The relentless campaign to destroy the Tirpitz, a German warship during World War II, has left traces in the environment that are visible to this day. The largest ship of Hitler’s war navy was primarily stationed along the Norwegian coast during the war to prevent an Allied invasion. The Nazis hid it in a fjord and masked it with artificial chemical fog, a form of smoke screen.
This “smoke” caused significant damage to the surrounding trees, which can be seen in their growth rings, BBC reported on Thursday. Claudia Hartl from Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz accidentally discovered this while researching pines in Kafjord near Alta. The dendrochronologist was collecting core samples to create a picture of the climate in the area. Severe cold and insect-borne diseases can significantly slow down the annual growth of trees, but they cannot explain the complete absence of growth rings in some trees dating back to 1945.
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Experts thought this might be related to the Tirpitz, which had been anchored in Kafjord a year earlier when it was attacked by Allied aircraft. Archival documents show that the ship released chlorosulfonic acid for camouflage. “We believe that this artificial smoke damaged the pine needles,” Hartl told the BBC. In one tree, she noticed that it had not grown for nine years since 1945. “It later recovered, but it took 30 years to return to a state of normal growth. It is still there, alive and truly impressive,” says Dr. Hartl.
