Operation Paravane
Operation Paravane was a British air raid of World War II that inflicted heavy damage on the German battleship Tirpitz. The attack was conducted on 15 September 1944 by 21 Royal Air Force heavy bombers, which flew from an airfield in the north of the Soviet Union. The battleship was struck by one bomb, and further damaged by several near misses. The Allies were unable to confirm the extent of the battleship’s damage, and conducted two more heavy bomber raids against her in late 1944, Operation Obviate on 29 October, and Operation Catechism on 12 November.
About Operation Paravane in brief
Operation Paravane was a British air raid of World War II that inflicted heavy damage on the German battleship Tirpitz, at anchor in Kaafjord in the far north of German-occupied Norway. The attack was conducted on 15 September 1944 by 21 Royal Air Force heavy bombers, which flew from an airfield in the north of the Soviet Union. The battleship was struck by one bomb, and further damaged by several near misses. The Allies were unable to confirm the extent of the battleship’s damage, and conducted two more heavy bomber raids against her in late 1944, Operation Obviate on 29 October, and Operation Catechism on 12 November. Further plans for air attacks on the ship were developed during 1943 but none took place during the war. The Germans used the battleships as a static artillery battery to protect the town of Tromsø, and she was sunk with considerable loss of life during the second of these attacks in November 1944. The German Navy’s commander decided to use her as an artillery battery for the rest of the war, and the Allies were forced to rely on her to protect Allied convoys in the Arctic and the North Atlantic. She was not used in combat as she was unable to sail to a major port and was unfit for combat. The Allied navies needed to keep a powerful force of warships with the British Home Fleet to counter the threat she posed and capital ships accompanied most convoys part of the way to theSoviet Union. From early 1942, Tirpitzer posed a significant threat to the Allied convoy transporting supplies through the Norwegian Sea to the Soviet union.
The first of these raids was successful, but the other attacks failed due to shortcomings with the Fleet Air Arm’s strike aircraft and the formidable German defences. As a result, the task of attacking the battlesyship was transferred to the RAF’s Bomber Command. During 1942 and 1943, British inventor Barnes Wallis tried to develop a version of his “bouncing bomb” for use against the larger German warships. Two squadrons of RAF Coastal Command operated from Vaengdena in northern Russia during mid-September 1942 to counter any German warships which attempted to attack any other Allied warships. These aircraft did not make contact with the German warships but these aircraft were used to attack several larger weapons that were used during Operation Chastise on 16 May 1943. The attacks were unsuccessful and none of the Germans attempted to counter these Allied aircraft. The British aircraft returned to base, though one of the Lancasters later crashed during its flight back to the United Kingdom. The last of the attacks was conducted by 21 Halifaxes and 12 Lancasters on 30 March, with the attacking force comprising 33 Halifaxes. On the night of 2728 April, another attack was mounted by 30 Halifaxe and 11 Avro Lancasters. The attackers found TirPitz covered in a protective smokescreen and the battlesion again escaped damage; two British aircraft were destroyed. The final raid in this series took place the next night and involved 21 Nova Scotia bombers and 11 Lancasters; two bombers were lost.
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This page is based on the article Operation Paravane published in Wikipedia (as of Oct. 30, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
