Target Tirpitz: X-Craft, Agents and Dambusters - The Epic Quest to Destroy Hitler’s Mightiest Warship. Patrick Bishop
rocks on the northern side of the fjord as mooring points. The crew were immediately set to work stretching grey camouflage nets over the length and breadth of the ship, which they covered with fir branches cut from the forest that covered the hill above. Soon Tirpitz was cloaked in a dusting of snow and its outlines melted into the monochrome landscape of hill and water.
The anchorage had been well chosen. Tirpitz was tucked into the tail of the inlet. The hills standing 400 to 600 feet above plunged straight into the water, making a natural mooring deep enough to take the ship’s nearly thirty-four-feet draught. There was another ridge on the southern shore, about 700 feet high. Any attacking aircraft would have to approach from the western, seaward side, making the task of the defenders much easier. The ship was protected by clusters of anti-aircraft batteries mounting sixteen 105mm, forty-four 20mm and eight 37mm guns sited to give an all-round field of fire. Within a few days more flak batteries had been placed on the slopes above it as well as chemical smoke generators that could pump out a thick, protective pall within minutes. Soon afterwards it was fully protected by attack from the water by steel antisubmarine and anti-torpedo nets, hung at right angles, a hundred yards from the stern, which faced backwards towards the mouth of Faettenfjord.
Topp and his superiors were certain that the British would soon learn about the new whereabouts of the Tirpitz and immediately attack her. Thanks to Fane’s reconnaissance flight of 23 January, the battleship had indeed been found. The Admiralty and Air Ministry now set to finding a plan that would satisfy the Prime Minister’s impatient demand that it should be sunk without further ado. In his instructions, Churchill had raised the possibility of an attack by carrier-borne torpedo planes. That would mean sailing a carrier close enough to put their aircraft within range of the target. To do so would expose the carrier and its escorts to great risk from the Lufwaffe’s Ju88 and Ju87 bombers and dive-bombers and Heinkel 111 torpedo planes that had begun to arrive in the region in response to Hitler’s new focus on Norway. Even if the Fleet Air Arm’s Swordfish and Albacore biplanes made it to Faettenfjord, the narrowness of the anchorage made it extremely unlikely they would be able to hit the target.
It was left to Bomber Command to come up with something. Tirpitz lay at the extreme limit of the range of even the four-engine bombers that had now come into service. To reach the target and return safely home they would have to take off from bases in Scotland. The operation that ensued was given the name ‘Oiled’. It was undertaken in a spirit of hope rather than expectation. The RAF had long been aware that it lacked the means to pose a deadly threat to large German warships. Since the second day of the war it had been trying to sink them, with very little success. Tirpitz herself had been the object of five operations while lying at Wilhelmshaven and Kiel. The results were negligible, even when large numbers of aircraft were involved. On the night of 20/21 June 1941, a force of 115 Wellingtons, Hampdens, Whitleys, Stirlings and Halifaxes set off for Kiel to ‘identify and bomb the Tirpitz’. Not one aircraft succeeded in doing so.18
At this stage navigational aids were still primitive and it was a considerable achievement to find the target. Even then, the chances of hitting it were small. Bomb sights were simple and hopelessly inaccurate. To limit the risk from flak, aircraft had to drop their bombs from heights of 10,000 feet or more. To hit a target as tiny as the deck of a warship from this range was a considerable feat. When bombs did strike they were unlikely to cause fatal damage. Once again, post-war economies had held back research and development and RAF aircraft went into the new conflict with much the same ordnance as they had carried in 1918. The biggest bomb the twin-engined Whitleys, Hampdens and Blenheims in service at the start of the war could carry weighed 500lb of which only a third was explosive charge. Bomber crews sometimes endured the heartbreak and frustration of struggling through flak and fighters to strike their target, only to be let down by their weapons. Such was the experience of the fifteen Halifaxes of 35 and 76 Squadrons which broke through fierce fighter opposition to hit Scharnhorst where she lay at La Pallice on the French Atlantic coast on 24 July 1941. Three armour-piercing bombs passed through the ship without exploding. Another two bombs did detonate but the damage was repairable and Scharnhorst was ready for action again in four months. If the quality of the crews’ weapons had matched their skill and courage, she should have been sent to the bottom.
The nine Halifaxes and seven Stirlings from 15 and 149 Squadrons which took off in the early hours of 30 January from Lossiemouth, on the north-east coast of Scotland, to attack Tirpitz were almost certainly destined to fail. So it turned out. The weather was terrible. Only two aircraft managed to find Trondheim where they dropped their bombs without effect over some unidentified shipping. One Stirling was shot down. Churchill’s incessant prodding meant it unlikely that the failure would deter further attempts. On 22 February Bomber Command got a forceful and ruthless new commander, Sir Arthur Harris, who was anxious to impress. There would be two more attempts by the RAF to sink Tirpitz in Faettenfjord before the start of the summer.
The ship was now under regular surveillance. A picture taken by a PRU overflight on 15 February shows it lying at its usual berth, the long, finely tapered bow flaring out into a broad 118-foot beam. It looks safe and secure inside its protective netting, with a cluster of small maintenance and supply craft huddled around it feeding its needs, and a sheet of snow on its upper surfaces. The photographic intelligence was soon supplemented by reports from Norwegian agents in the area.
They were operating in an extremely risky environment. By now the German occupation had set hard over Trondheim and the surrounding area. The army had garrisoned the town. Navy control boats plied the length of Trondheimsfjord checking fishing boats and cargo vessels while bigger ships stood sentry at the entrance. In their wake came the Gestapo, led by Obersturmbannführer Gerhard Flesch, who arrived in October 1941. He took over the local prison as his headquarters and set up a concentration camp at Falstad, near Levanger, north-east of Trondheim.
Trondheim was historically and economically important. Norwegian kings were still crowned there in the Gothic cathedral of Nidaros whose triple spires poke elegantly above the merchant houses and leafy squares of the old town. The banks of the Nidelva river, which snakes around the centre, were lined with slipways, small canning factories and warehouses, painted yellow and red and topped with steep-pitched, corrugated-iron roofs. The smells of the sea – drying nets, fish, salt, tar and diesel oil – hung pleasantly over the town.
A small minority of Norwegians had welcomed the arrival of the Germans. The Norwegian Nazi Party, led by Vikdun Quisling, had a presence in the area. Over time they planted their supporters in influential jobs in schools, hospitals and local administration. They forced the Protestant bishop from the cathedral and a collaborator was installed in his place.
With his arrival, congregations dwindled. It was the young who seemed to feel the German presence most, especially the students at the Institute of Technology, an imposing granite pile, which had been training architects and engineers since 1910. The Gestapo were quick to suppress displays of patriotism. Gestures of defiance, though, hardly posed a threat. Their main concern was enemy agents who could pass on intelligence about German dispositions and movements, particularly the activities of Tirpitz which now lay only fifteen miles to the east of the town.
British intelligence agencies set about establishing a network of agents under the Germans’ noses, in Trondheim and other key points along the Norwegian coastline. Their activities were to provide a continuous stream of human intelligence, gathered by direct observation. It was extremely valuable. Despite the aerial reconnaissance and the watch kept by British submarines at the sea entrance to Trondheimsfjord, bad weather meant that there were frequent holes in the surveillance. Agents could fill the gaps. Tirpitz had only one route to the sea – westwards along the fjord. This took it right past the 50,000 inhabitants of Trondheim, which lay on the southern shore. There were further settlements strung along either side of the fjord. Reliable agents equipped with radios would be able to alert the Admiralty to any significant comings or goings.
Shortly after the battleship’s arrival, Bjørn Rørholt, a twenty-two-year-old Royal Norwegian Navy lieutenant, exiled in London after escaping the Gestapo, was called to Admiralty Headquarters in London. Rørholt came from a patriotic military background. His father Arnold was an early member of the resistance and had been taken hostage after Bjørn had fled Norway. Bjørn had studied radio communications at the Institute of