Tirpitz was the second of two Bismarck-class battleships built for Nazi Germany’s Kriegsmarine prior to and during the Second World War. Named after Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, the architect of the Kaiserliche Marine, the ship was laid down in November 1936. She was armed with a main battery of eight 38-centimetre guns in four twin turrets. After a series of wartime modifications she was 2000 tonnes heavier than her sister ship, making her the heaviest battleship ever built by a European navy.
About German battleship Tirpitz in brief
Tirpitz was the second of two Bismarck-class battleships built for Nazi Germany’s Kriegsmarine prior to and during the Second World War. Named after Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, the architect of the Kaiserliche Marine, the ship was laid down in November 1936 and her hull was launched two and a half years later. She was armed with a main battery of eight 38-centimetre guns in four twin turrets. After a series of wartime modifications she was 2000 tonnes heavier than her sister ship, making her the heaviest battleship ever built by a European navy. In September 1943 she bombarded Allied positions on Spitzbergen, the only time the ship used her main battery in an offensive role. On 12 November 1944, British Lancaster bombers equipped with 12,000-pound \”Tallboy\” bombs scored two direct hits and a near miss which caused the ship to capsize rapidly. Between 1948 and 1957, the wreck was broken up by a joint Norwegian and German salvage operation. The ship was eventually sold for scrap in 1961. She is now a museum ship in the German port of Wilhelmshaven, where she is part of the Bremen-Gesellschaft collection of World War II-era naval memorabilia, including a collection of the ship’s topographical maps and other military memorabilia. The wreck of the battleship has been preserved in a museum since the 1970s, with the exception of a few pieces of the hull, which were removed in the 1980s and 1990s for use in the construction of the German Navy’s new aircraft carrier, the battleships Kriegersmarinewerft (KMAR) and Kriegesmarine (KD).
The ship is currently owned by the German State of Baden-Württemberg, along with her sister, the Kriegskrieg (KG) and her former owner, the German Ministry of Defence (KDM) The ship’s name is a tribute to the German Grand Admiral, who was responsible for the design and construction of many of the world’s most famous naval vessels, including the Battle of the Bulge and the Battlefleet of the North Sea, as well as to his son, Alfred. The battleship was named after the Grand Admiral’s father, the late Grand Admiral Alfred von TirPitz, who served as the head of theKaiserlichemarine. The two ships were designed in the mid-1930s as a counter to French naval expansion, specifically the two Richelieu-class Battleships France had started in 1935. As built, they were nominally within the 35,000 long-ton limit imposed by the Washington regime that governed battleship construction in the interwar period. But before either vessel was completed, the international treaty system had fallen apart following Japan’s withdrawal in 1937, allowing signatories to invoke an ‘escalator clause’ that permitted displacements as high as 45,000 tons.
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This page is based on the article German battleship Tirpitz published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 21, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
