Prime Minister Winston Churchill referred to Tirpitz as 'The Beast,' and on 25th January 1942 he wrote, 'The destruction or even the crippling of this ship is the greatest event at this present time. No other target is comparable to it.' With these words the seeds were sown for Operation TITLE, an Allied mission to sink Tirpitz. Harvesting began on 19th October 1942 when the fishing boat, Arthur, sailed from Scalloway with a crew of four Norwegians, a six-man team of Royal Navy divers and two 'chariots' in a brave attempt to tame 'the Beast.' Arduous training of men, fine tuning of the experimental 'chariots,' and the determination of those who undertook this mission all combined in a contest comparable with the biblical tale of David and Goliath. In this case Goliath, in the form of Tirpitz, survived with, sadly, the death of one Able Seaman, Robert Paul Evans RN. This book is a tribute to him and to all those who, undertaking similar dangerous deeds of valour, shared the same fate. AUTHOR: Glyn L Evans began his career in Liverpool in 1961 as a marine cargo insurance underwriter. Over a period of forty-one years he moved through promotion, resignation, re-instatement and recruitment to Manchester, Reading, London, Redhill, Bristol and Birmingham, becoming along the way an Associate of the Chartered Insurance Institute, a Chartered Insurance Practitioner and a Member of the Institute of Export. At some point during and after that, Glyn worked for an estate agent, a graphic design company, an art gallery and as an itinerant flat-pack furniture assembler. Growing up on the banks of the River Mersey, Glyn developed a life-long interest in ships, being a keen ship photographer at one stage and collector of ships' postcards. He has dabbled in paints with various degrees of failure, the least of which was his series ?Funnel Vision? that was exhibited at the National Waterways Museums at Ellesmere Port and Gloucester Docks. Time is now taken up with writing on maritime subjects for the Journal of the Honourable Company of Master Mariners and the Bulletin of the Liverpool Nautical Research Society, being a member of both organisations. His three published books to date are 'The Maritime Art of Kenneth D Shoesmith,' 'Dazzle-Painted Ships of World War I' and 'CARGOES ? A Celebration of the Sea,' an anthology of poems by John Masefield with paintings by K D Shoesmith. 12 b/w illustrations
