Operation Chariot

At the beginning of 1942, the Tirpitz, the heaviest battleship ever built by a European navy and sister ship of the Bismarck, was on the cusp of breaking out into the north Atlantic. The prospect of the huge German battleship patrolling the Atlantic posed a huge threat to the convoys that were the lifeline for an embattled Britain. Determined efforts were made to damage the ship through bombing raids: these failed. An altogether more daring and radical plan was conceived: destroy the dry-dock facility at St Nazaire on the French Atlantic coast, and without the use of the only suitable base for the ship, the threat would be neutralized.