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

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СКАЧАТЬ Rear Admiral Vizeadmiral Vice Admiral Generaladmiral No equivalent Grossadmiral Admiral of the Fleet

       Prologue

      The shortest memorandum in Winston Churchill’s vast wartime output of queries, instructions and exhortations is three words long. On Monday, 14 December 1942 he wrote to the First Sea Lord, Sir Dudley Pound, demanding: ‘Where is TIRPITZ?’ The reply was reassuring. She was stuck safely in a Norwegian fjord near Trondheim undergoing repairs. Far from getting ready for a potentially devastating sortie, the crew was busy decorating the messes in preparation for Christmas.

      The terse tone of the memo reveals a tremor of alarm. Churchill’s manner, both real and contrived, radiated unflappability, even in the face of towering danger. Yet throughout her life this one battleship, the last of Hitler’s fleet, could disturb his calm, nagging at his thoughts when it might be imagined he had bigger concerns to worry about. His wish to see it sunk, or at least disabled, bordered on the obsessive. The archives contain a stream of calls for action addressed to admirals and air marshals. A note from Churchill’s office dated 22 January 1942 reports that ‘the Prime Minister rang up the First Sea Lord and instructed him to see tonight the Chief of the Air Staff and concert means for making an attack on the TIRPITZ’. It goes on to record his opinion ‘that the crippling of this ship would alter the entire face of the naval war and that the loss of 100 machines or 500 airmen would be well compensated for’.

      In the cruel ledger of war, this, at the time, would have counted as a bargain. The destruction of no other enemy asset would absorb so many resources and so much time and energy. As long as Tirpitz was afloat she cast a shadow over British naval planning, mesmerizing the Home Fleet and forcing its most powerful ships to keep a constant watch against a breakout into the Atlantic where, in the anxious eyes of those watching her, she might cut Britain’s trans-atlantic lifeline.

      Fear of her destructive power inspired a heroic feat of arms, the blowing up of the St Nazaire dock in March 1942, thus depriving the battleship of a haven should it ever make it into the Atlantic. It also triggered the shaming decision a few months later to abandon Convoy PQ.17 to its fate when it was thought that Tirpitz was at sea.

      The effort to deal with her was unrelenting. Between October 1940 and November 1944 she was the target of twenty-four major air and sea operations. They ranged from conventional attacks by heavy bombers to innovative operations by human torpedoes and midget submarines that even in wartime seemed suicidally risky. Churchill’s proddings produced other even more hazardous and fanciful schemes that, mercifully, were never implemented.

      Whether the prize was worth the cost is open to question. Churchill’s determination, though, ensured that it would be paid in full. The actions that followed produced one of the great dramas of the war, touching the limits of human courage and folly. This is it.

       Chapter 1 The Belly of the Beast

      At 8.30 on the morning of 12 November 1944, the gun crews and lookouts on the decks of the battleship Tirpitz stood at their action stations staring intently into the eastern sky. It was a crisp, clear day. The sunlight sparkled on the waters of the Norwegian fjord in which they lay anchored, close to a small, humped island, smudged with the first snow of winter. A few minutes before there had been a clamour of bells and blaring loudspeakers as an air raid warning was announced.

      Below deck in the gunnery fire control section a young midshipman called Alfred Zuba was reading a book on German history when the alarm was sounded. He put it aside and waited for information about the approaching aircraft to start crackling in the earphones clamped to his head. The first report placed the raiders less than twenty miles away to the south-east, flying at an estimated 9,000 feet. The details changed fast. The aircraft were closing rapidly. Like everyone on board, he knew what they were – Lancaster bombers, carrying big new bombs that exploded with the destructive power of an earthquake. Nonetheless, he felt confident. Tirpitz had seen off a similar attack a fortnight before and there was a squadron of fighter aircraft nearby to protect her. As yet, though, there was no sign that they were flying to the rescue. When the raiders were nearly thirteen miles away the ship opened fire on the attackers. The first salvo erupted from ‘Anton’ and ‘Bruno’, the forward turrets each housing two 15-inch guns hurling shells weighing almost a ton each with a force that made Tirpitz vibrate like a tuning fork.

      Above decks, men were shouting and pointing excitedly at a cluster of small dots, black and ominous against the innocent blue of the sky. The heavy anti-aircraft guns and the light flak opened up and the stink of burnt powder filled the air.

      Then, over the industrial thud of artillery and the clatter of cascading shell cases, a different noise was heard. A deep, elemental thunderclap rolled over the decks and echoed through the passageways and stairwells. It was followed by another. It seemed to Zuba that the great craft was ‘staggering’. She was being ‘shaken by giant fists’.

In an instant the atmosphere of quiet efficiency inside the steel walls of his battle station was swept away and everywhere was ‘disorder, confusion, mess, chaos – the bedlam of near and distant noises’. The deck below him began to tilt and he had to cling to a bulkhead to stop himself falling. He called the central flak control station but got only silence. Nearby, Oberleutnant zur See* Ludwig Mettegang, a twenty-three-year-old communications officer, was scrambling up the sloping floor to reach the emergency telephone that connected with the bridge. This line was still working. Mettegang demanded information and instructions, shouting to be heard over the din of explosions and the shriek of tortured metal. The thirty men around him, crouching in the gathering darkness as the lights flickered and died, watched and listened. They were on the lowest deck of the ship. To reach the outside world meant climbing through four levels up a succession of ladders. Mettegang turned to them with some dismaying news. The orders from the bridge were that they were to stay at their posts. Then came ‘new terrific hits, new gigantic shakings’. Mettegang was shouting ‘get out! Now!’

      Zuba ‘tore the phones from my head. I took my gas mask and rushed to the emergency exit. Fifteen, twenty men were standing there. Everybody wants to go up, wants to get out – out to life, to escape from death! But there is only room for one at a time … so we are standing there and waiting for our turn.’

      As he shuffled forward he could feel the ‘bottom burning under our feet’. Then it was his turn and he was ‘clambering through, along the pitch-dark narrow hold’ that led to the gun deck. As he reached the next hatchway the ship made another sickening lurch. He slid down the linoleum-covered floor, slippery with oil and water, away from the exit. Water was tumbling into the compartment, ‘black and oily’, reaching up to his chest. He felt ‘death take hold of me with iron hands’. He yelled for a lifebelt but no one could help. He scrabbled on the slick lino as ‘more and more water comes streaming in, holds me tight and does not let me go’. He could feel the shock of more explosions shaking the ship. At last he ‘found a handhold and pulled myself up. A comrade stretched out his hand to me so I could reach a ventilator [pipe].’ The respite was short. The ship slumped again. The pipe that had been upright was now horizontal and he was hanging above the water swirling below. The weight of his sodden clothes was dragging him down and he could ‘literally feel the strength draining out of my fingers’. Zuba had decided that ‘a few minutes then it will be over’ when the ship shifted again. His dangling feet found another pipe and he was standing upright once more. Someone was shouting that everyone should go back through the emergency exit. СКАЧАТЬ