Operation Sportpalast (German: Sports Palace), also known as Unternehmen Nordmeer (German: Operation Northern Sea), was a German naval raid between 6 and 13 March 1942 in the Norwegian Sea against two Allied Arctic convoys during the Second World War. It was conducted by the battleship Tirpitz, three destroyers and eight submarines. The German ships were unable to locate either of the convoys but sank a merchant vessel that was sailing independently. An Allied attempt to intercept the German force also failed.
The operation was the first big German attack on the Arctic convoys to and from the Soviet Union and used warships that had been transferred to occupied Norway in early 1942. Tirpitz and her escorts sailed on 6 March. The Allies learned of this from decoded German radio signals and the British Home Fleet attempted to destroy the German force. This intelligence was also used to divert the convoys to evade Tirpitz. The British found the German battleship on the morning of 9 March, by which time she was returning to Norway. An attack against Tirpitz by torpedo bombers flying from the aircraft carrier HMS Victorious failed and two British aircraft were shot down. The German ships returned to their base on 13 March.
The British were disappointed with their failure against Tirpitz, that was attributed to shortcomings with the aircraft and tactics used. They believed that the battleship posed a significant threat to the convoys and powerful escort forces were assigned to them. The Kriegsmarine was chastened by how close Tirpitz came to disaster and became much more cautious. The battleship was only dispatched against Convoy PQ 17 in June 1942 and was recalled before attacking it. She was subjected to many attacks at her anchorages in Norway and sunk in November 1944.
Background
Before the outbreak of the Second World War the Kriegsmarine (German Navy) developed plans to attack Allied merchant shipping in the event of war. The commander of the navy, Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, believed that battleships and cruisers were to be used in this strategy. Scharnhorst-class battleships and Bismarck-class battleships that were constructed in the late 1930s and early 1940s were designed to be capable of making long-distance anti-shipping raids into the Atlantic Ocean. Tirpitz was the second of the two Bismarck-class vessels and was launched in April 1939 and commissioned on 25 February 1941.
The Kriegsmarine made two battleship raids against Allied convoys in the Atlantic Ocean during early 1941. The battleships Gneisenau and Scharnhorst conducted Operation Berlin between January and March 1941. During this raid they sailed from Germany, attacked Allied shipping and returned to occupied France. A second raid, Operation Rheinübung, was attempted in May with the battleship Bismarck and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen. While the German ships destroyed the British battlecruiser HMS Hood on 24 May, Bismarck was crippled by Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers from the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal and sank on 27 May after being bombarded by several British battleships from the Home Fleet. Admiral Sir John Tovey was the commander in chief of this fleet and led it from the battleship HMS King George V during the battle. The loss of Bismarck left Tirpitz as Germany's only battleship; her crew were still being trained.
After the German invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 the Allies began sending suppl convoys through the Norwegian Sea and Barents Sea to ports in northern Russia. The Arctic convoys that were dispatched during 1941 and early 1942 were lightly opposed, with only an Allied merchant ship and the destroyer HMS Matabele being sunk by German submarines prior to March 1942. The extreme cold, heavy seas and gales, made air and naval operations in the area difficult for all of the combatants.
In December 1941 the Germans began to transfer substantial naval and air forces to northern Norway, which they had occupied since early 1940. The forces sent to Norway were for attacks on the Arctic convoys as well as defending the area from an invasion. Adolf Hitler, wrongly believed the Allies intended to invade Norway. On 12 January 1942 Hitler ordered Tirpitz to be transferred from Germany to Trondheim in Norway. The battleship and two escorting destroyers departed Wilhelmshaven in Germany on 14 January and arrived in Trondheim on 16 January. She was to form the main element of a battle group once other German warships arrived in the area. Kapitän zur See Karl Topp commanded Tirpitz.
The Allies learned of Tirpitz's arrival at Trondheim on 17 January from Ultra intelligence obtained by decrypting intercepted German radio signals. British photo reconnaissance aircraft located the battleship there on 23 January and regular sorties were flown over the Trondheim area to monitor her. Due to the threat Tirpitz posed to Allied convoys in the Atlantic Ocean and Norwegian Sea, the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, directed on 25 January that "the destruction or even crippling of this ship is the greatest event at sea at the present time. No other target is comparable to it". The Royal Air Force (RAF) dispatched 16 heavy bombers to attack Tirpitz at its anchorage on the night of 29/30 January but no damage was inflicted. In February, 217 Squadron was ordered to prepare for a one-way mission against the battleship. This would have involved its Bristol Beaufort aircraft making an attack and the crews then parachuting over neutral Sweden or ditching into the sea. The raid was not attempted and 217 Squadron returned to normal duties in mid-March 1942.
Allied intelligence learned that Tirpitz was training in Trondheim Fjord on 19 February. Tovey sailed that day with most of the Home Fleet to either raid the Norwegian port of Tromsø or attack Tirpitz if she put to sea. Tovey cancelled the raid on Tromsø after the Admiralty passed on intelligence that another group of German ships was being transferred to Trondheim; these were the heavy cruisers Admiral Scheer and Prinz Eugen with three destroyers. The aircraft carrier HMS Victorious, escorted by the heavy cruiser HMS Berwick and four destroyers, was detached to attack these ships and four submarines took up positions near Trondheim. The carrier launched 17 Fairey Albacore torpedo bombers in the early hours of 23 February but they failed to find the German force, due to bad weather and three Albacores and their crews were lost. The submarine HMS Trident torpedoed and badly damaged Prinz Eugen near the entrance to Trondheim Fjord on 23 February; Admiral Scheer was undamaged and anchored near Tirpitz. The loss of the Albacores led to improvements to the information on weather conditions that was provided to the Home Fleet.
The Admiral Commanding Battleships, Vice-Admiral Otto Ciliax, assumed command of the battle group after it arrived at Trondheim Fjord and made Tirpitz his flagship. Ciliax had led the German forces in the Channel Dash between 11 and 13 February, during which Gneisenau, Scharnhorst and Prinz Eugen returned to Germany from Brest, France, via the English Channel. Both battleships were damaged by mines during this operation and could not be dispatched to Norway as intended. The failure to prevent the battleships from passing through the English Channel was embarrassing to the British but the German move ended the threat that the warships at Brest had posed to Allied shipping in the Atlantic.
Prelude
Allied convoys
Due to the presence of the battle group at Trondheim, the Home Fleet was directed to provide a powerful distant covering force for the Arctic convoys for the first time. The British also stepped up their air patrols of the Trondheim area and Norwegian Sea to monitor German naval movements. Two Arctic convoys sailed simultaneously on 1 March 1942. Convoy PQ 12 left Iceland bound for the Soviet Union, and Convoy QP 8 departed Murmansk in northern Russia to return ships to the Atlantic. Convoy PQ 12 was made up of 17 merchant ships and was escorted by a heavy cruiser, 2 destroyers and several armed Norwegian whalers. Convoy QP 8 comprised 15 merchant vessels and had a weak escort of 2 corvettes and 2 minesweepers. Tovey had requested that the convoys sail simultaneously to make it easier for the Home Fleet to protect both when they passed through the waters between Jan Mayen and Bear Islands, where they would be at greatest risk of attack by German surface ships.
On 3 March, a force under Vice-Admiral Alban Curteis, the deputy commander of the Home Fleet, departed Iceland to protect the convoys. It comprised the battleship HMS Duke of York, the battlecruiser HMS Renown and six destroyers. Tovey was on board King George V at Scapa Flow. He preferred to remain there with the battleship and Victorious to remain in contact by telephone with his sources of intelligence and to intercept Tirpitz if she attempted to break out into the Atlantic. Retaining part of the fleet at Scapa Flow would also help to keep ships and their crews ready over what was anticipated to be a lengthy campaign, with Tovey believing that Gneisenau and Scharnhorst would join Tirpitz over the summer after they were repaired. The Admiralty disagreed with this analysis and ordered Tovey to put to sea on 3 March so that the full force of the Home Fleet could be brought to bear against Tirpitz if she sailed. In doing so it accepted responsibility for the consequences if the German battleship entered the Atlantic. Tovey sailed shortly afterwards with King George V, Victorious, Berwick and six destroyers. The two elements of the Home Fleet met up to the east of Jan Mayen on 6 March.
Tovey had instructions to give precedence to protecting the convoys over destroying Tirpitz. He was unhappy with this and regarded the sinking of the battleship as being of "incomparably greater importance to the conduct of the war than the safety of any convoy". The forces under Tovey's command were considerably more powerful than those available to Ciliax. Victorious's air wing included 817 Naval Air Squadron (NAS) with nine Albacore torpedo bombers and 832 NAS with twelve. These obsolescent biplanes could be armed with a torpedo and were slow and difficult to manoeuvre. The Albacore crews were experienced flyers but had received little training in attacking ships. The other element of the carrier's air wing was 809 NAS with Fulmar fighters. The Fulmars were inferior to German land-based fighters due to their lack of speed and manoeuvrability but were capable of intercepting bombers. Tovey regarded the amount of air support available to his fleet as inadequate.
German plans
The crew of a German Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor maritime patrol aircraft sighted ships of Convoy PQ 12 near Jan Mayen at around noon on 5 March. The commander of Naval Group North, General Admiral Rolf Carls, requested permission to attack the convoy using Ciliax's force. This was granted by Raeder after he consulted with Hitler. Raeder ordered Ciliax to avoid Allied naval forces to the extent possible and only attack convoys if they were protected by a force equal or lesser than his. The raid is usually called Operation Sportpalast by historians but was called Operation Nordmeer by Ciliax and his staff.
Ciliax knew that two Allied convoys were at sea. He believed that they had the protection of the Home Fleet but he did not know its strength or if it had sailed. He planned to intercept the convoys between Jan Mayen and Bear Island. Tirpitz was to destroy the convoy escorts and then she and the destroyers would attack the freighters. Due to a fuel shortage, Ciliax could not use all of his ships. He sailed from Trondheim at noon on 6 March with Tirpitz and the destroyers Z14 Friedrich Ihn, Z7 Hermann Schoemann and Z25. Eight German submarines based in Norway were assigned to support Tirpitz. The four submarines with the most experienced crews were sent to ambush positions to attack the Home Fleet if it intervened. The other four submarines operated near Murmansk to attack any ships from Convoy PQ 12 that escaped the German flotilla.
Battle
6–7 March
The German ships were not spotted by Norwegian resistance agents as they departed. The scheduled British photo reconnaissance flight over Trondheim was unable to be conducted on 6 March due to bad weather. More air patrols over the Norwegian Sea, that were meant to be conducted as a substitute, were not flown due to a shortage of aircraft. Contact was first made by the submarine HMS Seawolf at 6:01 p.m. on 6 March, with its crew spotting a large warship while patrolling north of the exit to Trondheim Fjord. Seawolf's commanding officer Lieutenant Dick Raikes assumed this was Tirpitz. He attempted to attack the German force but was outpaced and broke off. Seawolf's crew then sent a radio report of this contact, that indicated that the ship was either a cruiser or a battleship. The German battle group sailed north-east along the coast of Norway at 23 kn (43 km/h; 26 mph) for the remainder of 6 March and turned north at midnight.
During 6 March, Convoy PQ 12 passed through areas of loose pack ice. This forced it to take a south-easterly course for much of the day and resulted in serious damage to the destroyer HMS Oribi. Convoy QP 8 was also behind schedule, as it had been scattered by gales on 4 and 6 March. The Soviet cargo ship Izhora and the American vessel Larranga fell behind the convoy on 4 March and were unable to rejoin it.