END OF THE TIRPITZ

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 129, 28 November 1944, Page 6

END OF THE TIRPITZ

EYE-WITNESS ACCOUNT

Rec. 12.40 p.m. LONDON, Nov. 27. •t> a■_ Norwegian who watched the R.A.F.S death blow attack against the battleship Tirpitz from a nearby height and then entered Sweden has given the first eye-witness account from the receiving end, says the Stockholm correspondent of "The Times."

He watched the Tirpitz turn turtle. The torpedo nets surrounding the battleship prevented escort craft approaching immediately, but when the nets were cut a swarm of small craft moved in and rescued a number of survivors, many of whom had terrible burns. The Germans spent the next 48 hours tackling the armour plating with oxygen blowpipes, in an effort to extricate those trapped inside the hui l# ,• T l hey succeeded in getting some put, but most of them were dead A Norwegian refugee who claims to have been an eye-witness of the sinking of the Tirpitz at Tromso Fiord on November 11 told the Stockholm newspaper "Dagens Nyheter" that there is no chance of the Germans salvaging any of the valuable equipment that went down with the battleship. The refugee stated that the Tirpitz was daily sinking deeper and deeper-into the muddy bottom of the fiord.