Tirpitz Museum Alta

On Friday morning me and the Girlfriend loaded up the HobbyHistoricamobile and were before 09 in the morning ready for a roadtrip. We were gonna drive from home to Kautokeino in Finmark, a trip on ca 820 km tour-retour. Our main mission were to collect the last of her insect traps for her fieldwork, but we also wanted to visit the Tirpitz museum in Kaafjord just outside Alta.

The trip north went very well and after collecting her trap in Kautokeino we ate dinner and drove back to the Alta area to find a nice place to overnight. After looking around for a while we just decided on a parking place outside the city. Here was a big pile of war junk laying. A couple of ship guns and some other bits from Hitlers aircraft carrier that never saw completion, the Graf Zeppelin.

The guns had been sent north to become part of a coastal fortress. On a small hill was a large crater from a Tallboy bomb that had missed Tirpitz by just a few meters, so it was a real historic site we had decided to spend the night, which was lit up by a massive northern lights playing across the sky.

Next morning we drove a few kilometers to collect her second insect trap. While she trekked the mountain side to pick it, I found a hill and collected berries. Here I met a squirrel that took great interest in what I was up to and sat on a branch only three meter from me for a long time.

Before lunch we were ready and found our way to the Tirpitz museum.

The owner of the museum, Even Blomkvist, has spent big parts of his life collecting items, photos and stories about the battleship, and opened the museum in 2005.

In the lobby a huge model of Tirpitz is on display. The scale is 1/32 which makes the model several meters long, and next to it a 1/50 model of its sister ship Bismarck. The Bismarck model is completely scratchbuilt and is very impressive. Throughout the museum is several other models of these two and many other ships.

Hundreds of interesting pics and items is telling the story of the ship and the wartime in the Kaafjord- and Alta area, and the Allied attacks on Tirpitz attempting to destroy it. Here you will see everything from small uniform buttons to super-rare relics like an example of a Johnny Walker Diving Mine that were used to try to sink the German battleship that were stationed in the Northern Norwegian fjords to disturb the convoy traffic in the Barents sea.

A little later on the day there was also a book launch in the museum. The Norwegian artist, John Jamtli, has made a comicbook about the demise of Tirpitz, and the Norwegian secret agents that helped the Allied with crucial information to make the operation possible. A really well made comicbook that both young and old can enjoy, and it will hopefully be translated to English at some point.

This is definately a museum I am going to visit again and I highly reccommend it.

Link to the museum website: www.tirpitz-museum.no/

A Tallboy crater.

Aurora danced for us all night.

Bits from Graf Zeppelin.

The museum building was moved from the south of Norway to here in 1946 as part of the rebuilding of the area that had been burnt to the ground by the Germans in 1944.

A wood cut Tirpitz emblem.

Model of one of the submarines that were used in an attempt to sink Tirpitz.

EKM from a Tirpitz seaman who died in the attack on the ship in April 1944.

Gebirgsjäger equipment and photoalbum.

An impressive model of the Tirpitz that has individual cut deck planks made from a real Tirpitz deck plank.

Details from Tirpitz found in the fjord.

Parachute for the Johnny Walker mine.

Johnny Walker Diving Mine.

Many of the items survived all the years on the seabed because they became encapsuled in oil.

Kriegsmarine medal found on the seabed.

Kriegsmarine dagger.

Red Army mans cigarett tin.

Small box made by one of Tirpitz` crew.

Cold weather straw-boots for soldiers produced by inmates in Ravensbrück KZ camp.

Radio operator.

1/50 scale Bismarck. Built with items found laying around the modellers farm.

Unfinished 1/32 scale model of the Tirpitz.

Some other models and dioramas of Tirpitz on display.

A beautiful Tirpitz monument.

The comicbook author, John Jamtli, to the left, Owner of the museum, Even Blomkvist, to the right.

Autumn is beautiful here north.