Last of the X- men who blew up the Tirpitz
It’s the end of an era as the last survivor of the X- Craft midget submarine raid on the German battleship Tirpitz passes away.
John Lorimer, later awarded the Distinguished Service Order for his silent service bravery, was captured during the mission in Norway’s Alten Fjord. He’d been second in command of the 52- foot- long sub as it tried to sneak up on one of Hitler’s key weapons in 1942.
The mini sub had been towed into the fjord by a larger submarine then cast adrift with tons of explosive strapped to it.
Cdr Lorimer volunteered for the X- Craft project after spotting a notice looking for volunteers with the caveat: “Must be able to swim.”
They were captured but not before they dumped the Amatol charges underneath Tirpitz, sister of the Bismarck.
And 19- year- old John and his three submariners were actually in custody on the battleship when the charges blew. They and the ship survived but the vessel was later put out of action by RAF bombers.
tHe would spend two years in a German PoW camp near Bremen.
His exploits featured in the movies Above Us The Waves, which told the story of the Tirpitz, and Albert R. N., which was based on the audacious mannequin stunt to try and escape the Bremen camp.
The objective of Operation Source was to use previously untried midget submarines ( known as X- Craft) to neutralise German warships in the waters of northern Norway. Among the targets was the heavily armed and seemingly invincible battleship Tirpitz, which had been attacking Arctic convoys.
Winston Churchill had made her destruction a top priority.
“She is the beast that would eat us,” he had declared in 1941. “If she were only crippled, the entire naval situation throughout the world would be altered.”
The operation began on September 11, 1943. Six large submarines, each with an X- Craft in tow, slipped out of Loch Cairnbawn, on the north- west coast of Scotland, heading for the Norwegian fjords
After ten days, X6 slipped into the fjord and John recalled seeing his target, saying: “It was surreal . . . lit up like a Christmas tree.
“My first thought was that she was so pretty, it seemed an awful shame to have to blow her up.”
On board each of the X- Craft was a specialist diver trained to cut through the thick steel underwater netting that surrounded the Tirpitz. However, Donald Cameron, the X6 commander, spotted through his leaking periscope a trawler bringing German sailors back from shore leave and audaciously followed it through a gate in the netting.
“We could see the sailors’ faces quite clearly, but they were too p**** d to notice us,” said John.
The next morning they pulled off a similar trick through an inner ring of netting, but then disaster struck. “We hit an uncharted rock,” Lorimer said. “Our periscope caught fire. The boat broke surface at 45 degrees.”
Their compass was also broken. “We had no idea where bloody north was,” he said.
Cameron managed to dive again, but X6 was now filled with fumes and almost uncontrollable. They dropped their Amatol explosives under the Tirpitz’s keel, rammed the vessel and then surfaced to be greeted by a hail of bullets. All the crew of X6 were captured and taken aboard the Tirpitz without getting their feet wet.
He and his colleagues were below decks being interrogated when the British explosives lifted the Tirpitz 70ft out of the water.
John said: “This Jerry is writing down my details,” he recalled.
“I believe we had just got to my date of birth when the whole bloody thing blew. He went one way and I went the other. I’ll never forget his face.
“The Germans were very hostile, and I wouldn’t blame them.”
The official report on Operation Source said the attack on the Tirpitz “will surely go down in history as one of the most courageous acts of all time”.
The mission was depicted in the film Above Us the Waves ( 1955) starring John Mills and Donald Sinden.
John lent Sinden his pipe which he smoked on the mission for the movie.