Just then Tirpitz was holed up in Norwegian waters, along with the pocket battleships Lützow and Admiral Scheer. With his usual gift for words, Winston Churchill summed up the importance of destroying Tirpitz: ‘The whole strategy of the war turns at this period on this ship.’ If this behemoth got loose in the North Atlantic convoys lanes, the results for the Allies could be catastrophic. She was so strong that no single British-or American-battleship could stand up to her alone. ![]() Tirpitz was a monster, more than 50,000 tons of thick armor and 15-inch guns. The most dangerous of these was Tirpitz, sister ship to Bismarck. The previous spring, the Royal Navy had run down and sunk the modern superbattleship Bismarck, but other potential surface raiders remained at large. U-boats were sinking Allied merchantmen faster than they could be replaced, and to this threat was added the lurking menace of German surface raiders. ![]() ![]() In the dark early days of 1942, Britain’s Atlantic lifeline was stretched to the breaking point.
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