Thank you for this. My father, a young second LT from Saskatchewan, served on the HMS Furious, one of the British aircraft carriers assigned to keep the Tirpiz in that fyord.
The value of the cargo in PQ17 was worth the cost of 10 Bismarck class battleships. Just the rumor of Tirpitz going to sea was enough to scatter the convoy, making it easy prey for U-boats and planes.
Awesome work as always. Serious question: why do you never use Maps in your storytelling? You often mention places I’ve never heard of and it’d be great to know where they are
I always thought both Tirpitz and Yamato were very unfortunate ships. They kind of outlived their time and as giant dinosaurs they were not given a chance to die in blaze of battle glory, but instead they died the death of "thousands mosquito bites".
Eh, the Tirpitz, unlike the Yamato, still served an important role as fleet in being, binding huge, huge amounts of allied ressources and eating up attack after attack over years. Had to be brought down by one of the largest bombs of WW2. Not a glorious story, but a gritty one. Thinking about it, it is quite remarkable what it took to sink the Bismarck class ships
@@phil3114 I mean they both probably served their purpose (albeit not very intentional :D) Tirpitz being great thorn in Allies backsides and Yamato being this picture of glorious warrior that will win in the "final battle". What I meant... they had a little bit of anti-climactic ending... Like a knight or samurai that trains all his life and becomes this master swordsman... only to be shot by rifle.
@@PetrSojnek True, though while Yamato was killed by a shotgun, death of a thousand cuts, the Tirpitz required heavy artillery, the heaviest bombs built in WW2 bar the a-bombs, which must have been quite the scene in itself
As a warship, she never really lived up to her potential. She never became ruler of the seas, nor did she challenge the allied navies. But as a psychological weapon, she fulfilled her role. The amount of men and material spent to sink her, was a lot. And so is the story of the Lonely Queen of the North.
The loss of almost the entire convoy PQ17 could be attributed to her. The only way to defend against u-boats and the Luftwaffe was to form ships into a convoy. The best defense against Tirpitz was to split the convoy up. The battleships in that way worked to support the u-boats.
Much is made about the amount of effort the British put into destroying Tirpitz and the losses of men and material. How about the resources that Germany had to find both in building and then maintaining the ship? The air defences alone were considerable, they also assigned at least one fighter squadron to her care. What did they achieve, PQ17 and the loss of the weather station. The submarines sank as many ships from one convoy as the Tirpitz. It was estimated several hundred tanks could have been built with the steel from the ship.
@@photoisca7386 There was not a squadron exclusively assigned to protect Tirpitz, that squadron had to cover a large sector of Norway and in general a Luftwaffe Jagdtgeschwader was assigned to Norway when it had suffered such sever losses it needed a break and time to rebuild. -Yes Tirpitz could be converted to scrap steal but it would still take a massive effort of man hours to turn it into tanks and guns. The Germans did have two H class battleships(25% bigger than Bismark) in the slipways in 1940 but they were scrapped after 10% of the steel and keel had been laid. The Iowas were in the same state and were also nearly scrapped but the US chose to continue.
I've been at Kåfjord outside Alta where Tirpitz was anchored and stood in a Tall Boy crater on one of the hills around the fjord. On the same hill is a crashed wreck of a Hellcat fighter.
Simon and his production crew are simply incredible, from subject matter to the research thereof, to the presentation as a whole. Keep it up, Big Brain & Co. All the love from the US.
Well she didn't do what she was built to do, but she performed the task she was assigned marvelously. Although, like the Yamato she had an unfitting end for such an impressive craft.
Wowza really? 😮 Good looking mate! 👏 Now that is summit to truly boast about! Wheras My Grandad was drafted onto a mine sweeper in 1944 - Before the allied landings in Normandy, he was on 1 of the many mine sweepers that did their dangerous work be4 the main charge! 😁 - Same day! Rest is history! As with yours!
I’ve been reading “Airborne In 1943,” by Kevin Wilson, about the Allied bombing campaign in the Ruhr Valley to destroy Germany’s industrial center. There are SO many videos you could do from this period; The Dams Raid, the firebombing of Hamburg, the development of the Oboe system to keep bombers on track, the creation and deployment of Mirror to confuse German radar. Take your pick.
Absolutely spot on mate. I am a heavy good driver here in the uk and can spend many hours a day driving and use audible and have listened to many books whilst driving, pathfinders was an excellent one, battle of the atlantic was another fantastic story. The list is endless
The dam story is such an amazing story, and the sacrifice of the commandos to make it happen has always stuck with me. It was told to me in basic training (British Army) and always questioned myself if I could do what was basically a suicide mission. Not sure if you have done it in greater detail, it deserves it.
I think both the Bismarck and the Tirpitz were never fully used to their full potential. If they had been, the Battle for the Atlantic and the war at sea in general would’ve produced a vastly different outcome.
No it wouldn’t. Tirpitz would have been sunk much quicker if she had tried to fight the RN. Numbers count and they weren’t in the favour of the Germans.
I say Tirpitz was used very well, it forced the allies to use modern battleships to guard the Russian convoys, ships who was needed in other fights. Going out Bismark style will get her killed. The allies had +30 battleships but I would not take something like Texas up against Tirpitz, they also had aircraft carriers who tend to defeat battleships but required decent weather and daytime with some exceptions.
Alternatively they’d both end up like the Bismarck. Using a ship to its “full effectiveness” intrinsically runs great risk, and consequently requires great luck.
You should do a video about the raid on St Nazaire. It was the only Atlantic port that could refuel/rearm the Tirpitz had it acted as an Atlantic convoy raider. A role it would've exceled at.
You could argue those 8 minutes were the beginning of the end for the British empire when the very ship that personified it blew up in a catastrophic explosion
It was VERY successful! The only way it could've been more successful would be if it was fake - like Patton's army during D-Day. A giant inflatable battleship.
The St. Nazaire raid is rightly considered the greatest raid of all. More accolades were won in this one action than in any other in the 2nd world war, including 5 Victoria Crosses, 4 Distinguished Service Orders, 4 Conspicuous Gallantry Medals, 5 Distinguished Conduct Medals, 17 Distinguished Service Crosses, 11 Military Crosses, 24 Distinguished Service Medals and 15 Military Medals. 4 men were awarded the Croix de guerre by France and another 51 were mentioned in dispatches.
She totally lived up to her secondary objective. She wasn't as designed a scourge of British convoys but as a distraction and a cost of men and equipment by her presence she more then delivered. Only down side to the Germans was the loss of nearly a thousand men.
The full story of 617 Squadron is a Megaproject on itself! Did you know that they pulled off one of the most crucial and complicated decoy operation of the whole war?
This! The squadron was based in my hometown of Lincoln! So not only my is my hometown of birthplace of the tank but also the home of the 617 Squadron 🙂
0:45 - Chapter 1 - A beauty & the beast 4:30 - Chapter 2 - Operation chariot 8:35 - Chapter 3 - A new lair for the beast 11:20 - Chapter 4 - Operation sources 13:50 - Chapter 5 - Enter the dam busters 18:25 - Chapter 6 - Aftermath
There's always so much fascination of ships that are just big and powerful, but ultimately did nothing. Meanwhile the most successful battleship of WW2 is a small 35-year-old hunk of junk held together in the end only by rage, navigated a narrow fjord with a broken rudder and wiped out half of Germany's destroyers, first battleship class to be run by oil, first fast battleship class, first ship class to use 15-inch guns, first ship to sink a U-boat with ship-launched planes in WW2, joint longest naval artillery hit in history, most battle honours in British naval history, most damaged ship in British history, most expensive ship to maintain in British history (because of damage received), and in the end, largest salvage operation in British history, and it's a ship that receives very little attention outside of people who already follow naval history in some form.
The british used tallboy bombs on the Tirpitz's deck armor, because it was ridiculously strong, probably the strongest deck armor of any battleship ever Overall, the bismarck class ships where extremely well armored The raw numbers don't seem impressive (80-100mm of deck armor), but that doesn't take into account the various other armor plates an enemy shell has to penetrate (If you do, the bismarck class deck armor increases 2,5×)
Nah, not really. They don't compare to the British refits, or to the new Japanese and American ships. Where they do excel was crew training and sheer audacity. A good crew in the right place at the right time is almost unstoppable.
The Bismarck classes deck armour was only 4.7 inches thick. This was less than the new US BB's at 5 inches, the KGV's at 6 inches and the Japanese Yamato class at 8 inches. ALL BB's also included various decks with splinter protection and smaller armour plates. Taking those into consideration the KGV's added up to over 9 inches, far more than the Bismarck class. Additionally Bismarck's armour deck was mounted low in the ship, an outmoded system which left far more of the ship vulnerable to shells and SAP bombs than the high mounted deck of other Navy's. One of the major problems in dealing with Tirpitz was overcoming the advantages of her berthing arrangements. Narrow and twisting Fjords combined with heavy anti torpedo nets made attacking her with torpedoes impossible. Those high and narrow fjord walls also made dive bombing very dangerous and the ship was also protected by massive shore based smoke generators, large numbers of shore based AA guns and nearby fighter protection. Honestly the Bismarck's were an obsolescent design that Germany violated the Anglo-German Naval Treaty to build but totally failed to deliver on the superiority that over 20% above the agreed limit should have granted them. Their reputation is inflated by Bismack's lucky hit and Tirpitz's excellent berth which for much of her existence was beyond the range of heavy bombers flying from Britain. Ultimately no battleship could have withstood the impact of 12,000lb Tallboys
@@johnfisher9692 The Deck Armour of German battle ships can't be compared to Allied Battleships. The Germans had two armored decks. Once just below the main deck of about 80mm then a second heavier one of about 120mm (4.7 inches) cm that formed a tortoise shell with the very thick side belt Armour. A shell would need to get through the upper deck Armour first. This would decap, defuse, tumble or predetonate the shell. The decaped tumbling shell was by then not as capable of getting through the main Armour deck. There was also a 20mm 'battery' deck in between to handle splinters from predetonation. This type of Armour covered about 80% of the ship. -The allied ships followed an 'all or nothing' philosophy and had very thick Armour covering around 60% of the ship and these rest virtually unarmoured. The argument being that if the shell is going to penetrate anyway there is no point armoring it. Best to transfer the Armour to local critical areas that can be made strong enough. -The Germans had different issues to deal with. They needed to break out through the English Channel or North Sea and so needed excellent protection against destroyers cruisers at close range.
I personally think a lot of these massive war machines Hitler had comissioned for the Nazi's during WW2 where both a vanity project and a way to distract the allies from other actions. It was the same with that giant rail cannon he had commissioned that needed to tracks to move along and was essentially a white elephant of a weapon, but just like the "the Beast" it drew the allies attention as a threat they needed to spend resources on taking out even though they didn't pose much a general threat to the allies due to the fact they were so specialised they were useless for anything but a single purpose and usually didn't do those very well. You see something similar with the Tiger Tanks as well; they scared the crap out of the allies because of how fast they were and the gun was huge compared to other tanks. But the things vibrated themselves into buckets of bolts and scarpe metal if they were overused, and had very poorly made fuel pumps that more often than not would douse everyone inside in gas while the air was slowly replaced with fumes in a closed space that could ignite at any moment.
All the heavy German battleships were a waste of money. They would've been better served by concentrating on developing their U-Boat fleet. 20/20 hindsight... ☺ 👍
In theory, sinking the Tirpitz was a stalemate on both sides. Germany did heavily invest in building her and the British in sinking her. That investment of the Germans was a huge one, considering the virtual non-existing surplus of resources in the Reich. In hindsight, it would have been better if both Bismarck and Tirpitz were not constructed but instead, those resources would have been used for creating a more extensive and better-organised submarine fleet. I personally still wonder why Hitler did order the construction of them anyway.
Applause and love from Canada to Britain 🇬🇧, resisting Nazi Germany despite overwhelming odds! 👏👍💞 I just subscribed Simon! Unlike - Queens funeral Megaprojects - I love this 1!
The lesson here for me is this is just another example of what historians refer to as 'The Rule of Unintended Consequences'. Yes, the British got what they wanted, but so did the Germans. British determination and doggedness prevented the Tirpitz from inflicting much damage, but in doing so they gave the Germans what they wanted by diverting valuable resources.
Am I crazy? I feel like every documentary I've ever watched pronounces this ship turr-pitz vs Simon's tier-pitz. Drachinfel has a whole episode on it "How to pronounce German battleships" tier-pitz because you cry when someone says turr-pitz. I guess that Simon was right after all.
Animarchy did a really good and longer video about the Tirpitz. It's in his Ships of Azur Lane series. Really can't wait for part 4 of Enterprise's story.
Simon, every video you are involved in is packed with wonderful details and information, however, if you want all of us to understand everything you are saying, you need to slow down just a wee bit.
9:15 Weary means tired. You can either say wary or leery to mean cautious or concerned about. I assume that people use a portmanteau of these two similar meaning words and get weary...
The Germans should have concentrated all of thier naval resources not in surface ships that were such large targets, but exclusively in production of U-boats.
The thing to remember about this ship is that it was hideously inefficient being far larger and displacing far more water than any contemporary ship of similar capability. Tirpitz had 8 380mm guns and an armour belt of 12.6 inches maximum. She would have been no match for any of the US fast battleships each of which had 9 16" guns and a belt similar in thickness to that of Tirpitz or the Richelieu class of France which had higher speed,a similar battery and better armour with all of these ships except the Iowas being 10,000 tons less in displacement. The much maligned KGV's of the RN had guns capable of piercing Tirpitz's armour and had vastly superior armour to any ship I have yet mentioned again on 10,000 tons less displacement than Tirpitz. On the axis side the Italian Littorios were far superior to the Bismarcks and the Yamato's incomparably so. Even the Scharnhorst class had better armour than Tirpitz
I'd counter that the huge amount of resources taken to build and operate ships like the Tirpitz would have been better used/spent on U-boats; given that the Kriegsmarine never had enough to fully strangle the shipping routes of the North Atlantic. The Kriegsmarine was never going to be able to take on the RN (even more so if you include the Allies additional resources) unless they matched the RN's resources, so it was either build lots of U-boats or lots of surface fleet. So, no, in the end it was ultimately a failure. By 1942 the Nazis had effectively lost the war. They didn't have the resources to match the Allies.
But battleships like Bismarck and Tirpitz- quite possibly the most beautiful and powerful looking large warship ever built, held an undeniable emotional appeal to maniacally-egotistical, ambitious heads of state with dreams of worldwide domination, and the visceral appeal of grand victorious battles obviously overcame the more measured approach of leveraging the country’s industrial/military capabilities. Which was a good thing
@@OleLeik I agree. The funniest thing about the Wehrmacht, under Hitler, was their complete inability to strategically understand their own resources. Instead of pumping in a load more resources in to building U-boats, they instead built a few 'amazing' capital ships - even though the Kriegsmarine still couldn't take on the Royal Navy - and the British end up either sinking or nuetralising them anyway.
I've been shooting at Tirpits for years now And she is a sturdy lady We have never been able to make more than a dent here and there I should probably explain this 😂😂 You see Tirpits was cut up for scrap by the end of the war and I'm a member of the pistol club and we have parts of here deck 3.75 inch thick and weighing in at 4 tons it's a plate that we use for target practice and I'll tell you this is solid quality steel even with a 44 or 45 ore 357 you ain't making more than a tiny little dent in this thing 😂😂 So the fact that they had to use tall boy bombs just goes to show how good steel the Germans was making in the pre war Era 🤔 Just saying 🇧🇻
It’s a shame Tirpitz wasn’t put down by an Iowa class. The Bismarck class was, essentially a WWI design blown up to huge proportions. An old style ship with its 15 inch guns wouldn’t have had a hope against a more modern Iowa with better targeting, more advanced armour and 16 inch guns.
The Iowa armor was superior only at long range, and their range finding capabilities because superior to every other only in the last months of the war, but when tirpitz was operational her radars were just as capable of that of the allies in terms of gun laying. Also the Iowa doesn't perform well in bad weather and rough seas, so her speed advantage would be negated. Sure she has an advantage in firepower, but her armor isn't anything special (aside from her deck and turrets face). Tirpitz is at a disadvantage against an Iowa but if you look at the numbers it's not as big as people keep saying it is. Tirpitz would not have gone down without a fight, and Iowa would not look good after said fight
A ship that is not at sea is not fulfilling its full potential. The idea that it was just to tie up resources is something you tell yourself to get SOME benefit from it. It needed to be deployed against surface ships and engage them. In this, Bismarck was successful even if a lucky torpedo strike to the rudder eventually killed her. “Any Captain who lays his ship alongside of the enemy can do no wrong.” - Nelson
The tripitz was a fleet in being and did just enough to justify the british effort. By sortie on unexpected occasions she made the british respond and resulted in the loss of 22 ships due to her presence alone (more than Bismarck) and showed her teeth at spitsbergen. The tall boy bombs was a weapon in search of targets and was used on all sorts of targets from canals to bridges to v1 sites. Two hits and near miss sunk the tripitz.
Only because the admiral in charge of PQ 17 forgot it had multiple battleships and a damned aircraft carrier covering it. The only thing Tirpitz destroyed was a weather station. It was the same flawed, inefficient design as his brother, Bismarck, and was the single largest nothingburger in the European theater... it spent its entire carrier cowering in that fjord and its greatest contribution to the german naval war was depleting the RAFs strategic munitions stockpile.
I don't know much about WWII naval warefare and capabilities; however, I've always wondered why they didn't heavily mine the fjord entrance and keep Turpitz inside.
Mines only work in hostile waters. You can always clear mines in waters that you control. If you are trapped in port by mines it is because you have already lost control of those waters. The USAAF managed to bottle up the Japanese in their home waters by mining the seas near Japan but that only worked because they had air superiority. The fact that the Tirpitz was there gave the Germans control of the local waters which needed to be mined repeatedly. It could have been done to keep her in port for a few hours but the cost of maintaining a mine barrier would be very high.
That last question I'd very important, I have a buddy who's a naval buff and he lways use to say that very few ships like the tripizt can claim the title of being able to tie down so much resources over so many years.
The British... Obsessing over a lone German battleship even though they had ten that could confront her... At a time when battleships were already obsolescent...
Not many know this but the Bismarck class was the worst class of last generation battleships. They’re shrouded in a myth that they were unstoppable beasts but really they were very bad.
They are for sure overhyped, but bad? Not really... They were fast, maneuverable, had long range, and were capable of highly accurate fire. Their armor layout was their only real drawback, but you had to hit it to make it count, and as history has proven at Guadalcanal the better ship is not always the one to come out on top, South Dakota should have destroyed kirishima without any problems, instead she got her ass kicked bad. The Bismarck class was arguably the most capable battleship of the axis, considering that the Littorio class couldn't hit the long side of a barn from the inside, and Yamato was ridiculously vulnerable to torpedoes and was pushed away from battle by one single destroyer and an old escort carrier... Not to mention that both lacked radar while Tirpitz carried a very accurate set (albeit a bit short ranged, but still perfect for gun laying). Overall they were on par with their contemporaries, so no i don't think they deserve to be called bad, there were far worse ships in ww2 than Bismarck and Tirpitz
@@willghezzi Okay let’s go over the Bismarck real quick. So yes as you mentioned it had an inferior armour scheme. Arguably its biggest flaw however was its extraordinarily vulnerable fire control which could be and was knocked out very quickly (look at when it engaged the Nelson and the KGV) Another flaw was German naval AA was arguably the second worst in the war just ahead of the Japanese AA. These things were very very overweight when one considers their capabilities. They weighed almost as much as an Iowas with a displacement of around 50-52 thousand tonnes at full load but had a similar capacity to a 35 thousand tonne KGV a much better class of battleships which shows it was poorly designed. It struggled with reversing and had a vulnerable rudder. With the Tirpitz it’s on deck torpedoes we’re just begging to be detonated. It had very poor steaming due to design flaws, to achieve marginally higher top speeds, Bismarck’s architects chose a convergent geometry of the outboard propellers and shafts. An unanticipated effect of this was that even with full left or right thrust, or even full power opposite rotation of the outboard shafts, little to no yaw (steering) moment was produced. All of this and for them to be very expensive while not matching the capabilities of a ship that should be so heavy and expensive.
@@redtob2119 I mostly agree with what you said. The thing about the fire control being vulnerable it's not what you wrote here. Rodney hit the fire control station with a direct impact of one of her 16inch shells, ANY fire control system would have been destroyed. The only place where her fire control system was vulnerable was in the tower of the Admiral Bridge, though as much as this is a weakness it requires you to hit it. I agree they were not particularly impressive in terms of firepower given their size, but if you look at the iowas they weight 2 times the South Dakota while still having the same guns... So I don't see why it is considered that bad for the Bismarcks. Talking purely from an efficiency point they are lacking I admit that, but in the end what it matters is the effectiveness, if a ship is inefficient but can still match her contemporaries in battle then it's combat capabilities should be taken seriously. I can understand the criticism about efficiency and some design drawbacks, but for the bismarck they are taken way too seriously. For example both Prince of Wales and South Dakota had better stern design and 4 shafts instead of 3, yet when their rudders where hit they were both screwed (south Dakota was saved by uss Washington destroying kirishima). So once again: -efficiency wise? Yeah not great -They also had some weaknesses, but seriously what warships doesn't? -and lastly I stress this point against, if Bismarck or Tirpitz have similar firepower to their adversaries, similar armor (but different layout), better speed and range, with good radar... How can they be considered bad or weak? Inefficient doesn't mean ineffective
I don't think it was worth this loss of life. Churchill was great at sacrificing lives as exemplified by the many that died at Gallipoli, soldiers dying was inevitable when he made decisions. They were just pawns to be used though the war department most of the time, ignored most of his ideas, after all the blunders he made as minister of war in ww1.
As horrible as it is he's not the only leader that viewed solider s as pawns that could be sacrificed. Prime example Stalin but also every leader that goes to war. That said as a solider myself that's what we are. Every one of us is expendable and we should know that going in.
Do a video on the Wilhelms Gustoff atrocity, where the Allies sank a rescue boat, killing just under TEN THOUSAND German civilians in cold blood . Oh, you never learned about that one in school? How peculiar
He could, but you would not like it. According to any standard, you cannot call a grey painted armed navy ship crewed by military personnel and escorted by warships a "rescue boat" The submarine force of all countries was executing unlimited submarine warfare, which means almost any kind of ship would be a fair game. In this particular case the Germans took civilians aboard a military ship which made it a legal military target The Soviet submarine captain would have been under the impression that it was evacuating military personnel (which it was) and high ranking Nazis (which it was). Apparently he did not know there were also large numbers of refuges aboard Wilhelm Gustloff when he torpedoed her, and he did not feel good when he found it out. He rarely mentioned what he did that night to other people for the rest of his life.
Thank you for this. My father, a young second LT from Saskatchewan, served on the HMS Furious, one of the British aircraft carriers assigned to keep the Tirpiz in that fyord.
That is like a village
The value of the cargo in PQ17 was worth the cost of 10 Bismarck class battleships. Just the rumor of Tirpitz going to sea was enough to scatter the convoy, making it easy prey for U-boats and planes.
Awesome work as always.
Serious question: why do you never use Maps in your storytelling? You often mention places I’ve never heard of and it’d be great to know where they are
Sabaton wrote a badass song called Bismark, about the ship mentioned earlier in the video.
BISMARCK NOT BISMARK
I always thought both Tirpitz and Yamato were very unfortunate ships. They kind of outlived their time and as giant dinosaurs they were not given a chance to die in blaze of battle glory, but instead they died the death of "thousands mosquito bites".
Eh, the Tirpitz, unlike the Yamato, still served an important role as fleet in being, binding huge, huge amounts of allied ressources and eating up attack after attack over years. Had to be brought down by one of the largest bombs of WW2.
Not a glorious story, but a gritty one.
Thinking about it, it is quite remarkable what it took to sink the Bismarck class ships
@@phil3114 I mean they both probably served their purpose (albeit not very intentional :D) Tirpitz being great thorn in Allies backsides and Yamato being this picture of glorious warrior that will win in the "final battle". What I meant... they had a little bit of anti-climactic ending... Like a knight or samurai that trains all his life and becomes this master swordsman... only to be shot by rifle.
@@PetrSojnek True, though while Yamato was killed by a shotgun, death of a thousand cuts, the Tirpitz required heavy artillery, the heaviest bombs built in WW2 bar the a-bombs, which must have been quite the scene in itself
As a warship, she never really lived up to her potential. She never became ruler of the seas, nor did she challenge the allied navies.
But as a psychological weapon, she fulfilled her role. The amount of men and material spent to sink her, was a lot.
And so is the story of the Lonely Queen of the North.
The loss of almost the entire convoy PQ17 could be attributed to her. The only way to defend against u-boats and the Luftwaffe was to form ships into a convoy. The best defense against Tirpitz was to split the convoy up. The battleships in that way worked to support the u-boats.
Much is made about the amount of effort the British put into destroying Tirpitz and the losses of men and material. How about the resources that Germany had to find both in building and then maintaining the ship? The air defences alone were considerable, they also assigned at least one fighter squadron to her care. What did they achieve, PQ17 and the loss of the weather station. The submarines sank as many ships from one convoy as the Tirpitz. It was estimated several hundred tanks could have been built with the steel from the ship.
@@photoisca7386 There was not a squadron exclusively assigned to protect Tirpitz, that squadron had to cover a large sector of Norway and in general a Luftwaffe Jagdtgeschwader was assigned to Norway when it had suffered such sever losses it needed a break and time to rebuild.
-Yes Tirpitz could be converted to scrap steal but it would still take a massive effort of man hours to turn it into tanks and guns.
The Germans did have two H class battleships(25% bigger than Bismark) in the slipways in 1940 but they were scrapped after 10% of the steel and keel had been laid. The Iowas were in the same state and were also nearly scrapped but the US chose to continue.
Germans Referred Their Ship's Males Not Females. Hitler's Ship's Were & Are Male's Not Females
@@williamzk9083. BISMARCK NOT BISMARK
I've been at Kåfjord outside Alta where Tirpitz was anchored and stood in a Tall Boy crater on one of the hills around the fjord. On the same hill is a crashed wreck of a Hellcat fighter.
Where is that exactly? Tried to find a reference online but could not find it.
Yesssss....thanks for this one Simon and Co. 🍻👌💯
We need a video on The Dambusters raid.
Hollywood should maka a movie about pursuit for this ship.
No Hollywood, please.
Simon and his production crew are simply incredible, from subject matter to the research thereof, to the presentation as a whole. Keep it up, Big Brain & Co.
All the love from the US.
Do it fact-boi!
Well she didn't do what she was built to do, but she performed the task she was assigned marvelously. Although, like the Yamato she had an unfitting end for such an impressive craft.
She was made for an era that was ending, the Germans did not see that.
Would love an episode on the St Nazaire raid, my late grandad was on the HMS Atherstone, one of the destroyers at the raid.
Wowza really? 😮
Good looking mate! 👏
Now that is summit to truly boast about!
Wheras My Grandad was drafted onto a mine sweeper in 1944 -
Before the allied landings in Normandy, he was on 1 of the many mine sweepers that did their dangerous work be4 the main charge! 😁 - Same day! Rest is history!
As with yours!
Jeremy Clarkson did one, it's top notch.
@@Kstang09 yep its brilliant
Please have your next video be on the battle of Towton.
Will there be an episode covering The Dam Busters raid?
I’ve been reading “Airborne In 1943,” by Kevin Wilson, about the Allied bombing campaign in the Ruhr Valley to destroy Germany’s industrial center. There are SO many videos you could do from this period; The Dams Raid, the firebombing of Hamburg, the development of the Oboe system to keep bombers on track, the creation and deployment of Mirror to confuse German radar. Take your pick.
Absolutely spot on mate. I am a heavy good driver here in the uk and can spend many hours a day driving and use audible and have listened to many books whilst driving, pathfinders was an excellent one, battle of the atlantic was another fantastic story. The list is endless
A Fleet in Being pretty much all by herself.
When are you gonna do the Chechnya conflicts?
The dam story is such an amazing story, and the sacrifice of the commandos to make it happen has always stuck with me. It was told to me in basic training (British Army) and always questioned myself if I could do what was basically a suicide mission. Not sure if you have done it in greater detail, it deserves it.
Very informative
There’s a movie on Operation Chariot.
I think both the Bismarck and the Tirpitz were never fully used to their full potential. If they had been, the Battle for the Atlantic and the war at sea in general would’ve produced a vastly different outcome.
No it wouldn’t. Tirpitz would have been sunk much quicker if she had tried to fight the RN. Numbers count and they weren’t in the favour of the Germans.
True very true but it seems that the German Navy became gun shy after the sinking of the BISMARCK
That's because the Royal Navy out-manoeuvred them.
I say Tirpitz was used very well, it forced the allies to use modern battleships to guard the Russian convoys, ships who was needed in other fights.
Going out Bismark style will get her killed.
The allies had +30 battleships but I would not take something like Texas up against Tirpitz, they also had aircraft carriers who tend to defeat battleships but required decent weather and daytime with some exceptions.
Alternatively they’d both end up like the Bismarck. Using a ship to its “full effectiveness” intrinsically runs great risk, and consequently requires great luck.
I love all these videos on the world wars really interesting stuff.
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people must love this guy
You should do a video about the raid on St Nazaire. It was the only Atlantic port that could refuel/rearm the Tirpitz had it acted as an Atlantic convoy raider. A role it would've exceled at.
Excellent episode Warographics team. Thankyou.
Thank God that Old 1 Ball wasted so many Resources on the Bismarck and Tirpitz instead of building dozens more Type 7 U Boats!!
Can you do a video on the battle of the Denmark Strait?
Was that in WW2 as well or?
@🇬🇧EAPhantom19 yes when Bismarck and prinz eugan broke out into the Atlantic
You could argue those 8 minutes were the beginning of the end for the British empire when the very ship that personified it blew up in a catastrophic explosion
Please make a video about the sinking of the German Blücher. Its a intersting story of the invation of Norway.
14:45 epic name. guy is literally called "Wolf pup".
It was VERY successful! The only way it could've been more successful would be if it was fake - like Patton's army during D-Day. A giant inflatable battleship.
Good question.
K unlike the recently released Megaprojects on the queen, I love this Warographics episode! 👍👍
The St. Nazaire raid is rightly considered the greatest raid of all. More accolades were won in this one action than in any other in the 2nd world war, including 5 Victoria Crosses, 4 Distinguished Service Orders, 4 Conspicuous Gallantry Medals, 5 Distinguished Conduct Medals, 17 Distinguished Service Crosses, 11 Military Crosses, 24 Distinguished Service Medals and 15 Military Medals. 4 men were awarded the Croix de guerre by France and another 51 were mentioned in dispatches.
She totally lived up to her secondary objective. She wasn't as designed a scourge of British convoys but as a distraction and a cost of men and equipment by her presence she more then delivered. Only down side to the Germans was the loss of nearly a thousand men.
It seems outside the U Boats the German Navy was not that good
After ww1 lost all trained naval officers
Hi Simon and the team - could you look to do a video about the channel dash in ww2?
Drachinifel has done an excellent video about the Channel dash.
The full story of 617 Squadron is a Megaproject on itself! Did you know that they pulled off one of the most crucial and complicated decoy operation of the whole war?
This! The squadron was based in my hometown of Lincoln! So not only my is my hometown of birthplace of the tank but also the home of the 617 Squadron 🙂
Two words, Nelson, Rodney!
0:45 - Chapter 1 - A beauty & the beast
4:30 - Chapter 2 - Operation chariot
8:35 - Chapter 3 - A new lair for the beast
11:20 - Chapter 4 - Operation sources
13:50 - Chapter 5 - Enter the dam busters
18:25 - Chapter 6 - Aftermath
Even today, Anyone that 617 Squadron has them on their Target List is in seriously deep sh!t!! Simon could do a Miniseries on them.
These are of one mind and give over there power and authority to the beast .
There's always so much fascination of ships that are just big and powerful, but ultimately did nothing. Meanwhile the most successful battleship of WW2 is a small 35-year-old hunk of junk held together in the end only by rage, navigated a narrow fjord with a broken rudder and wiped out half of Germany's destroyers, first battleship class to be run by oil, first fast battleship class, first ship class to use 15-inch guns, first ship to sink a U-boat with ship-launched planes in WW2, joint longest naval artillery hit in history, most battle honours in British naval history, most damaged ship in British history, most expensive ship to maintain in British history (because of damage received), and in the end, largest salvage operation in British history, and it's a ship that receives very little attention outside of people who already follow naval history in some form.
Operation Chariot should really be it’s own video in its self. It’s extremely interesting
There is a piece of the Tirpitz (belt armor) in a swiss museum
The british used tallboy bombs on the Tirpitz's deck armor, because it was ridiculously strong, probably the strongest deck armor of any battleship ever
Overall, the bismarck class ships where extremely well armored
The raw numbers don't seem impressive (80-100mm of deck armor), but that doesn't take into account the various other armor plates an enemy shell has to penetrate
(If you do, the bismarck class deck armor increases 2,5×)
Nah, not really. They don't compare to the British refits, or to the new Japanese and American ships. Where they do excel was crew training and sheer audacity. A good crew in the right place at the right time is almost unstoppable.
Also the quality of the steel
Dispersed deck armour is worse than utilising thicker armour over the essentials.
The Bismarck classes deck armour was only 4.7 inches thick. This was less than the new US BB's at 5 inches, the KGV's at 6 inches and the Japanese Yamato class at 8 inches.
ALL BB's also included various decks with splinter protection and smaller armour plates. Taking those into consideration the KGV's added up to over 9 inches, far more than the Bismarck class. Additionally Bismarck's armour deck was mounted low in the ship, an outmoded system which left far more of the ship vulnerable to shells and SAP bombs than the high mounted deck of other Navy's.
One of the major problems in dealing with Tirpitz was overcoming the advantages of her berthing arrangements. Narrow and twisting Fjords combined with heavy anti torpedo nets made attacking her with torpedoes impossible. Those high and narrow fjord walls also made dive bombing very dangerous and the ship was also protected by massive shore based smoke generators, large numbers of shore based AA guns and nearby fighter protection.
Honestly the Bismarck's were an obsolescent design that Germany violated the Anglo-German Naval Treaty to build but totally failed to deliver on the superiority that over 20% above the agreed limit should have granted them. Their reputation is inflated by Bismack's lucky hit and Tirpitz's excellent berth which for much of her existence was beyond the range of heavy bombers flying from Britain. Ultimately no battleship could have withstood the impact of 12,000lb Tallboys
@@johnfisher9692 The Deck Armour of German battle ships can't be compared to Allied Battleships. The Germans had two armored decks. Once just below the main deck of about 80mm then a second heavier one of about 120mm (4.7 inches) cm that formed a tortoise shell with the very thick side belt Armour. A shell would need to get through the upper deck Armour first. This would decap, defuse, tumble or predetonate the shell. The decaped tumbling shell was by then not as capable of getting through the main Armour deck.
There was also a 20mm 'battery' deck in between to handle splinters from predetonation. This type of Armour covered about 80% of the ship.
-The allied ships followed an 'all or nothing' philosophy and had very thick Armour covering around 60% of the ship and these rest virtually unarmoured. The argument being that if the shell is going to penetrate anyway there is no point armoring it. Best to transfer the Armour to local critical areas that can be made strong enough.
-The Germans had different issues to deal with. They needed to break out through the English Channel or North Sea and so needed excellent protection against destroyers cruisers at close range.
Simon team is amazing, kind of team it would seem amazing to work with
Would have been better off with a dozen or so more U-boats. Surface ships didn't stand a chance against the Royal Navy.
"Scuttled by her Capt."😅
Please do a video on the "bouncing bomb", "dam-busters" you mentioned in this script.
Had she been combined with Bismarck and Prinz Eugen things may have been different
WW2 really was the last hurrah for the battleships. Age of the aircraft carriers and naval aviation had truly begun.
Surprised the port wasn’t rebuilt. They built other massive buildings so had the resources
I personally think a lot of these massive war machines Hitler had comissioned for the Nazi's during WW2 where both a vanity project and a way to distract the allies from other actions. It was the same with that giant rail cannon he had commissioned that needed to tracks to move along and was essentially a white elephant of a weapon, but just like the "the Beast" it drew the allies attention as a threat they needed to spend resources on taking out even though they didn't pose much a general threat to the allies due to the fact they were so specialised they were useless for anything but a single purpose and usually didn't do those very well. You see something similar with the Tiger Tanks as well; they scared the crap out of the allies because of how fast they were and the gun was huge compared to other tanks. But the things vibrated themselves into buckets of bolts and scarpe metal if they were overused, and had very poorly made fuel pumps that more often than not would douse everyone inside in gas while the air was slowly replaced with fumes in a closed space that could ignite at any moment.
A charming feature of your presentations is the aggressive mispronunciation of all foreign names.
All the heavy German battleships were a waste of money.
They would've been better served by concentrating on developing their U-Boat fleet.
20/20 hindsight...
☺ 👍
In theory, sinking the Tirpitz was a stalemate on both sides. Germany did heavily invest in building her and the British in sinking her. That investment of the Germans was a huge one, considering the virtual non-existing surplus of resources in the Reich. In hindsight, it would have been better if both Bismarck and Tirpitz were not constructed but instead, those resources would have been used for creating a more extensive and better-organised submarine fleet. I personally still wonder why Hitler did order the construction of them anyway.
Applause and love from Canada to Britain 🇬🇧, resisting Nazi Germany despite overwhelming odds! 👏👍💞
I just subscribed Simon!
Unlike - Queens funeral Megaprojects -
I love this 1!
Canada certainly played its part alongside other Commonwealth countries
The lesson here for me is this is just another example of what historians refer to as 'The Rule of Unintended Consequences'. Yes, the British got what they wanted, but so did the Germans. British determination and doggedness prevented the Tirpitz from inflicting much damage, but in doing so they gave the Germans what they wanted by diverting valuable resources.
Still a massively unfavourable trade-off from a German point of view
@@silverhost9782 Agreed. The amount of resources poured into the construction of such a large ship must have made its loss very painful.
Am I crazy? I feel like every documentary I've ever watched pronounces this ship turr-pitz vs Simon's tier-pitz. Drachinfel has a whole episode on it "How to pronounce German battleships" tier-pitz because you cry when someone says turr-pitz. I guess that Simon was right after all.
Animarchy did a really good and longer video about the Tirpitz. It's in his Ships of Azur Lane series.
Really can't wait for part 4 of Enterprise's story.
Simon, every video you are involved in is packed with wonderful details and information, however, if you want all of us to understand everything you are saying, you need to slow down just a wee bit.
9:15 Weary means tired. You can either say wary or leery to mean cautious or concerned about. I assume that people use a portmanteau of these two similar meaning words and get weary...
No country has ever been a world power without command of the seas.
18:05 Captain Webber went down with the ship? What.
The Germans should have concentrated all of thier naval resources not in surface ships that were such large targets, but exclusively in production of U-boats.
The thing to remember about this ship is that it was hideously inefficient being far larger and displacing far more water than any contemporary ship of similar capability. Tirpitz had 8 380mm guns and an armour belt of 12.6 inches maximum. She would have been no match for any of the US fast battleships each of which had 9 16" guns and a belt similar in thickness to that of Tirpitz or the Richelieu class of France which had higher speed,a similar battery and better armour with all of these ships except the Iowas being 10,000 tons less in displacement. The much maligned KGV's of the RN had guns capable of piercing Tirpitz's armour and had vastly superior armour to any ship I have yet mentioned again on 10,000 tons less displacement than Tirpitz. On the axis side the Italian Littorios were far superior to the Bismarcks and the Yamato's incomparably so. Even the Scharnhorst class had better armour than Tirpitz
Bismarck next please :)
Yes. Purely because of what she represented. A huge loss of morale for the German Navy. Nothing was safe.
I love this kind of content, thank you bald bearded daddy
See the greatest raid of all for the story of operation chariot
Romanian 1989 Revolution and 1821 Wallachian Uprising when?
Live your life the way that you want to live it, don’t let other people live it for you…
Up next;belleau Woods
80 Knots you say lmao let's try 30 knots. at 80 knots you could water ski behind it lol
Uncle Winnie! When the British still had balls!
" the uss cambeltown was actually an American destroyer the USS buccannon " at first I was confused but I remembered lend lease was a thing lol
The HMS Campbeltown(ex US Wickes Class destroyer, the USS Buchanan)had depth charges rigged to blow, not Torpedos.
Yes but the timed detonated torpedos were in the second lock not the first. They both went off at almost the same time.
She was the joker of the North sea , not the queen and played them all like a fiddle.
I'd counter that the huge amount of resources taken to build and operate ships like the Tirpitz would have been better used/spent on U-boats; given that the Kriegsmarine never had enough to fully strangle the shipping routes of the North Atlantic. The Kriegsmarine was never going to be able to take on the RN (even more so if you include the Allies additional resources) unless they matched the RN's resources, so it was either build lots of U-boats or lots of surface fleet. So, no, in the end it was ultimately a failure. By 1942 the Nazis had effectively lost the war. They didn't have the resources to match the Allies.
But battleships like Bismarck and Tirpitz- quite possibly the most beautiful and powerful looking large warship ever built, held an undeniable emotional appeal to maniacally-egotistical, ambitious heads of state with dreams of worldwide domination, and the visceral appeal of grand victorious battles obviously overcame the more measured approach of leveraging the country’s industrial/military capabilities. Which was a good thing
@@OleLeik I agree. The funniest thing about the Wehrmacht, under Hitler, was their complete inability to strategically understand their own resources. Instead of pumping in a load more resources in to building U-boats, they instead built a few 'amazing' capital ships - even though the Kriegsmarine still couldn't take on the Royal Navy - and the British end up either sinking or nuetralising them anyway.
I've been shooting at Tirpits for years now
And she is a sturdy lady
We have never been able to make more than a dent here and there
I should probably explain this 😂😂
You see Tirpits was cut up for scrap by the end of the war and I'm a member of the pistol club and we have parts of here deck 3.75 inch thick and weighing in at 4 tons it's a plate that we use for target practice and I'll tell you this is solid quality steel even with a 44 or 45 ore 357 you ain't making more than a tiny little dent in this thing 😂😂
So the fact that they had to use tall boy bombs just goes to show how good steel the Germans was making in the pre war Era 🤔
Just saying 🇧🇻
It’s a shame Tirpitz wasn’t put down by an Iowa class. The Bismarck class was, essentially a WWI design blown up to huge proportions. An old style ship with its 15 inch guns wouldn’t have had a hope against a more modern Iowa with better targeting, more advanced armour and 16 inch guns.
The Iowa armor was superior only at long range, and their range finding capabilities because superior to every other only in the last months of the war, but when tirpitz was operational her radars were just as capable of that of the allies in terms of gun laying. Also the Iowa doesn't perform well in bad weather and rough seas, so her speed advantage would be negated. Sure she has an advantage in firepower, but her armor isn't anything special (aside from her deck and turrets face). Tirpitz is at a disadvantage against an Iowa but if you look at the numbers it's not as big as people keep saying it is. Tirpitz would not have gone down without a fight, and Iowa would not look good after said fight
A ship that is not at sea is not fulfilling its full potential. The idea that it was just to tie up resources is something you tell yourself to get SOME benefit from it. It needed to be deployed against surface ships and engage them. In this, Bismarck was successful even if a lucky torpedo strike to the rudder eventually killed her.
“Any Captain who lays his ship alongside of the enemy can do no wrong.” - Nelson
From everything I have read and seen, that torpedo to the rudder was a deliberate act, not a lucky shot.
For better and worse, Churchill was a man who always made the world aware of what he wanted. In this case it worked out. In some others...ehhhhh
The tripitz was a fleet in being and did just enough to justify the british effort. By sortie on unexpected occasions she made the british respond and resulted in the loss of 22 ships due to her presence alone (more than Bismarck) and showed her teeth at spitsbergen. The tall boy bombs was a weapon in search of targets and was used on all sorts of targets from canals to bridges to v1 sites. Two hits and near miss sunk the tripitz.
Only because the admiral in charge of PQ 17 forgot it had multiple battleships and a damned aircraft carrier covering it. The only thing Tirpitz destroyed was a weather station. It was the same flawed, inefficient design as his brother, Bismarck, and was the single largest nothingburger in the European theater... it spent its entire carrier cowering in that fjord and its greatest contribution to the german naval war was depleting the RAFs strategic munitions stockpile.
In hindsight, could the Tirpitz have simply been ignored?
Damn imagine this ship going against south dakota class
South Dakota would smoke it with no competition
I don't know much about WWII naval warefare and capabilities; however, I've always wondered why they didn't heavily mine the fjord entrance and keep Turpitz inside.
Mines only work in hostile waters. You can always clear mines in waters that you control. If you are trapped in port by mines it is because you have already lost control of those waters. The USAAF managed to bottle up the Japanese in their home waters by mining the seas near Japan but that only worked because they had air superiority. The fact that the Tirpitz was there gave the Germans control of the local waters which needed to be mined repeatedly. It could have been done to keep her in port for a few hours but the cost of maintaining a mine barrier would be very high.
That last question I'd very important, I have a buddy who's a naval buff and he lways use to say that very few ships like the tripizt can claim the title of being able to tie down so much resources over so many years.
The British... Obsessing over a lone German battleship even though they had ten that could confront her... At a time when battleships were already obsolescent...
Why not? At this point it's not like the allies we're lacking for resources. Killing more German ships is a decent enough way to use them
“Lonely QUEEN” and yet German ships are masculine. (Source - Imperial war museum)
No one outside of Hitler and a few German officers actually followed that 'rule'
Not many know this but the Bismarck class was the worst class of last generation battleships. They’re shrouded in a myth that they were unstoppable beasts but really they were very bad.
They are for sure overhyped, but bad? Not really... They were fast, maneuverable, had long range, and were capable of highly accurate fire. Their armor layout was their only real drawback, but you had to hit it to make it count, and as history has proven at Guadalcanal the better ship is not always the one to come out on top, South Dakota should have destroyed kirishima without any problems, instead she got her ass kicked bad. The Bismarck class was arguably the most capable battleship of the axis, considering that the Littorio class couldn't hit the long side of a barn from the inside, and Yamato was ridiculously vulnerable to torpedoes and was pushed away from battle by one single destroyer and an old escort carrier... Not to mention that both lacked radar while Tirpitz carried a very accurate set (albeit a bit short ranged, but still perfect for gun laying). Overall they were on par with their contemporaries, so no i don't think they deserve to be called bad, there were far worse ships in ww2 than Bismarck and Tirpitz
@@willghezzi Okay let’s go over the Bismarck real quick.
So yes as you mentioned it had an inferior armour scheme.
Arguably its biggest flaw however was its extraordinarily vulnerable fire control which could be and was knocked out very quickly (look at when it engaged the Nelson and the KGV)
Another flaw was German naval AA was arguably the second worst in the war just ahead of the Japanese AA.
These things were very very overweight when one considers their capabilities. They weighed almost as much as an Iowas with a displacement of around 50-52 thousand tonnes at full load but had a similar capacity to a 35 thousand tonne KGV a much better class of battleships which shows it was poorly designed.
It struggled with reversing and had a vulnerable rudder.
With the Tirpitz it’s on deck torpedoes we’re just begging to be detonated.
It had very poor steaming due to design flaws, to achieve marginally higher top speeds, Bismarck’s architects chose a convergent geometry of the outboard propellers and shafts. An unanticipated effect of this was that even with full left or right thrust, or even full power opposite rotation of the outboard shafts, little to no yaw (steering) moment was produced.
All of this and for them to be very expensive while not matching the capabilities of a ship that should be so heavy and expensive.
@@redtob2119 I mostly agree with what you said. The thing about the fire control being vulnerable it's not what you wrote here. Rodney hit the fire control station with a direct impact of one of her 16inch shells, ANY fire control system would have been destroyed. The only place where her fire control system was vulnerable was in the tower of the Admiral Bridge, though as much as this is a weakness it requires you to hit it. I agree they were not particularly impressive in terms of firepower given their size, but if you look at the iowas they weight 2 times the South Dakota while still having the same guns... So I don't see why it is considered that bad for the Bismarcks. Talking purely from an efficiency point they are lacking I admit that, but in the end what it matters is the effectiveness, if a ship is inefficient but can still match her contemporaries in battle then it's combat capabilities should be taken seriously. I can understand the criticism about efficiency and some design drawbacks, but for the bismarck they are taken way too seriously. For example both Prince of Wales and South Dakota had better stern design and 4 shafts instead of 3, yet when their rudders where hit they were both screwed (south Dakota was saved by uss Washington destroying kirishima).
So once again:
-efficiency wise? Yeah not great
-They also had some weaknesses, but seriously what warships doesn't?
-and lastly I stress this point against, if Bismarck or Tirpitz have similar firepower to their adversaries, similar armor (but different layout), better speed and range, with good radar... How can they be considered bad or weak? Inefficient doesn't mean ineffective
The allies spent a lot of time and manpower on one ship 🤪
I don't think it was worth this loss of life. Churchill was great at sacrificing lives as exemplified by the many that died at Gallipoli, soldiers dying was inevitable when he made decisions. They were just pawns to be used though the war department most of the time, ignored most of his ideas, after all the blunders he made as minister of war in ww1.
As horrible as it is he's not the only leader that viewed solider s as pawns that could be sacrificed. Prime example Stalin but also every leader that goes to war. That said as a solider myself that's what we are. Every one of us is expendable and we should know that going in.
But did she sink the Atlantic convoys?
Call her Terpitz not Teerpitz though. That's what the RN called her. It's like calling Paris Paree!
Do a video on the Wilhelms Gustoff atrocity, where the Allies sank a rescue boat, killing just under TEN THOUSAND German civilians in cold blood . Oh, you never learned about that one in school? How peculiar
He could, but you would not like it.
According to any standard, you cannot call a grey painted armed navy ship crewed by military personnel and escorted by warships a "rescue boat"
The submarine force of all countries was executing unlimited submarine warfare, which means almost any kind of ship would be a fair game. In this particular case the Germans took civilians aboard a military ship which made it a legal military target
The Soviet submarine captain would have been under the impression that it was evacuating military personnel (which it was) and high ranking Nazis (which it was). Apparently he did not know there were also large numbers of refuges aboard Wilhelm Gustloff when he torpedoed her, and he did not feel good when he found it out. He rarely mentioned what he did that night to other people for the rest of his life.
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tirpitz 30 knots
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