As day broke, the troops already embarked grew nervous and impatient to get under way. But gray-bearded Admiral Cadart coolly made an inspection round of the whole dock area to make sure that all the British rear guard troops were off. Finally the ships pulled out, loaded with 1,850 French troops, 2,354 British, and a few Norwegians—plus 38 German prisoners.
The return trip was a nightmare. The German air attacks were continuous. A German dive bomber succeeded in hitting the super-destroyer Bison (Captain Jean Bouan, the 11th Destroyer Division Commander). The Bison’s magazines exploded. From the Montcalm, flying Admiral Derrien’s flag, one of the Bison’s 138-mm. guns, with its crew, could be seen flying high in the air. The survivors were picked up by a British destroyer, which itself was sunk only two hours later. Later on, what remained of the Bison’s survivors barely missed being wrecked still a third time—an experience which the participants would never forget.
The other Norwegian landings were the primary concern of the British, since their main objective was Narvik, the northern terminal of the iron ore traffic to Germany. This port was still held by 2,000 German soldiers, reinforced by some 1,800 sailors from the crews of the destroyers sunk there by the British on the 10th and 13th of April, plus 600 or more soldiers brought in by plane—a total of some 4,400 men.
As an opening move, a powerful British surface and naval air force clamped a tight blockade on Ofot Fjord, leading Narvik. Three English battalions had already been landed outside the port, but though they had the assistance of some Norwegian troops, they had made no headway. The terrain inland was broken, rugged, desolate, and still covered with snow. To assist in the Narvik operation the British Command called in two French forces: one consisting of three battalions of “Blue Devils” (Alpine mountain troops), and the other of two battalions of the Foreign Legion and four of Polish depatriated troops—a total of 11,800 men, with 2,000 tons of light equipment. The heavy equipment was following in many cargo ships.
Notwithstanding frequent enemy air attacks, the landings were carried out under far better conditions than those at Namsos—the only ship casualty was one French super-destroyer slightly damaged. The difficulties were mainly material in origin, rather than human: wharves too short, with no unloading facilities; a shortage of charts and pilots; and the irritating loss of anchors and anchor chains in very deep water. The Alpine troops were landed on the last two days of April, the Foreign Legion and the Poles on the 9th and 10th of May.
On May 27, a grand combined attack of the British Naval Forces, commanded by Admiral of the Fleet Lord Cork and Orrery, and the French troops, commanded by General Marie Béthouart, drove the Germans out of Narvik with heavy loss. To the Norwegians was given the honor of being the first to enter the recaptured city. Only the two senior commanders knew, however, that for the past 24 hours they had carried in their pockets the order to blow up the port installations and to evacuate Norway.
As has been said earlier, the Norwegian operation was undertaken chiefly as a diversion—a flank movement permitting the utilization of naval forces not employed elsewhere—and the whole concept had been based on the supposed impregnability of the Maginot line. But 15 days before, the Germans had broken through this front and the sweep of their armored divisions threatened to encircle the whole left wing of the Allied armies. At the very hour when General Béthouart was making his entry into Narvik, almost 500,000 French and British soldiers stood compressed into the Dunkirk pocket.
Béthouart’s few thousand men would have made no difference at Dunkirk, even if they could have been transported there. However, their continued operation in Norway served no useful purpose, either. Furthermore, a declaration of war by Italy was imminent, and France had need of every man, gun, ship, and plane for the defense of the homeland.
The Allied troops at the Narvik bridgehead—24,000 men in all—were evacuated from northern Norway on June 8. Part of these French troops, in addition to those in Scotland who had not yet been transshipped to Norway, were still in Britain during the tragic days of the armistice.
Offhand, the whole Norwegian expedition would seem to have been a defeat for France and Britain. The objective of cutting Germany’s iron ore route was not realized. Instead, it was the Germans who, by capturing Norway, would for a long time deprive England of her share of the Swedish exports. And the tragedy of it all was that the results might have been reversed if the expedition had not been delayed for five fatal days by the bickering over Mr. Churchill’s pet scheme of sowing the Rhine with river mines.
Yet, there were a few bright entries on the opposite side of the ledger, too. The damages and losses suffered by the German Navy were far greater comparatively than those suffered by the Royal Navy—a fact which was to be enormously important to Britain in the future. And these German Navy losses77 at this particular time did not encourage it, in case there had been such a thought, to operate in the lower North Sea on the right flank of the German armies during those critical last days of the Battle of France.
Germany’s naval casualties were 3 cruisers, 10 destroyers, 4 submarines, 1 gunnery training ship, and 10 small ships lost; and the battle cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau damaged. British ship casualties were 1 aircraft carrier, 1 cruiser, 7 destroyers, 3 submarines, 1 sloop, 1 antiaircraft escort ship, and 14 trawlers lost, plus 1 Polish destroyer. French casualties were 2 super-destroyers (the Bison, lost under the circumstances already stated, and the Maillé-Brézé, destroyed at Greenock on April 30 by the explosion of one of its torpedoes). Despite Germany’s Air Force and submarines, not one single British or French troop transport was sunk.
One of the most revealing aspects of the Norwegian campaign was the complete degree of collaboration achieved between the British and French Navies. It was during this campaign that the British Admiralty, fully occupied in northern waters, proposed that the French Navy assume responsibility for the Mediterranean.88 Never in history had there been more cordial relations than those established in the battle area of the sea off Norway. Not merely was this collaboration in the technical field, but in the far more important field of human relations—the spirit of comraderie between the French officers and their brethren of the Royal Navy. Whether they sailed with the Home Fleet or on escort duty off the fjords of Norway, French and British ships, side by side, learned to sustain and to parry the fierce attacks of Germany’s formidable Air Force.
The proposal was presented by the British on April 16, and the French Admiralty immediately gave its agreement. But at a meeting of the Interallied Supreme Command on April 23, it was decided to maintain the status quo.
1 In 1920 the Black Sea Squadron of General Pierre de Wrangel’s anti-Bolshevik White Russians had taken refuge at Bizerte, where the ships had been interned. The 305-mm. guns had been taken from the old battleships of this fleet.
2 For entirely different strategic reasons the Germans were also preparing to occupy the Norwegian coast. (See Vice Admiral Friedrich Ruge’s history, Der Seekrieg—The German Navy’s Story, 1939-1945).
3 The Altmark, a German naval supply ship for the Graf Spee in the South Atlantic, had been sent back to Germany with some 300 prisoners taken from the prizes sunk by the raider. The British learned of this, found the Altmark hidden in a Norwegian fjord, and boarded her to rescue the prisoners despite the fact that she was in the territorial waters of Norway. As grounds, they claimed that the Altmark was violating the limited rights granted a belligerent in the territorial waters of a neutral, and that Norway was unable to protect her neutrality.
4 In 1914 a similar engagement had been entered into, but only after most careful study and full discussion by the Council of Ministers. (See G. Chastenet, La République Triomphante—“The Republic Triumphant.”)
5 Three minefields were planned: one at the entrance to the Vest Fjord, off Bodö; another at Statlandet (not laid because of bad weather);