Sinking the Tirpitz

War History Online has an article by Colin Fraser about the sinking of the Tirpitz:

The World War Two story of the German battleship Bismarck is legendary. The massive warship was destroyed by British ships and planes, and then scuttled by its crew, in one of the most famous naval battles in the Atlantic during the war.
The Bismarck, however, had a sister ship. The Tirpitz was commissioned into the Kriegsmarine in February of 1941, and after a series of improvements, weighed even more than the Bismarck, becoming the heaviest battleship ever built by a European navy.
The British Royal Navy and Royal Air Force each dedicated several missions to destroying this behemoth, finally succeeding in November of 1944. Apart from the sizable periods of time the Tirpitz spent under repair from the damages the British caused in a few of the missions, she was effectively an entire fleet in one ship. So feared was the Tirpitz that the British had to dedicate a huge counter-force to remain in the region, should the Germans release this beast for an attack.
The Tirpitz’ main guns were eight 38 cm pieces mounted on four turrets. Following those, 15 cm, 10.5 cm, 3.7 cm, 2 cm (Flak) guns made up the rest of her armament along with eight torpedo tubes. Her armor was over a foot thick in the belt and on the gun turrets.
Compared to other elements in the German Navy, like U-boats, for example, this giant battleship saw little action. In fact, the only time Tirpitz’ crew unleashed the power of her main batteries in an offensive action was on the Allied base on Spitzbergen, the main island in Svalbard. Tirpitz posed enough of a threat from her usual position in one of Noway’s fjords, that the Allies were almost too wary to try and move any ships or convoys between the North and Baltic Seas.
The Tirpitz could also be a huge problem for the Germans, as well. While trying to intercept two Allied convoys in March of 1942, the Tirpitz, and the destroyers accompanying her, used up to eight thousand metric tons of fuel. It took the Germans three months to recuperate from the massive effort.
The first operation in which the British had any major success in damaging the Tirpitz was codenamed Source and took place on 20 to 22 of September 1943, just two weeks after the assault on Spitzbergen. Using intelligence gathered from considerable effort by Norwegian Resistance brothers Torbjørn and Einar Johansen, the Royal Navy sent several X-class mini submarines into Norway’s Kåfjord, where the Tripitz was stationed.
The mission was actually intended to destroy the Tirpitz, the battleship Scharnhorst, and the heavy cruiser Lützow,which was in Langfjord. Six X subs were sent out, towed most of the way there by normal sized subs. X8 was heavily damaged en route and had to be scuttled. X9’s tow cable broke and she plunged abruptly down into the sea, killing the entire crew. The Scharnhorst, target of X9 and X10, was out on exercises, so X10 turned back.
X5’s fate is still unconfirmed, but it is thought that she was detected by the Tirpitz and sunk before reaching her target. X6 and X7, however, slipped under the Tirpitz’ torpedo nets and each laid two mines on timer fuses below and around the battleship on the seafloor. While trying to escape, both subs were detected and attacked. Of the eight crew members of the two craft, two from X7 were killed and the other six were captured by the Germans, survived the war, and were highly decorated by their country for their actions.
The Tirpitz was badly damaged by the mines. Shell plating was ripped open, an oil tank ruptured, and one of the massive turrets was thrown off its bearings. All but one of the turbo-generators was disabled and over fourteen hundred tons of water flooded the ships, causing a list of one or two degrees to port. While the Tirpitz wasn’t sunk, it took over six months to repair in one of the most complex naval engineering tasks of World War Two.
The Royal Navy and its Fleet Air Arm tried several more times to sink the Tirpitz and caused some significant damage, along with killing and wounded hundreds of the crew. But they never sank her and lost several aircraft in the attempts. The duty of sinking the Tirpitz then fell to the Royal Air Force.
In two missions, in September and October of 1944, the RAF managed to do sizable damage to the Tirpitz with armor-piercing Tallboy bombs weighing over ten thousand pounds each; full repairs would have taken the Germans months. The ship, barely seaworthy, was moved further south to the island of Håkøya in Tromsø and was used as a floating gun battery.
The RAF’s final mission to sink Tirpitz, Operation Catechism, was launched on 12 November 1944. Thirty-two Lancaster bombers dropped thirty Tallboys from the sky, with two direct hits, a near miss, and further misses conveniently destroying the sandbank the Germans had built up to keep the ship from capsizing. The bombers had come in at 0935 and, by 0950, the Tirpitz had tipped sixty degrees to port and all hands were abandoning ship. As one group of men were swimming to shore, a huge explosion blasted one of the large turrets into the air, which then crashed into the sea, killing all of them.
Before 1000, the Tirpitz had totally capsized. Eighty-two men would be rescued by comrades cutting through the hull, but a thousand of the crew died in the destruction of the mighty battleship.
Accusations flew widely between the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe over why the Tirpitz had no air support during the attack. After investigations, poor communication between the two military branches was blamed. A joint Norwegian-German company began salvage operations on the ship in 1948, but didn’t finish until 1957.
Though she was used comparatively very few times and always at great cost to Germany in terms of war supplies, the Tirpitz fulfilled its purpose, holding the Allied navies in check and forcing them to be ever-watchful of the sea monster ever coming out of its lair. She was finally sunk, just over five months after D-Day, becoming another symbol of the imminent defeat of the Third Reich.

Rico says a lot of effort, and lives lost on both sides, for nothing...