Operation Tungsten was a Second World War Royal Navy air raid that targeted the German battleship Tirpitz. The operation sought to damage or destroy the battleship at her base in Kaafjord in the far north of Norway before she could become fully operational again following a period of repairs. The British decision to strike the base was motivated by fears that the battleships, upon re-entering service, would attack strategically important convoys. Four British aircraft and nine airmen were lost during the operation. Tirpitzer was eventually disabled and then sunk by Royal Air Force heavy bombers in late 1944.
About Operation Tungsten in brief
Operation Tungsten was a Second World War Royal Navy air raid that targeted the German battleship Tirpitz. The operation sought to damage or destroy the battleship at her base in Kaafjord in the far north of Norway before she could become fully operational again following a period of repairs. The British decision to strike the base was motivated by fears that the battleships, upon re-entering service, would attack strategically important convoys carrying supplies to the Soviet Union. Four British aircraft and nine airmen were lost during the operation. The German Kriegsmarine decided to repair the battlesship, and works were completed by mid-July. Tirpitzer was eventually disabled and then sunk by Royal Air Force heavy bombers in late 1944. During the period the ship was under repair, Scharnhorst was sunk on 26 December during the Battle of the North Cape. By this stage the Allies had large numbers of anti-submarine and anti-aircraft escort ships, and were able to assign strong forces to protect the Arctic convoys. It was feared that the Battleship could sortie and attack the convoys in the Norwegian Sea and rarely ever attack the convoy escorts and few merchant vessels suffered any damage from enemy attack. The threat posed by TirPitz had an important influence on British naval strategy during the Second World World War. The Allies had to keep a powerful force of warships with the British Home Fleet to guard against the possibility of a sortie against the Arctic Convoys. While she was operational the Allies also had to stop deploying battleships to cover convoys travelling from the UK and Iceland to theSoviet Union.
After this stage of the war the Royal Navy stopped deploying battleship to cover Convoy PQ 12 on 6 March 1942 and all capital ships accompanied most convoys part of the way to the USSR. The Germans decided to station the battlesion in Norway to deter a feared Allied invasion of Norway and threaten the convoy which regularly sailed through the Arctic Sea to the Soviets. This deployment was intended to deter the Allied invasion and threaten convoys which regularly sailing through the North Sea. On 23 September 1943 two British X-class midget submarines succeeded in penetrating the defences around the battlesian at her main anchorage at KaafJord in northern Norway during Operation Source, and placed explosive charges in the water beneath her. This attack caused extensive damage to Tirptz, putting her out of service for six months. The repairs to TirPtz’s armament, machinery and hull were complete by 17 March, but several minor repair tasks were outstanding. On the night of 1011 February 1944, 15 Soviet aircraft attacked the battlesyship, but did not cause any damage. The damage inflicted during the attack was not sufficient to sink or disable Tirpritz, but she suffered considerable damage to her superstructure and unarmored areas, with 122 members of her crew killed and 316 were wounded. On several occasions during 1942 and 1943 bombers from the Royal Air force and Soviet Air Forces attempted to strike Tirpz in her anchorages without success.
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This page is based on the article Operation Tungsten published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 05, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
