The Tirpitz was the largest and fastest battleship in European waters - the pride of the Kriegsmarine, and the scourge of the Royal Navy.
When Hitler decided that 'the fate of the war will be decided in Norway', the Tirpitz was sent to lurk in the Fjords of Norway to threaten the vital Arctic and Atlantic convoys. She became Winston's Churchill obsession; he was determined to sink 'the beast'.
American and British Naval and Air forces threw everything they could at the mighty Tirpitz, Halifax, Stirling and Lancaster bombers, 'X-Craft' midget submarines and the force of the Royal Navy's Home Fleet, armed with armour piercing bombs.
Although the Tirpitz was severely damaged, each time she was mended, she returned as menacing as ever.
Her nemesis was the Tallboy bomb, a massive 12,000 pound weapon designed to penetrate the most heavily defended targets. On the 12th November 1944, the Tirpitz was hit for the last time.
Of 1,000 crewmen trapped inside her capsized hull, only 85 were rescued. The Allies quarry had been vanquished - ironically in her three years of action, the Tirpitz never actually sank an Allied ship