Tirpitz: The Life and Death of Germany's Last Super Battleship [Hardcover]

Although not as famous as her sistership Bismarck, the German battleship Tirpitz has received a far amount of coverage in the past thirty years, including John Sweetman's Tirpitz - Hunting the Beast in 2000. Now, Niklas Zetterling and Michael Tamelander, two Swedish researchers, have collaborated to produce another book on the Tirpitz. Rather than focusing on what the Tirpitz accomplished in her brief wartime career between 1942 and 1944 - which was darn little - the author's focus on the repeated British efforts to destroy the Tirpitz. Readers should be aware of several things about this book. First, it is rather non-technical and appears suited to general rather than specialist readers. Second, although the authors have used German wartime diaries as a source, they have also relied very heavily on standard secondary sources, so there is not a lot of new or unexpected information revealed here. Third, the book is an interesting read but the most gripping parts - those concerning actual attacks upon the Tirpitz - often seem rather succinct. Overall, this book represents a fairly well packaged and presented narrative on the two-year British effort to eliminate the Tirpitz, but it is also not very original in content or method. Indeed, I would say that it represents the historical equivalent of a bologna sandwich - edible and tasty while being consumed, but utterly forgettable afterward.

The book consists of 26 sequential chapters, which provide 322 pages of text. Aside from one large 2-page map of northern Norway, there are several smaller maps for actions such as the Battle of the Barents Sea; these maps are generally too small to read without a magnifying glass handy. There are also a number of B/W photos - a few of which I hadn't seen before - but by and large, they're the kind of photos that have appeared in other books about the Tirpitz. The authors did conduct archival research to write this book, primarily the War Diaries of the Tirpitz, Marinegruppe Nord and Luftflotte V. Frankly, I was disappointed by the superficial level of research. Zetterling is known as a prodigious trawler of German archived records and I was expecting to see some fresh data and insights here (e.g. he points to the shortage of fuel oil as a major handicap for the operations of the Tirpitz, but only once does he provide the briefest data about how much fuel was actually available. Also, he could have shed much more light on the defenses around the Tirpitz, such as flak guns and smoke screens), but it didn't happen. There's a bit more information on individual German sailors than in other accounts, but this is still skimpy.

Up front, the author's state that "we hope to assist the reader in attaining a better understanding of the war in the Arctic, as well as the Tirpitz's role in it. This was our main objective." So the book opens with Operation Nordmeer, the abortive sortie by the Tirpitz against convoy PQ12 in March 1942. After a few more chapters which discuss the early years of the Second World War at sea and the creation of British convoys across the Arctic to support the Soviet Union, much of the rest of the book shifts to cover British efforts to destroy Tirpitz. A particularly lengthy chapter is devoted to the British raid on the French port of St Nazaire to prevent the Tirpitz from possibly using the dry dock there. This chapter actually draws heavily upon Ken Ford's volume in the Osprey campaign series and after I went back and checked Ford's book, it was hard to draw much distinction in the narrative. The remaining chapters, cover a wide diversity of operations, from the Chariots, to the X-Craft, carrier raids and Lancs with Tallboys. It's all good fun if you like reading about things (and people) behind smashed about for no real purpose.

Since the book is non-technical, the evaluation of the damage inflicted on the Tirpitz is minimal. I recall other books mentioning that her keel and a number of critical frames were warped by the X-craft and first Tallboy attacks, which severely limited her speed, but that isn't made clear here. Details on the German defenses is sparse and information on the Norwegian resistance in provided help to the British is negligible except for the chapter on the chariots. Overall, this book would be useful for someone approaching this subject for the first time, but it seems to add only a thin coat of new paint to the existing historiography available.

In the companion volume to Bismarck, the authors gloss over the technical details of the ship assuming that the reader has read the other volume, but still provides enough information to inform someone who has not read the other volume. As with Bismarck, the authors put the role of the Tirpitz within the larger picutre of Arctic Convoy warfare. They focus on other events besides those directly related to the Tirpitz. For instance, they spend some time discussing the role of Artic Convoys and the demise of the Scharnhorst.

The authors also focus on the British attempts to destroy the battleship through direct assaults--including midget submarines, bombing raids, and deceptions--as well as their attempts to destroy all support for the battleship in Operation Chariot, the raid on the St. Nazaire Dry Docks.

This is a good acoount of the Tirpitz's story. There are not too many available in English and this fills a void. However, there are numerous grammaticsl errors (as in the Bismarck) and the footnotes do not correspond with the text. Additionally, the last 75 footnotes are not even covered in the back of the book. These faults are the major reason for the rating of three stars; if they had been addressed, the book would merit four for the story and background infomation alone.

The bottom line is that this book provides a good basic account of the Tirpitz, Arctic convoy warfare, and the British attempts to stop her, this is the place to start as long as one does not wish to utilize the footnotes.

This is a very solid read. Not action packed as the life of this ship was a bit of a disappointment but entertaining story nonetheless. I recommend it thoroughly just for an inside glimpse at the British and German high commands thoughts on what the ship could be used for and how its demise would be brought about.