Named after Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, the architect of the Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy), the ship was laid down at the Kriegsmarinewerft in Wilhelmshaven in November 1936 and her hull was launched two and a half years later.

[4] In September 1943, Tirpitz, along with the battleship Scharnhorst, bombarded Allied positions on Spitzbergen, the only time the ship used her main battery in an offensive role.

On 12 November 1944, British Lancaster bombers equipped with 12,000-pound (5,400 kg) "Tallboy" bombs scored two direct hits and a near miss which caused the ship to capsize rapidly.

Laid down after the signing of the Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935, Tirpitz and her sister Bismarck were nominally within the 35,000-long-ton (36,000 t) limit imposed by the Washington regime that governed battleship construction in the interwar period.

The ships secretly exceeded the figure by a wide margin, though before either vessel was completed, the international treaty system had fallen apart following Japan's withdrawal in 1937, allowing signatories to invoke an "escalator clause" that permitted displacements as high as 45,000 long tons (46,000 t).

[16] The Baltic Fleet, under the command of Vice Admiral Otto Ciliax,[15] patrolled off Åland from 23 to 26 September 1941, after which the unit was disbanded and Tirpitz resumed training.

[17] During the training period, Tirpitz tested her primary and secondary guns on the old pre-dreadnought battleship Hessen,[18] which had been converted into a radio-controlled target ship.

The ship would be able to attack convoys bound for the Soviet Union, and act as a fleet in being to tie down British naval assets and deter an Allied invasion of Norway.

[21] British military intelligence, which was capable of decrypting the Enigma messages sent by the German navy, detected the departure of the vessel, but poor weather in Britain prevented action by the RAF.

[23] Admiral John Tovey, the commander in chief of the British Home Fleet, was not made aware of Tirpitz's activities until 17 January, well after the ship had arrived in Norway.

[25] The movement was codenamed Operation Polarnacht (Polar Night); the battleship was escorted by the destroyers Z4 Richard Beitzen, Z5 Paul Jakobi, Z8 Bruno Heinemann and Z29 for the voyage.

[25] The crew also frequently hid the entire ship from aerial reconnaissance and attacks inside a cloud of artificial fog, created using water and chlorosulfuric acid.

The most pressing were shortages of fuel and the withdrawal of the German destroyer forces to support Operation Cerberus, the movement of the battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen through the English Channel.

[33] A planned British air attack at the end of January by four-engined heavy bombers was disrupted by poor weather over the target, which prevented the aircraft from finding the ship.

[33][37] Admiral Scheer,[33] with a design speed of 26 knots (48 km/h; 30 mph),[38] was too slow to operate with Tirpitz and was left in port,[33] as was the destroyer Paul Jakobi.

[46] During the repair process, the British attempted to attack the battleship with two Chariot human torpedoes, but before they could be launched, rough seas caused them to break away from the fishing vessel which was towing them.

[50] On 21 February, Topp was promoted to Rear Admiral and was replaced by Captain Hans Meyer; five days later the battleship Scharnhorst was ordered to reinforce the fleet in Norway.

To give the ships an opportunity to work together, Admiral Karl Dönitz, who had replaced Raeder in the aftermath of the Battle of the Barents Sea on 31 December 1942, ordered an attack on Spitzbergen, which housed a British weather station and refuelling base.

[52] The two battleships, escorted by ten destroyers, left port on 6 September; in a ruse de guerre, Tirpitz flew the white ensign on the approach to the island the following day.

[56] The X Craft were towed by large submarines to their destinations, where they could slip under anti-torpedo nets and each drop two powerful two-tonne mines onto the sea bed under the target.

Concussive shock disabled the starboard turbine engine, and saltwater used to fight the fires reached the boilers and contaminated the feed water.

[66] Dönitz ordered the ship be repaired, regardless of the cost, despite the fact that he understood Tirpitz could no longer be used in a surface action because of insufficient fighter support.

Repair work began in early May; destroyers ferried important equipment and workers from Kiel to Altafjord over the span of three days.

[70] The ineffectiveness of the great majority of the strikes launched by the Fleet Air Arm in mid-1944 led to the task of Tirpitz's destruction being transferred to the RAF's No.

Tirpitz's 38 cm fragmentation shells proved ineffective in countering the high-level bombers; one aircraft was damaged by ground-based anti-aircraft guns.

The ship was also prepared for her role as a floating artillery platform: fuel was limited to what was necessary to power the turbo-generators, and the crew was reduced to 1,600 officers and enlisted men.

[62] Several other bombs landed within the anti-torpedo net barrier and caused significant cratering of the seabed; this removed much of the sandbank that had been constructed to prevent the ship from capsizing.

A very large hole was blown in the ship's side and bottom; the entire section of belt armour abreast of the bomb hit was completely destroyed.

Major Heinrich Ehrler, the commander of III./Jagdgeschwader 5 (3rd Wing of the 5th Fighter Group), was blamed for the Luftwaffe's failure to intercept the British bombers.

[80] Ehrler was exonerated by further investigations which concluded poor communication between the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe had caused the fiasco;[81] the aircrews had not been informed that Tirpitz had been moved off Håkøya two weeks before the attack.