The first Battle of Narvik

Just before dawn on 10 April 1940, in a thick snowstorm, five British destroyers of Captain Bernard Warburton-Lee’s 2nd Flotilla entered the harbour of Narvik and attacked the German warships that the day before had brought General Eduard Dietl’s troops to the town. In less than two hours of fighting in the harbour and on the waters of the Ofotfjord, two destroyers on each side were sunk or wrecked, several merchant ships went to the bottom, and both commanders were killed: the German Commodore Friedrich Bonte and Warburton-Lee himself. Some war chronologies place the battle under 11 April and state that British destroyers “and aircraft” surprised a stronger German force. British, German and Norwegian sources agree that the action was fought on 10 April, and solely between ships. Carrier aircraft played a part only three days later, in the second British attack on Narvik, and on 10 April British aircraft were operating far to the south, off Bergen. The rest of the description, however, is true: the attack came as a surprise, and the Germans had twice as many ships in the fjord as the attackers.

The ore port

Narvik, a small town on a fjord in northern Norway, lived on iron ore. The Ofoten Line railway brought ore from the mines at Kiruna in Sweden to its ice-free harbour, and from there ships carried it along the Norwegian coast to Germany. In winter, when the Gulf of Bothnia froze, this was the main route by which Swedish ore reached the Reich. That is why Narvik stood at the centre of the Allied plans, which since February 1940 had envisaged landing troops there and advancing by rail to the Swedish mines, and why the German directive on Operation Weserübung assigned to Narvik the most distant and most hazardous landing of the whole operation.

The task went to Group 1: ten modern destroyers under Commodore Friedrich Bonte, the Kriegsmarine’s Commander of Destroyers. On board were some 2,000 soldiers of Colonel Alois Windisch’s 139th Mountain Infantry Regiment of the 3rd Mountain Division, most of them Austrians from Carinthia and Styria, together with the divisional staff and General Dietl. The ships sailed from Wesermünde (today’s Bremerhaven) and as far as the entrance to the Vestfjord were covered by the battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. The British destroyers that had laid mines at the entrance to the Vestfjord on 8 April as part of Operation Wilfred had been called away that same day to join the battlecruiser Renown, and the way to Narvik lay open. On the morning of 9 April, when Bonte’s destroyers were already in the fjords, the Renown clashed on the open sea with the two German battleships, which after a brief exchange of fire drew away to the west.

The Germans in Narvik

In the grey dawn of 9 April, as the Wehrmacht invaded Norway, the German destroyers entered the Ofotfjord through snow and mist and split up. Three headed for a side arm, the Herjangsfjord, to seize the stores and barracks of a Norwegian regiment at Elvegårdsmoen near Bjerkvik; two others landed troops at the Ramnes narrows in search of coastal batteries which, as it turned out, did not exist at all. Off Narvik their way was barred by the old Norwegian coastal defence ship Eidsvold. Bonte sent an emissary aboard her, Lieutenant Commander Gerlach, who demanded that the ships be allowed through. The Eidsvold’s captain, Odd Isaachsen Willoch, after consulting his superior by radio, refused. As the boat carrying Gerlach pulled away, the destroyer Wilhelm Heidkamp fired torpedoes from a range of a few hundred metres. Hit, the Eidsvold blew up and sank within moments. 175 men were killed, Willoch among them. Six or eight sailors survived, depending on the source.

Her sister ship Norge, under Per Askim, lay in the harbour itself. She opened fire on the destroyer Bernd von Arnim, which was coming alongside the quay, but in the snowstorm her optical sights were useless and the shells missed. The German ship replied with salvoes of torpedoes. Hit, the Norge capsized and sank in less than a minute. 101 of her crew were killed and about 90 were rescued. Within a quarter of an hour Norway had lost both ships, with some 275 sailors killed.

On land there was hardly any resistance. The commander of the Narvik garrison, Colonel Konrad Sundlo, a member of Vidkun Quisling’s fascist party Nasjonal Samling, surrendered the town without a fight after brief talks with Dietl. The commander of the 6th Division, General Carl Gustav Fleischer, ordered his arrest, but it was too late. Only some 200–250 soldiers under Majors Sigurd Omdal and Sverre Spjeldnæs slipped out of the town eastwards along the tracks of the ore railway. By the end of that day Narvik, the harbour and the stores at Elvegårdsmoen, with thousands of Norwegian rifles, were in German hands. Dietl, who had sailed aboard the Wilhelm Heidkamp, set up his headquarters in the town.

The fuel trap

According to the plan the destroyers were to refuel on the evening of 9 April and head back to Germany before the British fleet reached Narvik. Only one of the two tankers, however, reached the harbour: the Jan Wellem, converted from a whaling factory ship, which arrived from the north – according to some sources from the German base on the Soviet coast of the Barents Sea. The other, the Kattegat, was intercepted on the evening of 9 April by the Norwegian fishery protection vessel Nordkapp and went to the bottom in the Glomfjord. The Jan Wellem had makeshift pumps and could refuel only two ships at a time, taking several hours over each. The departure was therefore put off until the following evening.

During the night of 9–10 April five destroyers lay in the harbour at Narvik, three in the Herjangsfjord and two in the bay by Ballangen. The Diether von Roeder kept watch at the entrance to the fjord, and German U-boats were on station in the Vestfjord. Towards morning the Roeder, believing her watch was over, went back into harbour. The entrance to the Ofotfjord was left unguarded.

Warburton-Lee’s decision

For a long time the British did not know what was happening at Narvik. In those days the Admiralty, headed by the First Lord, Winston Churchill, and the First Sea Lord, Admiral Dudley Pound, was issuing orders directly to ships at sea, bypassing the Commander-in-Chief of the Home Fleet, Admiral Charles Forbes, and the commander of the Battlecruiser Squadron, Vice Admiral William Whitworth. Around midday on 9 April Warburton-Lee, who commanded the 2nd Flotilla from the destroyer Hardy, was instructed to go to Narvik and sink or capture a German ship which, according to press reports, had landed a small force there. The Admiralty added that he might land a party if he judged that he could recapture the town.

In the afternoon the flotilla stopped at the pilot station at the entrance to the Vestfjord. The Norwegian pilots told the British that six ships larger than their destroyers and a submarine had entered Narvik, and that an attack would need twice their strength. Warburton-Lee signalled the Admiralty: Norwegians report Narvik held strongly by the Germans, six destroyers and one submarine there, channel possibly mined, intend attacking at dawn, high water. The Admiralty replied that he alone could judge whether to attack and that it would support whatever decision he took. It also warned him that the Norwegian coastal defence ships might be in German hands. Warburton-Lee decided to strike.

He had five G- and H-class destroyers: Hardy, Hunter, Havock, Hotspur and Hostile. Each was smaller and more lightly armed than the German destroyers, which carried 127 mm guns against the British 120 mm. During the night the flotilla passed through the Vestfjord and the Ofotfjord, slipping past the German U-boats unseen.

The dawn attack

At about half past four in the morning, with snow falling thickly, the Hardy, Hunter and Havock came out before the harbour entrance. The Hotspur and Hostile stayed behind to cover the withdrawal and to engage the coastal batteries should they open fire. The Germans were expecting no one. The first salvo of torpedoes from the Hardy struck the stern of the Wilhelm Heidkamp, Bonte’s flagship. Her after magazine blew up. 81 men were killed, among them Commodore Bonte. The ship’s captain, Lieutenant Commander Hans Erdmenger, made the wreck, its stern under water, fast to a Swedish ship, but the next day the Heidkamp capsized and sank. Dietl, who had gone ashore the previous day, survived.

The Hunter hit the Anton Schmitt in the engine room with a torpedo, and a second torpedo, from the Havock, broke her in two. More than 50 of her crew were killed. British shells damaged the Hermann Künne and Hans Lüdemann, which were refuelling alongside the Jan Wellem, and the Diether von Roeder, which lost propulsion and was reduced to an immobile battery. German torpedoes fired blind from the harbour passed beneath the British ships, because they had been set to the depth appropriate for large warships. In the second and third runs the Hotspur and Hostile joined the action, sending torpedoes into the ships crowded in the harbour. According to one tally eleven merchant ships were sunk: six German, two Swedish, two Norwegian and one British.

Warburton-Lee, convinced that he had smashed most of the six ships reported to him, and having no landing party aboard that could have occupied the town, turned for the mouth of the fjord. He did not know that five German destroyers had not yet even been touched.

The chase in the fjord

On hearing of the attack, the Wolfgang Zenker, Erich Giese and Erich Koellner came out of the Herjangsfjord under Commander Erich Bey, and the Georg Thiele and Bernd von Arnim from the direction of Ballangen. The British were caught in a pincer: three ships followed them from the east, while two barred their way to the west. The Thiele and Arnim could fire full broadsides, while the leading Hardy could bring only her forward guns to bear. Shells wrecked her bridge. Warburton-Lee was mortally wounded in the head, and every officer on the bridge was killed or wounded except the captain’s secretary, Paymaster Lieutenant Geoffrey Stanning, who, though wounded himself, ran the burning ship aground at Vidrek at the entrance to the Skjomen fjord. Warburton-Lee’s last signal to the flotilla read: “Continue to engage the enemy.”

The badly hit Hunter lost speed, and the Hotspur following her, whose steering gear had been damaged by a shell, rammed into her side. When the ships separated, the Hunter capsized and sank. The Hotspur, herself badly damaged and under fire from all the German ships, got out of the fight only because the Havock and Hostile turned back to help her and the Hostile laid a smokescreen. British fire seriously damaged the Georg Thiele. The Germans, running short of fuel and ammunition, did not give chase.

On the way out of the fjord the British came upon the German supply ship Rauenfels, which was carrying ammunition and heavy equipment for Dietl. The Havock opened fire on her, and the ship, abandoned by her crew, blew up. The U-boats U-25 and U-51 fired torpedoes at the departing destroyers, but faulty magnetic pistols failed, as they did throughout the Norwegian campaign.

Losses

The British lost the Hunter and the Hardy, whose wreck the tide later carried further into the Skjomen fjord, and the Hotspur was out of action for several months. According to the named casualty lists 19 men were killed on the Hardy, 17 or 18 on the Hotspur and more than a hundred on the Hunter – some 145 sailors in all, including those who died of wounds. Warburton-Lee died soon after being carried ashore. More than a hundred and forty survivors from the Hardy, many of them wounded, found shelter in the homes of Norwegians living around Ballangen. Several dozen survivors from the Hunter were pulled out of the icy water by the Germans. They later ended up in Sweden.

The Germans lost two destroyers, and three others were damaged, among them the Roeder, which never put to sea again. 81 men were killed on the Heidkamp, more than 50 on the Schmitt and 9 on the Roeder. The commander of the whole group was dead, and without the Rauenfels Dietl’s troops were left without the reserves of ammunition and the artillery they had been counting on.

Warburton-Lee was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross, Britain’s highest award for gallantry. Announced in June 1940, it was the first Victoria Cross of the war to be published in the London Gazette. The citation recalled that he had known of the enemy’s superiority and yet had led his flotilla up the fjord in a snowstorm and attacked three times. Bonte received a posthumous Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross.

Trapped in the fjord

After Bonte’s death Bey took command of the surviving ships. Grand Admiral Erich Raeder ordered him to break out of the fjord and return to Germany. On the evening of 10 April Bey sailed with the two serviceable ships, the Zenker and Giese, but in the Vestfjord he sighted the cruiser Penelope and British destroyers which the Admiralty had sent to close the exit, and he turned back. During the night of 11–12 April the Zenker and Koellner ran aground in the harbour and were damaged. Seven German destroyers, most of them damaged and with empty tanks, were trapped in the Ofotfjord. The Admiralty was preparing a second attack, this time with a battleship.

Significance

The first Battle of Narvik was the Royal Navy’s first clear success of the Norwegian campaign and the first blow to a plan that assumed the German warships would land their troops and get home in time. It cost the British two destroyers and the flotilla commander, but it bottled up Bonte’s whole group in the fjord. On 13 April Vice Admiral Whitworth’s force, with the battleship Warspite and nine destroyers, destroyed the remaining German ships. The Kriegsmarine, which in April 1940 had twenty destroyers, lost half of them at Narvik, a loss that still weighed on its plans in the summer, when Hitler was considering an invasion of Britain.

For Dietl the battle meant being cut off. His mountain troops, reinforced by some 2,600 sailors from the sunken ships armed with captured Norwegian weapons from Elvegårdsmoen, held out for two months in the mountains around Narvik against Norwegian, British, French and Polish troops, the last from the Independent Podhale Rifle Brigade. The Allies recaptured the town on 28 May, but in the face of defeat in France they evacuated northern Norway by 8 June, and on 10 June Norway capitulated. German propaganda made Dietl “the hero of Narvik”, while the British remembered Warburton-Lee’s attack as a model of bold initiative by a commander who, on learning of the enemy’s superiority, did not turn back.