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Home Warships of World War II German Battleship Tirpitz Teak Deck Relic Display by Ron Cole
 

German Battleship Tirpitz Teak Deck Relic Display by Ron Cole

$220.00

Own a very rare piece of the famous German Battleship Tirpitz - sistership of the Bismarck - combined with Ron Cole's haunting artwork portraying this warship underway at night beneath the Northern Lights of Norway! 
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A Short History of the Battleship Tirpitz

The German battleship Tirpitz was the second and final ship of the Bismarck class, built for Germany's Kriegsmarine and commissioned in February 1941. Named after Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, she was among the largest battleships built in Europe. Although she was designed as a powerful surface raider, her historical importance lay less in decisive combat than in the strategic threat she posed. After the loss of her sister ship Bismarck in 1941, German commanders used Tirpitz largely as a fleet in being: a heavily armed presence whose mere existence forced Britain to retain major naval forces in northern waters.
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Much of Tirpitz's wartime career was spent in Norwegian fjords, where she threatened Allied Arctic convoys bound for the Soviet Union and complicated Allied planning. British forces repeatedly tried to destroy her through submarine, carrier-aircraft, and bomber attacks. One of her few major offensive actions came in September 1943, when she took part in the bombardment of Allied positions on Spitzbergen. Yet the ship spent most of the war under concealment, protected by heavy defenses, camouflage, and even artificial smoke screens used to obscure her position in Norway.
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Date
Event
Historical significance
25 February 1941
Tirpitz commissioned into service
Entered the German fleet as one of its most formidable warships.
1942
Deployed to Norway
Became a strategic threat to Arctic convoys and tied down Allied naval strength.
September 1943
Bombarded Spitzbergen
Represented one of the ship's few major offensive operations.
12 November 1944
Sunk near Tromsø by RAF Lancaster bombers using Tallboy bombs
Ended the threat she posed after years of British efforts to destroy her.
1948–1957
Wreck broken up in salvage operations
Marked the ship's physical disappearance, though material remnants survived in reuse.
The end of Tirpitz came on 12 November 1944, when Royal Air Force Lancaster bombers attacked her near Tromsø with 12,000-pound Tallboy bombs. Direct hits and near misses caused catastrophic damage, and the battleship capsized quickly. Estimates of the dead vary, but roughly a thousand men were killed in the sinking. Her destruction was strategically important because it removed the last major German capital ship threat in northern Europe.
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The ship's post-war fate was unusual and, in some ways, enduring. Rather than remaining intact as a memorial or war grave, the overturned wreck was gradually dismantled between 1948 and 1957 by a joint Norwegian-German salvage operation. Large sections of metal were removed and reused, and later accounts note that some material from the wreck entered commercial afterlives, including metalwork and knife-making. The legacy of Tirpitz also lingered in northern Norway through wartime environmental damage associated with the ship's concealment methods, showing that its presence continued to affect the region long after the war itself had ended.
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This relic of Malay Teak decking was salvaged in the 1950s, along with other artifacts, by the noted author and collector Mike Hodgson, who studied and wrote extensively on the history of the Tirpitz. A piece of this hardwood, cut from the larger sample, is combined with the original artwork in these 8.5x11-inch (artwork size) wall-hanging displays. Each is signed & numbered by the artist - 1 through 75. 



 

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