1942 1943 1944 1945 Associated articles Operation Goodwood was a series of British carrier air raids conducted against the German battleship Tirpitz at her anchorage in Kaafjord in occupied Norway during late August 1944.

Historians regard Operation Goodwood as a significant failure for the Fleet Air Arm and attribute its results to the shortcomings of the force's aircraft and their armament.

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.

[3] To counter this threat, the Allies needed to keep a powerful force of warships with the British Home Fleet, and capital ships accompanied most convoys part of the way to the Soviet Union.

On 6 March 1942, torpedo bombers flying from the aircraft carrier HMS Victorious attacked the battleship while she was attempting to intercept Convoy PQ 12 but did not achieve any hits.

[6] On 23 September 1943, two British X-class midget submarines penetrated the defences around the battleship's main anchorage at Kaafjord in northern Norway during Operation Source, and placed explosive charges in the water beneath her.

Following months of preparations, a successful attack (Operation Tungsten) involving two strike forces of 20 Fairey Barracuda dive bombers escorted by 40 fighters was conducted on 3 April 1944.

[11] The first raid (Operation Planet) began on 21 April, but it was cancelled three days later when agents stationed near Kaafjord reported bad weather over the target area.

[12][13] A strike force of 27 Barracudas escorted by Vought F4U Corsair and Supermarine Seafire fighters took off from the carriers HMS Furious and Victorious on 15 May, but returned to the ships without attacking after they encountered heavy clouds over Kaafjord.

[14] The subsequent attack (Operation Mascot) was timed for mid-July, before the resumption of the Arctic convoys, which had been suspended since April 1944 in order to free ships for the Normandy landings.

[15] The strike force of 44 Barracudas and 40 fighters dispatched on 17 July reached the target area, but found Tirpitz cloaked in a protective smokescreen and the attack failed to inflict any damage on the battleship.

However, the Admiralty judged that repeatedly striking Kaafjord with Barracudas over a 48-hour period might wear down the German defences and exhaust the supply of fuel for Tirpitz's protective smoke generators.

Consideration was also given to flying fast and long-ranged de Havilland Mosquito bombers off the carriers in an attempt to achieve surprise, but none of these land-based aircraft could be spared from supporting the Allied bombing of Germany.

The mines dropped near the battleship were to be fitted with time-delay fuses, and it was hoped that the explosions of these devices would cause Tirpitz's captain to try to move the warship into safer waters and pass through the minefield at the fjord's entrance.

The timing of the operation was set to allow the Home Fleet to also protect Convoy JW 59, which had departed from Scotland on 15 August bound for the Soviet Union.

While the first attack against Kaafjord had been planned to take place on 21 August, weather conditions that day were unsuitable for flying operations, and Moore decided upon a 24-hour postponement.

Because few mines were available and the Avengers could not safely land while still carrying these weapons, the mine-dropping element of the plan would fail if the aircraft were unable to locate Tirpitz and had to dump their loads into the sea.

[30] Three British aircraft were lost during the attack on the morning of 22 August; one Hellcat and a Seafire were shot down, and one of the Barracudas was forced to ditch into the sea during its return flight.

[37] Shortly after the attacks on Nabob and Bickerton, Seafires from 894 Naval Air Squadron shot down two German Blohm & Voss BV 138 reconnaissance aircraft.

[36][42] British fighters also attacked other German ships and facilities in the Kaafjord area, damaging two patrol boats, a minesweeper and a radar station, as well as destroying an ammunition dump and three guns of an anti-aircraft battery.

[44] At 7:30 pm on 24 August, a pair of Fireflies conducted a photo-reconnaissance sortie over Kaafjord to gather intelligence on the results of the attack; their presence caused the Germans to generate a smoke screen over the fjord and fire an intensive anti-aircraft barrage.

[34][45] The German command at Kaafjord judged that the attacks on 24 August had been "undoubtedly the heaviest and most determined so far", and requested that fighter units be transferred from northern Finland to bolster the area's defences.

In an attempt to give the bombers accurate aiming points once the artificial smokescreen was generated around Tirpitz, four of the Hellcats were armed with target indicator bombs.

German radar stations had been tracking the Home Fleet's routine anti-submarine and fighter patrols, and the Seafires were detected at 4:40 pm when they were 54 miles (87 km) from Kaafjord.

[41] The arrival of the main body of British aircraft over Kaafjord was delayed by stronger than expected winds and a navigational error, and they did not reach the target area until 5:25 pm.

The Barracudas and Corsairs were forced to blind-bomb Kaafjord, and while no hits were achieved on the battleship, six members of her crew were wounded by bomb fragments from near misses.

The planners accepted that the Germans were now able to cover Tirpitz in smoke before Barracudas could reach the battleship, and these aircraft could not carry bombs large enough to inflict heavy damage.

Further consideration was given to attacking Kaafjord using Mosquitos launched from aircraft carriers, but the light bombers continued to be in short supply and it was judged that they were not well suited to the task.

[55][Note 1] On 15 September, a force of Avro Lancasters attacked Kaafjord after refuelling at bases in northern Russia and inflicted irreparable damage on the battleship.

Writing in 1961, the British official historian Stephen Roskill stated that the attacks marked the end of a "series of operations whose results can only be classed as intensely disappointing", and concluded that the possibility of sinking Tirpitz had been "remote" due to the shortcomings of the Barracudas and their armament.