Referred to by Winston Churchill as ‘The Beast’, Tirpitz was Germany’s last great battleship and was one of the largest and heaviest warships ever constructed by a European navy.
Sister ship to the infamous Bismarck, Tirpitz was referred to as ‘The Lonely Queen of the North’, a floating fortress that was built to dominate the seas. Laid down in 1936 and commissioned in 1941, Tirpitz spent most of her operational life lurking amongst the fjords of Norway. Such was the threat posed to the sea lanes and the Allied war effort, and so obsessed were Churchill and the Admiralty with her destruction, that twenty-four operations, ranging from the foolhardy to the ridiculous, although all were brave, were undertaken against her.
It was in November 1944 that the Tirpitz was finally sunk, not by the Royal Navy, but by Avro Lancasters of RAF Bomber Command.
Using a variety of sources, Tirpitz: The Life and Death of Germany’s Last Great Battleship looks at the military and political situation in Nazi Germany, which led to its commissioning and analyses the demise of Hitler’s iconic naval powerhouse.
ISBN: 9781781556696
Format: Hardback
Author(s): Daniel Knowles
First Publishment Date: 10 May 2018
