Flames Over Norway

by Robert Jackson

  A knock at the door interrupted his somewhat depressing reverie. A moment later Max, the Lithuanian, entered the office, silently handed a piece of paper to Royston, then departed without saying a word, nodding and smiling at Armstrong in friendly fashion as he passed by.

  It was a message slip. Royston studied it, his face serious, then folded it and put it in his pocket. He took time to light a cigarette before speaking.

  “Intelligence reports that heavy units of the German Fleet are putting to sea,” he told Armstrong. “To my mind, that can only mean one of two possibilities. Either they are planning a major breakout into the North Atlantic, or we’ve got an invasion of Norway on our hands. We are to move up to Kinloss as soon as the weather lifts.”

  Armstrong’s heart sank. North of the border again, he groaned inwardly. Still, at least it’s not bloody Wick. He looked out at the lowering clouds and the rain; for the time being, nothing was going anywhere.

  Chapter Eleven

  Southern Norway, 9 April 1940: 04.45 hours

  On this Tuesday morning, the second Tuesday in April, the waters of Oslofjord and its adjacent hillsides were shrouded in fog. It was not yet five o’clock, but already people were up and about, for there were breakfasts to be prepared, nets to be made ready, and engines to be checked before the fishing boats could put to sea on the morning tide. An eerie silence hung over everything, as it always did when fog clung to the water. Somewhere, a muffled bell tolled, and a siren gave a couple of mournful blasts, as though in answer.

  Even the great, booming explosions that came reverberating without warning over the fjord were deadened by the grey vapour. The fishermen on the quaysides paused at their work and looked at one another in alarm, knowing the sound for what it was. The great guns of the Feste Oskarsborg, the fortress that guarded the Drobak Narrows and the approaches to Oslo, fired practice rounds from time to time, but never at this hour of the morning. The explosions thundered out again and again, splitting the silence in a continuous drumfire that showed no sign of ending. What, the fishing folk asked themselves and one another, was going on out there, in the darkness and the murk?

  Daylight came, and with it a slight lifting of the fog, enough to reveal a fantastic sight. Oslofjord was crammed with ships of all kinds — warships, freighters, troopships. At the entrance to Drobak Narrows a tall column of smoke rose into the sky, penetrating the fog like a dark finger. At its base, surrounded by spreading oil, licked by flames and on her beam ends, lay the German heavy cruiser Blücher, hit by several torpedoes from the Oskarsborg defences, on fire and sinking. Nearby, other cruisers and destroyers duelled with the fortress, trying to blast a path through the narrows so that the troopships — penned up at the moment in a dangerous bottleneck — could break through into Oslo harbour.

  As the sun rose, and the fog drifted into ridge-like banks that made tracts of southern Norway visible from the air, waves of three-engined Junkers 52 transports came droning in across the Skagerrak. Ahead of them, Messerschmitt 110 fighters swept the sky, ready to eliminate any resistance. Their task was hardly formidable. The Royal Norwegian Army Air Force had only nine fighters, Gloster Gladiator biplanes, and on this ninth day of April only seven of them were airworthy. The Messerschmitts raced across Fornebu, Oslo’s airport, and caught two of the Gladiators on the ground, destroying them with cannon fire, then circled the airfield watchfully, diving down from time to time to strafe Norwegian machine-gun posts, while the first of the Junkers 52 transports touched down to disgorge their airborne troops.

  High over Oslo the five surviving Gladiators, which had managed to take off before the onslaught began, fought on. In a savage engagement with a mass of enemy bombers they destroyed two Heinkel 111s and a Dornier 17, but one Gladiator was shot down — its pilot miraculously surviving — and two more had to be abandoned when, short of fuel, they landed on a frozen lake to the north of the capital. The remaining two, their ammunition exhausted, withdrew to an airstrip farther north.

  While the airborne troops consolidated their position at Fornebu and prepared to advance on Oslo, another formation of Junkers transports battled its way through bad weather to Stavanger, in south-west Norway. Jumping from only 400 feet, 150 heavily-armed paratroops descended on Stavanger airfield, which was in their hands within half an hour.

  Earlier, another German airborne force had landed at Aalborg, in Denmark. That country, overwhelmed by surprise, was now being occupied fairly peacefully; its airfields and ports would be vital for the continued supply of the Norwegian invasion forces.

  There had been plenty of warning of the Germans’ intentions. For several days in early April, the British Government had been receiving intelligence reports of unusual enemy activity in the Baltic ports, and had interpreted this as a sign that heavy units of the German Fleet were preparing to break out into the Atlantic. As it happened, the interpretation was completely wrong. The bulk of the enemy invasion force was already at sea on 7 April, ploughing northwards through savage weather. In the troopships, soldiers who had never seen the sea before, men who had no idea where they were going until they embarked — some thought Scotland, and made jokes about the whisky in an attempt to lift morale amid the stench and misery of seasickness — were battered helplessly against the iron bulkheads.

  This part of the invasion force was divided into three Task Groups. Group One, with Narvik as its objective, had the farthest distance to travel — roughly 1000 miles — and was heavily escorted by the battlecruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, together with ten destroyers; Group Two, bound for Trondheim, was guarded by the cruiser Admiral Hipper and four destroyers, while Group Three, heading for Bergen, was protected by the cruisers Köln and Königsberg, screened by torpedo boats. Groups Four and Five, assigned to Kristiansand and Oslo, did not have to sail so early. The idea was that all five groups would hit their objectives at more or less the same time.

  One Allied officer at least believed that he knew what the Germans intended, even before the invasion forces set sail. He was Vice Admiral Sir Max Horton, commanding the Royal Navy’s submarine flotillas. On his own initiative, he sent all available submarines — 12 in all — to lie off the German ports and patrol the sea routes to Norway. Throughout that day they saw many northward-bound cargo vessels pass before their periscopes, but because their orders were to attack only those ships recognizable as warships or troopships, they let them go.

  Then, on the eighth, the Polish submarine Orzel torpedoed and sank the troop transport Rio de Janeiro off Lillesand, on the south coast of Norway. Norwegian fishermen rescued about 100 survivors, some of whom, interrogated by the military authorities, revealed that they had been on their way to Bergen “to protect Norway against English invaders.”

  The military authorities at once called for the full mobilization of Norway’s small armed forces, and the mining of the approaches to the Norwegian harbours. The pacifist Norwegian Government, fearful of provoking Nazi Germany even at this late hour, did nothing. And all the while, the enemy task groups were drawing closer to their objectives. Already, on the previous day, the units of Task Group One had been sighted by the crews of some RAF Coastal Command Blenheims, carrying out shipping searches from bases in Scotland. The Blenheims had attacked, but no hits had been obtained.

  A few hours later units of the Home Fleet, including two battleships and several cruisers, sailed from Scapa Flow under their Commander-in-Chief, Admiral Sir Charles Forbes, with orders to intercept the enemy warships reported by the RAF. Even now, the belief still persisted that the Germans were breaking out into the North Atlantic, to prey on Britain’s supply convoys. By the early hours of 8 April, fierce gales were lashing the Norwegian Sea. The ships of both sides plunged on in screaming winds and icy darkness, massive waves crashing over them and battering their superstructures.

  One such wave plucked a seaman bodily from the deck of the battle-cruiser HMS Renown and hurled him overboard; an escorting destroyer, HMS Glowworm, was instructed to leave the ma
in force and carry out a hopeless search for him. While engaged in this task, in a murky dawn, she sighted the warships of Task Group Two, bound for Trondheim. An enemy destroyer loomed up, her outline blurred by spray. Glowworm fired two salvoes at her before she was lost to sight in the heavy seas and fog. A few minutes later, Glowworm sighted a second destroyer and gave chase, the two warships exchanging shot for shot. The larger German vessel increased speed to try to shake off the dogged British destroyer but her bows ploughed under, forcing her to slow down again. Glowworm closed in, her skipper. Lieutenant Commander Roope, trying to get into position for a shot with torpedoes.

  Some distance ahead, a great, dark shape burst from a fog-bank. For a few moments the men on Glowworm’s bridge were elated, believing the ship to be HMS Renown. Then a salvo of heavy shells tore into the British destroyer, setting her on fire. The newcomer to the battle was the Admiral Hipper. She forged towards the Glowworm, which turned away, belching clouds of smoke. The German cruiser lost sight of her and pursued her into the smokescreen, intent on delivering the coup de grace.

  Suddenly, the destroyer came into view once more, her helm hard over, plunging headlong on a collision course with the Hipper. The cruiser tried to take avoiding action, but her response was too slow. Glowworm tore into the Hipper’s flank, shearing away over 100 feet of the cruiser’s armour plating in a nightmare crescendo of rending metal. Recoiling from the collision she fell astern, ablaze and sinking.

  There was a violent explosion, a mushroom of flame and smoke, and Glowworm disappeared.

  Kapitän Heye, the Hipper’s commander, ordered his ship to heave to and search for survivors. His crew plucked 38 of them from the sea, shocked, frozen and smothered in oil, some of them badly injured. A 39th, Lieutenant Commander Roope, struggled weakly in the sea. German seamen threw him a line and he clutched at it, only to have it slip from his hands. He fell back, exhausted, and the waves closed over him.

  So ended the first of many desperate, isolated naval actions that would be fought in these freezing waters in the days to come.

  The day wore on and the weather steadily worsened. The main units of the Home Fleet under Admiral Forbes were still a long way from the scene of the action, although Forbes had sent the battlecruiser HMS Repulse and the cruiser HMS Penelope racing northwards with all speed to join HMS Renown and her destroyers, 500 miles away, playing an unwitting game of hide-and-seek with the Germans in squalls of ice and rain and appalling visibility.

  There was still no indication as to where the enemy warships might be heading, but at ten minutes to seven that evening, 8 April, the Admiralty in London finally made up its mind about what was really happening, and a signal was flashed to the commander of the northernmost group of British warships — Vice Admiral William Whitworth, in HMS Renown. It was terse and to the point.

  ‘Most immediate. The force under your orders is to concentrate on preventing any German force proceeding to Narvik.’

  It was too late. Before midnight, the German invasion forces were already entering the dark fjords that led to their objectives.

  *

  Narvik, 9 April 1940: 06.15 hours

  For several hours the destroyers had been nosing their way through the fog that enveloped Vestfjorden, the narrow waterway between the Lofoten Islands and the Norwegian mainland, their crews alert for British mines. The destroyers were crammed with the troops of the German Third Mountain Division, under General Dietl.

  There were ten warships in all. As they slipped into Ofot Fjord, on the approach to Narvik, the German naval commander, Kommodore Friedrich Bonte, detached seven destroyers: three to deal with the Norwegian forts said to be defending the Ramnes Narrows, and four to occupy the township of Elvegaard in Herjangs Fjord. The remaining three, with Bonte leading in the Heidkamp, the Arnim and Thiele close behind, sailed on to Narvik.

  The harbour was crowded with the merchant ships of many nations, most of them ore carriers. At its entrance was the only obstacle Bonte’s destroyer force had encountered so far: the Norwegian coastal defence vessel Eidsvold. She was ancient, dating back to 1900, but heavily armed with two 8-inch and six 6-inch guns — still no match for the destroyers’ quick-firing 5-inch weapons and torpedoes.

  Bonte, confident that she would not resist, sent an emissary to her skipper, Commander Willoch, demanding a free passage into the harbour. Willoch refused. Minutes later he was dead, together with most of his crew, their ship blasted by the Heidkamp’s torpedoes.

  The explosions alerted the crew of the Eidsvold’s sister ship, the Norge. They tumbled to their stations in time to see the destroyer Arnim slipping alongside a jetty, her decks crowded with troops. The Norge managed to fire one salvo before she went to the bottom, shattered by torpedoes and shells. 50 of her crew struggled ashore.

  There was no further resistance. The small Norwegian Army garrison in Narvik quickly surrendered and the German Mountain Troops fanned out through the town. The population, startled by the explosions and gunfire, came out into the streets to find German troops walking by, carrying placards that read in Norwegian: “Be calm. Take things easy. We have come to help you against the English.” Bemused, uncomprehending, the people of Narvik went about their morning business.

  On board the Wilhelm Heidkamp, Kommodore Bonte redeployed his destroyers, bringing others into Narvik. Then he went to his bunk to snatch a few hours’ sleep. He had less than 24 hours left to live.

  Early in the afternoon there came an unexpected break in the weather, and the Luftwaffe seized its opportunity. For nearly three hours, units of the Home Fleet operating off Bergen were attacked almost without pause by 41 Heinkels and 47 Junkers 88s. The battleship HMS Rodney took a direct hit from a 1,000-pound bomb, but escaped serious damage; the cruisers Devonshire, Southampton and Glasgow were also hit and damaged, and the destroyer Gurkha was sunk west of Stavanger.

  While this action was in progress, a solitary Spitfire, its pilot also taking advantage of the unexpected break in the weather, droned high over Bergen harbour, its cameras clicking. Clusters of flak rose to challenge it from German warships, but they failed to reach the Spitfire’s altitude. His job done, Wing Commander Royston set course for the Orkney Islands, racing against time and the weather front that was building rapidly over the Norwegian Sea.

  Kommodore Bonte slept for the second time since his arrival in Narvik, together with most of his crew. The previous day had been hectic, and in one sense frustrating. After landing their troops, all ten German destroyers should have been sailing back to Germany at high speed by nightfall; but before they could do so they needed fuel, and only one of the expected tankers had turned up. Bonte had therefore decided to delay the voyage home until the tenth, while his destroyers took it in turns to take on fuel.

  Dawn was breaking; a white dawn, the snow that lay in drifts on the hillsides around the harbour blending with the lightening sky. The outlines of the hills, and of the ships in the harbour, were blurred by flurries of snow.

  Death for Kommodore Bonte, and most of his crew, came without warning, its emissary a torpedo that tore through the Heidkamp’s plating and exploded in her after magazine. A great blast of flame and smoke burst high into the air, the echoes of the explosion reverberating round the hills. Burning debris hissed down into the freezing water, all that remained of the 2,400-ton vessel.

  For Captain Warburton-Lee, RN, whose small force of five destroyers had been patrolling the entrance to Vestfjorden, it had been a long and lonely night. Somewhere up there in the darkness and the snow, beyond Ofot Fjord, were God knew how many enemy destroyers, and maybe submarines too. And he had been ordered into the unknown, to proceed to Narvik “… to make certain that no enemy troops land,” in the words of the Admiralty signal, or if they had already landed “to sink or capture enemy ships and land forces if you think you can recapture Narvik from number of enemy present”.

  Detaching two of his ships — the Hotspur and Hostile — to search for and destroy enemy shore batter
ies, Warburton-Lee smashed on through the night at 20 knots towards Narvik in HMS Hardy, together with HMS Hunter and HMS Havock. Reaching the harbour, the sight of so many ships made the officers on Hardy’s bridge gasp. Warburton-Lee quickly recovered his composure.

  “Well,” he ordered, “get on with it!”

  The torpedo that destroyed the Heidkamp was followed by six more, in quick succession. Two of them exploded on the flank of a second destroyer, the Anton Schmitt, and she went down in minutes. The other four struck merchant vessels, or missed their targets to explode against the rocky shore.

  Hardy swung round in a wide circle, her 4.7-inch guns blazing. The other two destroyers, Hunter and Havock, came crashing into the harbour in their turn, adding to the carnage. Their shells punched into the Hans Ludemann, setting her ablaze, and then they turned on the Diether von Roeder like terriers, reducing her to a burning, shattered wreck that only just managed to reach the shore, where her captain beached her. Only one German destroyer escaped, and even then she was disabled, her engines damaged by the explosions of the torpedoes which sank the Schmitt.

  At full speed, the three British destroyers sailed out of Narvik harbour. Rejoining the other two, they headed westwards down Ofot Fjord. It was 05.30 hours. Ahead of them, two more German destroyers, the Georg Thiele and Berndt von Arnim, alerted by frantic signals from Narvik, crept out of fogbound Ballangen Fjord into the British warships’ path. Warburton-Lee’s vessels were now being pursued by the three destroyers which Kommodore Bonte had stationed in Ofot Fjord, and were consequently trapped between two enemy forces. In the savage fight that ensued, HMS Hardy received the full weight of fire from the Thiele and Arnim. With her captain mortally wounded and her steering gear shattered, she grounded on some rocks 300 yards from shore. 170 men struggled to safety, taking Captain Warburton-Lee with them, strapped to a Carley Float. He died just as they dragged him from the water.