Operation Sportpalast

Operation Sportpalast (German: Sports Palace), also known as Unternehmen Nordmeer (German: 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 attempted to intercept the German force 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 decided to be 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.

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 a key part of this strategy. As a result, the 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 British 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 convoys loaded with supplies 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. At this time the German dictator, 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 at 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.