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The Tirpitz
Biggest. Fastest. Strongest.
The Tirpitz was the sister ship to the Bismarck, and the two battleships were the crown jewels of the German navy. After losing the Bismarck on the open sea, the Tirpitz was moved into a defendable position off the coast of Norway to prevent the US from supplying material support to Europe. The blockade crippled England and the European allies, so it became a major focus of the Royal Air Force
to sink the Tirpitz.
An Exploding Chevy Chevette?
The ship was equipped with more than 58 deck guns, including four dual turrets that could send a high explosive shell weighing roughly that of a Chevrolet Chevette over 23 miles. (Yes, both the high explosive round or the Chevette would be terrifying if you saw it coming from 23 miles away!) It also had eight torpedo tubes and the ability to launch four reconnaissance seaplanes via catapults. The ship was more than two NFL football fields long, and could house an NBA basketball court across its width, with room for bleachers at either end. The turbine engines could produce over 160,000 horsepower. To put that into perspective, you would need about 25 modern freight train locomotives pulling together at at full output to equal the power available to the captain of the Tirpitz. The ship’s main guns and hull were skirted with special alloy steel armor more than 12 inches thick.
The battleship was stronger than anything faster, and faster than anything stronger-
in the world.
The 27th Time is the Charm
A Tallboy bomb being prepared for a raid...
To sink the Tirpitz, the allies launched mission after mission. Heavy bomber raids, sea mines, even one-man submarines to quietly plant explosives on the ship’s hull- they failed twenty-six times to sink the Tirpitz. As they say, the twenty-seventh time is the charm. On November 12th, 1944, thirty-two Lancaster bombers dropped Tallboy bombs on the Tirpitz. Two direct hits and several near misses damaged, but failed to sink the ship. One of the massive bombs hit the sandbar shoring up the ship’s position, causing it to list and take on water. The ship tipped 60 degrees to port, and at 10:00 in the morning, a fire set off by one of the bombs reached the magazine igniting a store of munitions for the main guns. The resulting explosion was so incredible it blew one of the main gun turrets completely off the ship, and at last, the Tirpitz had lost its final battle.
Shortly after the war ended, German and Norwegian divers worked together to reclaim the alloy steel from the ship to use in civilian applications. Limited quantities of the alloy steel has been secured for the Tirpitz Damascus series knives.