Target Tirpitz: X-Craft, Agents and Dambusters - The Epic Quest to Destroy Hitler’s Mightiest Warship. Patrick Bishop

to enemy action in the war to date, only two had been sunk by gunfire.

      Räder, though, was cautious. The prize of destroying the convoy was not worth the risk of the loss of his battleship. Vizeadmiral Ciliax, in command of the operation, was told that he was to avoid confronting enemy forces unless it was absolutely necessary to complete the destruction of PQ.12. Even then, he was to engage only if he was confident that he was facing an equal or inferior force.

      There was plenty of time for an interception and nothing to be gained by an early appearance that would give the enemy time to react. It was not until the following morning that Tirpitz slipped her moorings at Faettenfjord and set off westwards into Trondheimsfjord. Darting ahead were the slim shapes of the destroyers Hermann Schoemann, Friedrich Ihn and Z-25. Snapping in the wind, high on the mast, flew the flag of Otto Ciliax, flushed with success from the Channel Dash and as anxious as Tovey for another triumph.

      That afternoon Tirpitz passed the Agdenes fortress and steered round the Brekstad headland and out into the open sea. Norwegian agents onshore seem either to have missed her passing or their reports did not reach London in time, for the first sighting was made by one of the British submarines, now on regular picket duty off the entrance to Trondheimsfjord. Lieutenant Dick Raikes was patrolling in Seawolf, trying to stay hidden on a ‘horribly flat sea’ from the German aircraft that appeared frequently overhead, when, just before 6 p.m., the submarine’s hydrophones picked up the ominous churning of big propellers. He stayed on the surface long enough to glimpse the foretop and funnel of a large warship which he immediately took to be Tirpitz. He dived and set off towards her but ‘never got within ten miles of her’. It was, as he reflected later, as well that he did not for the destroyers and the escorting aircraft circling the squadron would have made short work of Seawolf.⁸

      He broke off the chase to report the news to London. Nerves everywhere, in the Admiralty, in Downing Street and on all the ships at sea, were already strained in expectation. The Condor’s signal had been picked up and decoded. Just after midnight, Raikes’ confirmation that Tirpitz had been unable to resist the temptation presented by PQ.12 was in Tovey’s hands aboard King George V and he paused to consider his options.

      Tirpitz was at sea but what about her companions? Prinz Eugen was still out of the picture, thanks to the damage done by a torpedo from HMS Trident on the journey to Trondheimsfjord, but where was the Admiral Scheer? The answer was that she was still at anchor, immobilised by the caution of Räder who was worried that she was too slow to take part in the operation. Tovey continued to worry about a big ship breakout into the Atlantic. There was a danger that one enemy ship might engage the convoy, diverting the attention away from the other while it raced for the North Atlantic. He considered dividing his force to cover both possibilities but an intervention from the Admiralty stopped this line of thought. They were sharply aware of the threat posed by the Luftwaffe squadrons now based in the area. The navy’s losses from air attack in Norway, Dunkirk and Crete had taught them a painful lesson. Tovey was told to keep his fleet concentrated under the protective air umbrella provided by the Fulmar fighters aboard Victorious.

      Fleet Air Squadrons 817 and 832 made up the striking force that would be thrown at German shipping. They were equipped with Fairey Albacore torpedo planes, the replacement for the Swordfish. The RAF’s interwar control of naval aviation had meant that the navy had inherited a service that was dismally lacking in aircraft and weapons capable of taking on ships. For the first years of the war the men of the Fleet Air Arm were stuck with inadequate and ill-equipped aeroplanes which they flew with extraordinary élan and determination despite being profoundly aware of their shortcomings.

      Sub-Lieutenant Charles Friend had just arrived on 832 Squadron, his latest posting in an incident-packed war that included having taken part in the air attacks on Bismarck. He was a reservist, a ‘hostilities only’ volunteer. Like many young men of the time he was fascinated by flying and in 1939 had given up his job as a lab assistant at the Paint Research Station in Teddington, Middlesex, to join the Fleet Air Arm. Friend was a grammar school boy, intelligent and lively. He brought a healthy dose of civilian scepticism with him into the enclosed world of the professional navy. On the whole, though, he found his new life congenial. ‘I had been made aware of the military virtues of obedience and loyalty in my family and school life as most of us had at the time,’ he wrote later. ‘The loss of complete independence in service life at all levels was compensated for by an abiding sense of belonging to an organization with a purpose.’⁹ In the early spring of 1942 he was just twenty-one but had already seen enough action to furnish several military careers. As well as the Bismarck operation, he had watched the sinking of the French fleet at Mers-el-Kebir, hunted submarines in the Atlantic and been aboard the carrier Ark Royal when she was sunk by a U-boat in the Mediterranean in November 1941.

      Friend was an observer and most of his flying had been done in Swordfishes. He found the Albacore ‘like a first class version of the Swordfish. It was an improvement on the dear old Stringbag because it had a more powerful engine and it was more aerodynamically efficient.’ Unlike the ‘Stringbag’ it had an enclosed and heated cockpit which represented an enormous improvement to the lives of the crew, particularly in the savage conditions of the Arctic. It also had an automatic life raft ejection system which triggered in the event of the aircraft ditching. One innovation was particularly welcome. The installation of a ‘P Tube’ meant they could relieve themselves in comfort. In the Swordfish, the crew had to make do by filling the empty containers of aluminium dust markers or flame floats, used to determine wind direction and tide speed, before flinging them overboard. It was important to choose the right side, ‘because over the wrong one, the slipstream opened them and showered the contents back into the cockpit’.

      The Albacore already bore an air of obsolescence. It was a biplane and its fixed undercarriage hung below, dragging through the air and slowing it down. Even with the extra horsepower offered by its new 1,065-horsepower Bristol Taurus II fourteen-cylinder radial engine it could still only manage a top speed of 150 knots (172mph) in straight and level flight. Its usual speed was a mere 90 knots (103mph), which made the observer’s job of navigating easier but severely limited its searching capabilities especially when the wind was against it. Some pilots felt the controls were heavier than those of the Swordfish and it was harder to take evasive action after dropping a torpedo.¹⁰

      There were other antiquated touches. The pilot’s seat was just ahead of the upper mainplane and a long fuel tank separated him from the observer. Communication was via a Gosport speaking tube – a simple length of flexible pipe. Pilots often forgot to connect them. According to Friend, to gain the attention of the man at the controls of a Swordfish ‘one simply reached over and banged his head’. In Albacores, though, ‘we all carried a long garden cane to reach forward past the tank to tap him on the shoulder.’ Detailed messages were written down and passed forward in an empty Very signal cartridge stuck on the end of the stick.

      Contact between aircraft and back to the ship was by radio and conducted in Morse code and was only used to report a sighting of the enemy or in extreme emergency. The Aldis lamp was still a useful tool to signal from air to deck or to other aircraft. When flying in formation they ‘resorted to making Morse with a swung forearm – “zogging” it was called’. As protection the Albacore had one fixed forward firing .303 machine gun in the starboard wing operated by the pilot. The rear cockpit was fitted with twin Vickers K guns operated by a third member of the crew, which delivered more firepower than the Swordfish’s single Lewis gun.

      Compared with the Luftwaffe’s sleek Condors and Heinkels, compared with the Japanese Mitsubishi torpedo and bomber aircraft, the ‘Applecore’ was slow and feebly armed. Thus equipped, the Fleet Air Arm could hope to achieve little. Given the quality of its aircraft, it had performed remarkably well. So far, the FAA actions had sunk three Italian battleships and six destroyers, as well as a German light cruiser, largely thanks to the skill and boldness of the crews. These qualities were about to be tested again as the British fleet and the Tirpitz squadron headed towards what all involved believed would be an epic encounter.

      By the evening of 6 March, Tirpitz was steaming north-eastwards up the Norwegian coast at a steady twenty-three knots through heavy seas before turning due north at midnight. At ten the next morning an attempt was made to send two of the