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Fleet in being - Wikipedia
Even more so than other surface vessels in Nazi Germany's Kriegsmarine (navy), the German battleship Tirpitz served her entire career as a "fleet in being" in her own right. Although she never fired a shot at an enemy ship, her mere presence in the Norwegian fiords forced the Royal Navy and their allies to allocate powerful warships in defending Arctic convoys, and caused a major convoy (PQ 17) to scatter, suffering huge losses, mainly to U-boats and aircraft. A 1943 midget submarine attack and successive airstrikes launched by the RAF and the Fleet Air Arm removed the threat by November 1944, when the Tirpitz was sunk at Tromsø