In 1942, on this day a jittery Winston Churchill wrote the shortest official memorandum in British history to his First Sea Lord Sir Dudley Pound demanding "Where is TIRPITZ?".

Flugzeugträger Part 6:
Where is TIRPITZ?She was the second of two Bismarck-class battleships built for the German Kriegsmarine. Named after Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, the architect of the earlier Kaiserliche Marine, the ship was laid down at the Kriegsmarinewerft Wilhelmshaven in November 1936 and her hull was launched two and a half years later.

Deployed in a double carrier group alongside the Peter Strasser and the Graf Zeppelin, her main war-time role was to wreck havoc amongst the Arctic convoys. And of course the source of Churchill's concern was the deteriorating situation on the Eastern Front. Because at first the invasion of Northern Germany and Romania known as the Zhukov Plan had made great progress. But now it was clear that Stalin's assault was premature and his build-up insufficient to defeat the Nazis. And due to the operation of the Kriegsmarine, the Allies problem was getting resupply through to the Russians.
This post shares some commonality with the sister articles in the Flugzeugträger thread.