1942 was a pivotal year for Germany, with the defeated Germans under Moscow launching a new offensive on the southern section of the Eastern Front, and Rommel's Afrika Korps were victorious and pushing into Egypt. At the same time, the German Navy fought on a wider scale, surface ships were massed in Norway to attack the Arctic route, and submarine forces achieved astonishing success on the west coast of the United States, leaving traces of German warships everywhere in the Black Sea, the Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean, and the Pacific.
Migration to Norway: On 14 January 1942, the battleship Tirpitz departed for Norway and never returned to Germany. The move was motivated by Hitler's fears of an Allied counterattack on Norway and the need to cut off the Arctic route, and for the same reason, the Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and Prinz Eugen, which had been bombed in Brest, France, were also ordered to be transferred north, and the Germans planned a wonderful operation that enabled the three large ships to successfully break through the English Channel and return to Germany on February 12.
■ Painted works showing the German naval fleet led by the Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and Prinz Eugen in February 1942, breaking through the dense defenses of the British army in the English Channel and successfully returning to Germany.
The "Strait Rush" was a tactical and psychological victory for the German Navy, but the British Navy gained strategic comfort, and the threat of large German warships to North Atlantic shipping always worried the British, as evidenced by the raid on Saint-Nazaire on France on 27 March, when the explosive-laden British destroyer HMS Campbeltown blew up the entrance to the local Normandy dockyard, paralyzing the only large dry dock on the Atlantic coast capable of accommodating the Tirpitz The move was intended to block the powerful warship from entering the Atlantic. From February to May 1942, ships such as "Ruzov", "Scheer", "Hipper" and "Prince Eugen" were also transferred to Norway.
After the sinking of Bismarck in May 1941, the cruise operations of the German Navy's large warships were suspended, and only a small number of auxiliary cruisers continued to carry out Raeder's strategy. As a result of the British heightened vigilance, the German Navy encountered great difficulties in sending the second batch of camouflage attack ships in 1942, with several ships being sunk while sneaking across the English Channel, and a few lucky ones succeeding, but it was already difficult to achieve decent results. On 26 August 1942, Raeder's last attempt to deploy Tirpitz and Scheer on the Atlantic Was rejected by Hitler on the grounds that it was difficult to obtain air cover. By December 1942, the situation at sea was no longer conducive to camouflage raider activities, and Raeder was forced to order the cancellation of plans to continue to convert auxiliary cruisers, at which time there was no surface attack ship of the German Navy cruising the ocean except for michel, which was operating in the Far East. After the Michel was sunk by a U.S. submarine off the coast of Japan on October 17, 1943, the German Navy's cruise came to a sad end.
The battleship Tirpitz, stationed in the Norwegian fjords, served as a "presence fleet" for most of its service, pinning down a large number of Allied war resources.
Arctic Route: After withdrawing from the Atlantic War, the Norwegian Sea and the Arctic Ocean became new battlefields for the German Navy's large surface ships, targeting Allied merchant ships that traveled between Iceland and the northern Soviet ports of Murmansk and Arkhangelsk, carrying Anglo-American war supplies to the Soviet Union. The Arctic Route was opened in August 1941, and the high-latitude sea area made the voyage very difficult due to ice floes and storms, but the first few fleets were able to survive the 2,000-nautical-mile voyage to reach their destination safely. In December 1941, the PQ-6 fleet was intercepted for the first time, and as the Germans gathered ships and aircraft into northern Norway, the Arctic route became dangerous, and merchant ships would face a joint attack in the air, surface and underwater, the most threatening of which was the Tirpitz, whose presence forced the British Navy to deploy heavy ships to escort the fleet every time.
On 5 March 1942, tirpitz sailed out of a hidden fjord and began her first combat attack escorted by three destroyers, targeting opposing PQ-12 and QP-8 fleets, with a very strong British convoy, including the battlecruiser Prestige, the Duke of York, the battleship HMS King George V and the aircraft carrier HMS Victorious. Although the German destroyers lined up in front of the battleships, they were lost to the fleet, only one merchant ship was sunk by the destroyer, and poor visibility in the combat waters prevented the warring sides from establishing visual contact. On 9 March, victory's carrier-based aircraft spotted tirpitz and attacked, failing to hit, and the German ship, aware of the danger, returned to Norway.
Four months later, as the PQ-17 passed through the waters near Bear Island, tirpitz attacked again, and soon turned back halfway, but the British made a fatal misjudgment in the speculation of the fearsome warship, disbanded the fleet, and caused the worst losses in the Arctic escort war, with 24 merchant ships destroyed by submarines and air raids, and the subsequent PQ-18 fleet lost 13 more merchant ships under German naval and air interception, forcing the Losses to interrupt the Arctic route for three months.
■ After successfully intercepting the PQ-17 fleet, the German submarine U-255 displayed its results: four pennants representing the results of the sinking and a captured flag from captured Allied merchant ships. The PQ-17 fleet eventually sank 24 merchant ships, and more than 140,000 tons of cargo, including 430 tanks, 210 aircraft, and 3,350 trucks, sank to the bottom of the sea.
In August, the Scher was also ordered to carry out Operation Wonderland, going deep into the Arctic Ocean to intercept a Soviet fleet from Vladivostok, but it was difficult to carry out operations in the harsh ice sea, and only one icebreaker was sunk. The JW-51 fleet, which departed at the end of December, was intercepted by the German fleet dominated by Hipper and Lützov, and the inferior British escorts stubbornly repelled the attackers, and the fleet was safe and sound. The defeat at the Battle of barents on 31 December greatly enraged Hitler and cast an even heavier shadow over the fate of Germany's large warships, and the commander-in-chief of the navy, Raeder, hung up the crown and was succeeded by Dönitz.