The most heavily armored battleship ever built by a European navy fired her main guns offensively exactly once, at a remote weather station on a frozen island. Launched in April 1939, weighing over 52,000 tons fully loaded, 2,000 tons heavier than her sister Bismarck, and carrying eight 15-inch guns behind a 13-inch armor belt with nearly 60 anti-aircraft guns, Tirpitz spent her life as the ultimate 'fleet in being', pinning battleships, carriers, and cruisers of the British Home Fleet at Scapa Flow simply by existing in a Norwegian fjord.

This episode deconstructs the psychological warfare of the 'Lonely Queen of the North': the trauma of losing Bismarck on her first mission that made Hitler too paranoid to risk her, the 2,000-man crew who hauled real Norwegian trees onto the deck and pumped chlorosulfuric acid fog that corroded the ship a ...