Operation Tungsten was a Second World War Royal Navy air raid that targeted the German battleship Tirpitz. The operation sought to damage or destroy Tirpitz at her base in Kaafjord in the far north of Norway before she could become fully operational again following a period of repairs.
The British decision to strike Kaafjord was motivated by fears that the battleship, upon re-entering service, would attack strategically important convoys carrying supplies to the Soviet Union. Removing the threat posed by Tirpitz would also allow the Allies to redeploy the capital ships which had to be held in the North Sea to counter her. After four months of training and preparations, the British Home Fleet sailed on 30 March 1944 and aircraft launched from five aircraft carriers struck Kaafjord on 3 April. The raid achieved surprise, and the British aircraft met little opposition. Fifteen bombs hit the battleship, and strafing by fighter aircraft inflicted heavy casualties on her gun crews. Four British aircraft and nine airmen were lost during the operation.
The damage inflicted during the attack was not sufficient to sink or disable Tirpitz, but she suffered considerable damage to her superstructure and unarmored areas, with 122 members of her crew killed and 316 were wounded. The German Kriegsmarine decided to repair the battleship, and works were completed by mid-July. The British conducted further carrier raids against Tirpitz between April and August 1944 in the hope of prolonging the period she was out of service, but none was successful. Tirpitz was eventually disabled and then sunk by Royal Air Force heavy bombers in late 1944.
Background
The threat posed by Tirpitz had an important influence on British naval strategy during the Second World War. She was commissioned in February 1941 and completed her crew training late that year. At about the same time the German high command decided to station the battleship in Norway; this deployment was intended to deter a feared Allied invasion of Norway and threaten the convoys which regularly sailed through the Arctic Sea to the Soviet Union. These convoys carried large quantities of war material from ports in the UK and Iceland, and were frequently attacked by the German air and naval units stationed in Norway. Tirpitz arrived in Norway in January 1942 and operated from anchorages located in fjords. While she was operational the Allies had to keep a powerful force of warships with the British Home Fleet to guard against the possibility of a sortie against the Arctic convoys, and capital ships accompanied most convoys part of the way to the Soviet Union.
The British attacked Tirpitz several times during 1942 and 1943. When the battleship sortied to intercept Convoy PQ 12 on 6 March 1942 , which formed part of the convoy's escort, attempted to attack her using torpedo bombers. These aircraft launched twenty torpedoes at the battleship but all missed. On several occasions during 1942 and 1943 bombers from the Royal Air Force and Soviet Air Forces attempted to strike Tirpitz in her anchorages without success. On 23 September 1943 two British X-class midget submarines succeeded in penetrating the defences around the battleship at her main anchorage at Kaafjord in northern Norway during Operation Source, and placed explosive charges in the water beneath her. This attack caused extensive damage to Tirpitz, putting her out of service for six months.
Repairs to Tirpitz were carried out using improvised facilities at Kaafjord as it was considered too risky to attempt to move the damaged warship to Germany. Instead, equipment and work crews were shipped to the fjord from German ports. On the night of 10/11 February 1944, 15 Soviet aircraft attacked the battleship, but did not cause any damage. By 17 March, the repairs to Tirpitzs armament, machinery and hull were complete, but several minor repair tasks were outstanding. During the period the ship was under repair, Scharnhorst, the only remaining operational German battleship, was sunk on 26 December during the Battle of the North Cape. Following this engagement the Royal Navy stopped deploying battleships to cover convoys travelling to and from the Soviet Union. By this stage of the war the Allies also had large numbers of anti-submarine and anti-aircraft escort ships available, and were able to assign strong forces to protect all of the Arctic convoys. German submarines operating in the Norwegian Sea were rarely able to evade the convoy escorts, and few merchant vessels suffered damage from enemy attack.