Operation Paravane

A British Lancaster bomber over Kaafjord during Operation Paravane

Date	15 September 1944
Location	Kaafjord, Norway
Result	British victory

Belligerents

United Kingdom

Germany

Commanders and leaders

Casualties and losses

11 killed
6 or 7 heavy bombers destroyed in accidents

1 battleship heavily damaged
5 killed, 15 wounded

Operation Paravane was a British air raid of World War II that inflicted heavy damage on the German battleship Tirpitz. The attack was conducted on 15 September 1944 by 21 Royal Air Force heavy bombers, which flew from an airfield in the north of the Soviet Union. The battleship was struck by one bomb, and further damaged by several near misses. This damage rendered Tirpitz unfit for combat, and she could not be repaired as it was no longer possible for the Germans to sail her to a major port.

The attack on 15 September followed a series of raids conducted against Tirpitz by Royal Navy aircraft carriers between April and August 1944 that sought to sink or disable the battleship at her anchorage in Kaafjord in the far north of German-occupied Norway, so that she no longer posed a threat to Allied convoys travelling to and from the Soviet Union. While the first of these raids was successful, the other attacks failed due to shortcomings with the Fleet Air Arm's strike aircraft and the formidable German defences. As a result, the task of attacking the battleship was transferred to the RAF's Bomber Command. Avro Lancaster bombers from the Command's two elite squadrons flew to their staging airfield in the Soviet Union on the night of 11/12 September, and attacked on 15 September using heavy bombs and air-dropped mines. All of the British aircraft returned to base, though one of the Lancasters later crashed during its flight back to the United Kingdom.

Following Operation Paravane, the German Navy's commander decided to use Tirpitz as a static artillery battery to protect the town of Tromsø. The Allies were unable to confirm the extent of the battleship's damage, and conducted two further heavy bomber raids against her in late 1944. Tirpitz was sunk with considerable loss of life on 12 November during the second of these attacks.

From early 1942, Tirpitz posed a significant threat to the Allied convoys transporting supplies through the Norwegian Sea to the Soviet Union. Stationed in fjords on the Norwegian coast, the battleship was capable of overwhelming the close-escort forces assigned to the Arctic convoys or breaking out into the North Atlantic. Due to the superiority of the Allied navies, Tirpitz rarely put to sea, and only conducted three brief combat operations into the Norwegian Sea during her career. However, the Allies needed to keep a powerful force of warships with the British Home Fleet to counter the threat she posed, and capital ships accompanied most convoys part of the way to the Soviet Union.

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Wikipedia