Sky Warriors: Air War Battles by Price Alfred

Author:Price, Alfred [Price, Alfred]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lume Books
Published: 2020-07-15T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine – Bombers against the Tirpitz

The final generation of battleships made extremely difficult targets for air attack . Although they were large and difficult to hide , they were also very well armed and had strong armour protection . If these vessels were in port or at an anchorage they usually enjoyed the additional protection of smoke generating units , anti -torpedo nets , anti -aircraft guns and , usually , shore -based fighters .

To stand a reasonable chance of destroying such a target it was necessary to use either a very large number of planes carrying conventional armour -piercing bombs , or a small number of planes equipped with more specialized types of weapon . During its final series of attacks leading to the destruction of the battleship Tirpitz, the Royal Air Force adopted the latter course ..

The German battleship Tirpitz spent almost her entire life holed up in the Norwegian fjords. Too powerful to be ignored, she was a constant menace to the Allied convoys carrying supplies and equipment around the north of Norway to assist the Soviet Union’s war effort. Tirpitz rarely put to sea, and when she did she saw relatively little action. But by her very presence she tied down a large number of Allied warships, including battleships, that could have been better used elsewhere.

Tirpitz , sister-ship of the famous Bismarck , was one of the most powerful warships of her time. With a displacement of 42,900 tons, she was 7,900 tons heavier than the King George V class battleships, the nearest equivalent in the Royal Navy. Much of the difference in weight was accounted for by the German ship’s extra armour. To give protection against naval gunfire and torpedoes, Tirpitz had a vertical belt of side armour 12.6in thick that extended from 8ft below the waterline to a similar distance above it; above that belt extending to deck level was a vertical belt of armour 5.7in thick. To keep out aerial bombs, the vessel carried a layer of horizontal armour just over 3in thick to protect the machinery spaces, increasing to nearly 4in above the ammunition magazines. Where the deck armour met the side armour, the former was inclined at an angle to keep out plunging shot. The German battleship had an abnormally wide beam of 118ft, giving her a greater degree of initial stability than any comparable ship in the British or US Navies (battleships built for the latter had to be narrow enough to pass through the locks of the Panama Canal, but for obvious reasons that was not a design requirement for German warships).

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