Book Review: Operation Title: Sink the Tirpitz

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by Glyn L. Evans

Yorkshire & Philadelphia: Pen & Sword, 2024. Pp. xiv, 235+. Illus., notes, chron., biblio., indices. $$36.95. ISBN: 1399050192

Manned Torpedoes vs. the Tirpitz

Obsessed with “game-changing” Wunderwaffen (“wonder weapons”) Adolf Hitler squandered vast resources on the development and construction of monster war machines that proved to have little operational utility. Among these were two Bismarck-class battleships. Tirpitz, the second of these, was laid down in November, 1936 and completed in February, 1941. Displacing over 52,000 tons at full load, armed with eight 15-inch (380 mm) guns and crewed by up to 2,500 sailors, she spent most of her brief career holed up in a Norwegian fjord against repeated and determined British attempts to sink her.

In December 1941, Italian frogmen riding “manned torpedoes” launched from a submarine severely damaged the British battleships HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Valiant in the harbor of Alexandria, Egypt. These were not suicide missions; the frogmen were captured, as expected, and treated as Prisoners of War. Winston Churchill demanded that the Royal Navy develop a capability to duplicate this feat. In great secrecy, “Chariot” manned torpedoes were constructed and crews were trained. The battery-powered Chariot Mark I was 22 feet long, with a range of about 18 miles and a speed of 3 knots. A detachable 600 pound explosive charge with a time-delay fuze could be rigged under the keel of the target vessel.

An old fishing boat named Arthur, with a dodgy engine, was provided with a Norwegian Resistance crew, a cargo of peat, and meticulously forged papers. The plan was to tow a pair of Chariots underwater to a point within range of Tirpitz, launch the attack, scuttle Arthur, and escape overland to neutral Sweden.

On October 26, 1942, the boat left the Shetland Islands, crossing the North Sea and entering Trondheim fjord. The forged papers passed muster with a German patrol boat, but the Chariots were lost on October 31 when their tow cables parted in rough seas, causing the operation to fail.

During the escape overland one of the teams encountered an enemy patrol and Able Seaman Robert P. Evans, 20 years old, was wounded in the shootout; Evans was captured and later executed in accordance with Hitler’s secret “Commando Order.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commando_Order.)

Tirpitz was finally sunk at her anchorage on November 12, 1944, when RAF Lancaster bombers scored two direct hits and a near miss with six-ton “Tallboy” bombs. The wreck was salvaged between 1948 and 1957, and the valuable steel recycled.

Deeply researched and well-documented, Operation Title is a case study that will be of great interest to students of special operations in World War II. History suggests that special operations in war either succeed in spectacular fashion or fail catastrophically. It is proverbial that “success has a hundred fathers, but failure is an orphan.” But we can learn as much, or even more, from studying the failures.

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Our Reviewer: Mike Markowitz is an historian and wargame designer. He writes a monthly column for CoinWeek.Com and is a member of the ADBC (Association of Dedicated Byzantine Collectors). His previous reviews in modern history include To Train the Fleet for War: The U.S. Navy Fleet Problems, 1923-1940, Comrades Betrayed: Jewish World War I Veterans under Hitler, Rome – City in Terror: The Nazi Occupation 1943–44, A Raid on the Red Sea: The Israeli Capture of the Karine A, Strike from the Sea: The Development and Deployment of Strategic Cruise Missiles since 1934, 100 Greatest Battles, Battle for the Island Kingdom, Abraham Lincoln and the Bible, From Ironclads to Dreadnoughts: The Development of the German Battleship, 1864-1918, Venice: The Remarkable History of the Lagoon City, The Demon of Unrest, Next War: Reimagining How We Fight, Habsburg Sons: Jews in the Austro-Hungarian Army, Hitler's Atomic Bomb, The Dark Path: The Structure of War and the Rise of the West, and The Last Hot Battle of the Cold War.

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Note: Operation Title is also available in e-editions.

 

StrategyPage reviews are published in cooperation with The New York Military Affairs Symposium

Reviewer: Mike Markowitz   


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