The Hunt for Tirpitz
During World War II, the German battleship Tirpitz was a major threat to Allied convoys travelling across the North Atlantic and Arctic Sea to the Soviet Union. Tirpitz was one of the largest and most modern battleships afloat, and the massive effort which was required to find and sink its sister ship Bismarck in May 1941 convinced the Allies that it needed to be destroyed. This proved very difficult, however, as from 1942 Tirpitz was stationed in well-protected bases in Norwegian fjords.
During 1942 and 1944, the British repeatedly attempted to attack Tirpitz at its bases. Several raids by land-based bombers flying from the UK were unsuccessful, and an attempt to attack with manned torpedoes failed at the last moment due to technical problems. The task of attacking Tirpitz became even harder once it was moved to Kaafjord in the remote far north of Norway, but in September 1943 a raid conducted by British midget submarines (Operation Source) inflicted heavy damage. However, it survived this attack, and the British decided that the next-best option was to attack it with the Fleet Air Arm, using aircraft flying from aircraft carriers.
This led to a series of operations between April and August 1944, of which only the first—Operation Tungsten—inflicted any significant damage. Mascot was much less successful, and involved a somewhat farcical attack in which the British pilots attempted to drop bombs on the ship by aiming at flashes from Tirpitz‘s guns through a thick German-laid smokescreen. Goodwood involved four separate raids over a week in August, but once again ended in failure due to smokescreens over the battleship during each of the attacks. Despite the lack of results, each of these attacks was a major battle involving thousands of personnel on both sides.