201004 Narvik 1940 Supplement

Slaughter in the Fjords NAVY NEWS, NARVIK 70th ANNIVERSARY SUPPLEMENT APRIL 2010

Narvik 1940

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NAVY NEWS, NARVIK 70th ANNIVERSARY SUPPLEMENT APRIL 2010

A BLEAK FUNERAL ‘PIRATE METHODS’ SCANDINAVIAN POWDER KEG THE morning of Monday February 19 1940 was bitterly cold. A crisp layer of snow covered the grounds of the 140-year-old church in the picture-postcard village of Sogndal.

The wind was funneled up the Sogn valley, sandwiched between two fjords in south-west Norway, as the ship’s company of the Altmark stood to attention.

Three days earlier British sailors had stormed the tanker in nearby Jøssingfjord and freed nearly 300 prisoners.

To Fleet Street, the Altmark was a ‘hell ship’, her captain “a bullying shrimp forever bleating ‘Heil Hitler!’”

As seven of their shipmates were laid to rest on Norwegian soil, Kapitän Heinrich Dau addressed them. The goatee-bearded Dau was a rather stiff character, never particularly popular with his men.

This morning, however, he captured their mood perfectly.

“We believed we were safe from a British attack in a neutral harbour but we have learned the opposite all too well,” he said bitterly.

“But the German people will now quite rightly strive to ensure that British pirate methods are banished from the world once and for all.”

Dau’s words were measured, forthright. Not so those of Curt Bräuer. The German minister in Norway had made the 200-mile journey from Oslo less to address the Altmark’s crew than to address the world: in neutral Norway, British reporters jostled with their German counterparts, American newsmen, film crews, photographers. Curt Bräuer did not disappoint.

“These comrades of ours met their death at the hands of murderers,” he snarled.

He wasn’t the only angry German.

In his year-old Chancellery building in Berlin’s government quarter, Adolf Hitler tore a strip off his chief military adviser, Alfred Jodl.

“No resistance, no English losses,” he raged, ordering the general to accelerate plans for an operation codenamed Weserübung – the occupation of Norway and Denmark.

The fuse on the Scandinavian powder keg had been lit. Within four months, Adolf Hitler would command a domain stretching from the North Cape to the Pyrenees.

But in doing so, he would sacrifice his Navy. Half of it lies in the deep, icy waters of the fjords around one Norwegian town: Narvik.

DIE VALIANTLY ‘TOTAL GERMANY’ Erich Raeder tottered ashen faced out of Hitler’s study in his Chancellery in Berlin. The Commander-in-Chief of the German Navy had spent the summer of 1939 in the doghouse following a petty squabble with the Führer over the scandalous behaviour of the wife of his naval adjutant.

Neither Hitler nor Raeder had backed down. Not once as he finalised his plans for the invasion of Poland did Adolf Hitler seek the counsel of his most senior naval officer.

When it was sought, Raeder’s counsel was unequivocal. A deeply religious, conservative man, he knew better than any man in Germany that “war with England would mean Finis Germania!” And now there was war with England – Germans never referred to their mortal enemy as Grossbritannien, always England.

Shortly after mid-day on Sunday September 3 1939, listening stations picked up a signal broadcast en clair by the Royal Navy: TOTAL GERMANY. Repeat.

TOTAL GERMANY.

● ‘On the surface, everything was peaceful’... The Norwegian port of Narvik – dominated by a red-brick church – in the winter of 1939-40 and (right) a Nazi propaganda poster published in the wake of the ‘Altmark incident’ decrying ‘global pirate England’ Back in his office, Erich Raeder everything was peaceful, flying the already at sea, hunting the tanker: five destroyers and two cruisers. collected his thoughts. He possessed Union Jack or the Swastika.”

Barely an hour later, the force sighted five battleships, one heavy and six the Altmark.

Much as he covetously looked upon light cruisers, plus 22 destroyers.

Heinrich Dau sought shelter in The Royal Navy alone possessed 15 Norway and Narvik, Erich Raeder’s hopes remained just that – until a Jøssingfjord, 200 miles southwest of capital ships, more than half a dozen Oslo. It was no sanctuary. After dark aircraft carriers, and in excess of 60 treacherous Norwegian intervened. on February 16, British task force cruisers. His fleet, Raeder lamented, To this day in Norway the word is “can do no more than show that they synonymous with traitor: Quisling. flagship HMS Cossack entered the The Earl of Sandwich gave us a narrow waters with orders to board know how to die gallantly”. and seize the German tanker and free lunchtime snack, the Duke of Wellington gave us boots. And the prisoners – with or without the COVETOUS EYES Norwegians’ co-operation.

Vidkun Quisling gave us the ultimate The Norwegians did not definition of a traitor, a man who sold SWEDISH IRON ORE co-operate. Nor did Heinrich Dau. his soul to the devil.

Vidkun Quisling was a former First he gave orders for the boats THE TRAITOR’S ROLE army officer and defence minister to be swung out and Altmark to be scuttled, but subsequently had It wasn’t merely the size of their who had cast aside democracy to second thoughts and decided to try form the Norwegian fascist party, fleet which troubled Germany’s to break out of the fjord. Then he Nasjonal Samling – National Unity. senior naval officers, but her strategic tried to manoeuvre his tanker so he Mimicking Hitler, his followers position. Even when she had could drive Cossack on to the shore. called him Fører – leader. And in possessed a mighty fleet – the second He failed. Instead, a boarding party most mighty on the Seven Seas – a December 1939, Fører met Führer.

Quisling boasted 300,000 “steel helmets on their heads, pistols, generation before, her ships had been machine-pistols and carbines in their bottled up in their North Sea bases; followers – one in ten Norwegians hands” stormed the Altmark. the Royal Navy commanded the (the reality was nearer one in 50...)

For a few minutes there was “wild gateways to the Atlantic – the Strait – and claimed the country was ripe shooting”. Two German stewards for plucking by the British. It would of Dover or the Norwegian Sea. It had troubled the strategists of the he argued, be a disaster for his nation and a stoker fell down. A handful of Altmark’s crew tried to flee across Kaiser’s Navy, chief among them and for Germany. Adolf Hitler agreed the ice. Cossack’s searchlights fell one Wolfgang Wegener who realised – and ordered his military to study upon them, as did bullets. Some Germany had to “force open the gate the occupation of Quisling’s native Germans fell through holes in the ice, to the Atlantic”. He continued: “In the land. others made it to the shore.

Studie Nord – Study North – as struggle for survival between great As for their ship, she was swiftly in nations, a small state simply cannot it was uninspiringly codenamed, the hands of Cossack’s three-dozenstuttered along with few in the upper be allowed to neutralise the power of echelons of the German military strong boarding party. In the tanker’s a fleet built by years of hard work.” hold, the 299 merchantmen had heard machine convinced it would ever the crack of gunfire but had little idea That small state, Erich Raeder be carried out. An incident in a what was going on. It was a good ten Norwegian fjord late on February 16 determined in the autumn of 1939, minutes before the door was flung would be Norway. Raeder greedily changed their minds. open. eyed-up the Scandinavian nation. At “Are there any Englishmen down THE NAVY’S HERE a stroke, seizure of Norway would there?” a voice inquired. improve his fleet’s strategic position.

“Yes – we’re all English!” came ENTER THE COSSACK It would also safeguard one raw the response. material vital to the German military “Well, the Navy’s here!”

THE WORLD THRILLED machine, Swedish iron ore. That The prisoners cheered. By ore – more than four million tons in 1939 – was transported by rail then There was a palpable sense of relief midnight they were aboard the British destroyer and bound for Leith. shipped to the Reich via the port of on the bridge of the Altmark. For Within a day they would be free men, Narvik. more than 24 hours, the tanker had Narvik was a boom town. Just hugged the Norwegian coast from “the whole English-speaking world four decades before its inhabitants Trondheim, past Bergen, escorted by thrilled” by their rescue. “The Navy’s here” became a rallying cry (and numbered barely 600. In 1940, the patrol boats. town counted some 10,000 residents.

Since leaving Texas the previous even a popular song).

Iron ore had been the catalyst for August, Altmark’s crew had never RACE FOR NORWAY growth. The Swedish mines at set foot on land. They had seen only Kiruna, little more than 80 miles one ship in all that time – the Admiral away, needed an ice-free port to ship Graf Spee. In her hold were 299 DARING PLANS their ore. Sweden had none. Instead, British sailors, victims of the pocket the mine owners chose to create one. battleship’s guerre de course against WESERÜBUNG vs R4 They chose the ancient Norwegian merchant shipping – until she was fishing village of Narvik. snared off the River Plate.

In Berlin there was feigned Sitting on a promontory at the After her six-month odyssey, indignation at the breach of end of the 30-mile-long Ofotfjord, the Altmark was within touching Norwegian neutrality. Plans for the Narvik was blessed with a large distance of the Reich. “If we can occupation of the country switched and deep natural harbour and waters avoid the British Navy for just a few from contigency to reality overnight which were kept ice-free thanks to more hours, I think we will be safely and Studie Nord – now renamed the Gulf Stream. When the railway home,” her first officer Friedrich Weserübung, Weser Exercise – was to Kiruna and the imposing ore quay Paulsen observed. hurriedly completed. And if Norway opened in 1906, Narvik thrived.

He spoke too soon. Shortly could be seized, why not Denmark And now, the northern port was in after mid-day on February 16, too, to secure Germany’s northern the eye of the storm. “Steamers flying an RAF Hudson reconnaissance flank? Some trumped-up casus belli the flag of the belligerent nations aircraft spied the tanker, the name would be found. lay side-by-side,” wrote A L T M A R K – painted in brilliant By the first day of April 1940, Narvik’s mayor Theodor white on her stern – clearly visible. the German military machine was Broch. “On the surface A Royal Navy task force was ready. At 5.15am on April 9, German troops would set foot on Norwegian ● Lt Cdr Gerard Roope VC who ‘fought his ship to the end soil by sea and air; paratroopers against overwhelming odds, finally ramming the enemy would capture strategic points in with supreme coolness and skill’ (IWM A29585) southern Norway, those further north

● A shell from the Admiral Hipper land destroyer manoeuvres to ram the cruise would fall to soldiers ferried by the Kriegsmarine.

This was an operation for which Erich Raeder had lobbied. He knew the stakes. Weserübung was “one of the boldest operations in the history of modern naval warfare,” he recorded in his diary.

It was also as much about exorcising demons as occupying a country or securing iron ore.

“The operation goes against all the principles of naval warfare,” he continued. “The conduct of the war at sea rests in enemy hands because the British Fleet is far superior.”

The shackles had to be cast off.

“Germany’s conduct of the war at sea will never succeed if we do not make a conscious effort to break free from the psychological pressure of a much superior enemy.” Surprise was the key. And perhaps a little luck. In the first week of April 1940, Erich Raeder rolled the dice. He did so just in time.

London and Paris too had designs on Norway. They too realised the importance of the Scandinavian nation to the German war effort.

They had a good idea that Germany would invade. Berlin just needed a little push.

The push was Plan R4, the mining of the approaches to Narvik. The Germans would respond, not with diplomatic protests as after the Altmark affair, but with force. “The moment the Germans set foot on Norwegian soil,” the Chiefs-ofStaff in Whitehall determined, the Allies would dispatch a force to seize Narvik and other important ports along Norway’s west coast. On April 5, the War Cabinet gave R4 its lukewarm approval. The Royal Navy would mine Norwegian waters in three days’ time. By then the German Navy was already at sea.

Long after nightfall on April 6, ten destroyers headed out of Bremerhaven and into the Weser estuary. The tankers and transporters had already sailed ahead of the faster destroyers of Naval Group I, bound for Narvik, more than 1,100 miles away. Other ports in northwest Germany were emptying as task groups and U-boats made for Trondheim, Bergen, Kristiansand and Oslo.

Across the North Sea, the veteran battle-cruiser HMS Renown

was bound for the Lofoten Isles, shepherded by a quartet of destroyers and a secondary force of mine-layers and their escorts, determined to carry out Plan R4. As the groups ploughed east through heavy seas, the Admiralty flashed a signal: Recent reports suggest a German expedition is being prepared. Hitler is reported to have ordered unostentatious movement of one division and ten ships by night to land at Narvik.

The Admiralty was somewhat sceptical. It placed little value on the intelligence. Hitler was simply ratcheting up his war of nerves.

BOUND FOR NARVIK DESTROYERS NORTH ‘RAGING ATLANTIC WEATHER’ The reports were spot on. The Wilhelm Heidkamp, Anton Schmidt and Erich Koellner, Erich Giese, Hermann Künne, Diether von Röder, Georg Thiele, Hans Lüdemann, Bernd von Arnim, and Wolfgang Zenker were racing northwards, carrying the mountainmen of 3rd Gebirgs Division, most of whom had never seen the sea before. In glorious sunshine, the destroyers sped through the North Sea in Kiellinie – long lines of ships as if they were at Kiel Week. In the calm, the fast-moving destroyers left thick white wakes streaking the ocean, while their funnels belched black smoke into a clear sky. Below decks, the mountain infantryman sat or lay in their sturdy Kraxlhuber outdoor clothing. Every nook, every cranny, every flat was filled with luggage, tools, machineguns, chests of ammunition.

As Sunday April 7 progressed, the weather worsened. By nightfall, the German destroyers were being buffeted by the wind and waves. The night was pitch black, but the ships attempted to maintain their Kiellinie, the bridge teams struggling to follow the weak blue stern light of the ship in front.

By dawn on the eighth, the storm was raging. Breakers crashed over each ship, foaming, washing the deck, tearing at everything which stood in their way, before rushing through the railings on the leeward.

“Cases of life jackets, almost all

NAVY NEWS, NARVIK 70th ANNIVERSARY SUPPLEMENT APRIL 2010

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● All in the valley of death... German destroyers sail up Ofotfjord on April 9, as seen from the Erich Koellner and (right) the people of Narvik stare in disbelief at German mountain troops wandering around their town

THE FIRST CLASH GLOWWORM vs HIPPER ‘STAND BY TO RAM’

ds just short of HMS Glowworm as the er the railings, the ladders on the upper deck, a dinghy, and most of the Gebirgsjägers’ motorcycle sidecars went overboard,” recalled Korvettenkapitän Karl-Theodor Raeder of the Erich Giese. “For the mountain soldiers the weather posed a great physical and mental test.”

Occasionally, the soldiers left the messdecks and tried to grab some fresh air. “They hang over the railings, swearing,” wrote 36-yearold novelist and war correspondent Otto Mielke. “What little food they have had in the last few hours goes overboard.”

One Austrian non-commissioned officer was swept into the sea. He was fortunate. After six minutes, the crew of the Erich Giese fished him out of the water. Others were not so lucky. Aboard the Theodor Riedel, escorting the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper to Trondheim, junior officer Kapitänleutnant Peter ‘Ali’ Cremer watched a wave carry away a sailor on a gun platform. “One moment he was standing there, the next the sea had wrenched him down,” he wrote.

“Despite the storm I could hear his cries for help. He was wearing a life jacket, but little good did that do him – the destroyer slid past him in a flash.” ●♦ ●

Leading Seaman F S Mason was delighted to be in the relative shelter of the Lofoten Islands. HMS Hardy was one of the four Hs – Havock, Hunter and Hotspur completed the quartet – of the 2nd Destroyer Flotilla which was escorting four mine-layers about to sow their ‘seeds’ in the Vestfjord, the long approach to Ofotfjord and Narvik.

It took maybe an hour to offload the mines, then the destroyers tried to warn local fishermen of the dangers of the freshly-laid minefield.

Rough maps were handed out while the captain’s secretary on Hardy tried to converse with locals in Norwegian. Mason studied their faces as they nodded blankly, then took their boats straight across the minefield – fortunately missing every mine as they did so.

Her job done, Hardy returned to the open waters of the North Sea. The “raging Atlantic weather” made life in the 1,400-ton warship “most uncomfortable” as she struggled to rejoin Renown. After nightfall, she fell into line astern of the battlecruiser.

HMS Glowworm never did find Renown again. The destroyer had broken off from the Renown group during the seventh to search for a man overboard. The able seaman, a lifebuoy sentry, vanished into the grey wastes. Glowworm turned around and struggled to catch up with Renown through “some very heavy weather”, AB Duncan Blair recalled – “really terrible weather.

I’ve never experienced anything like it.” Glowworm’s whaler and motor launch had been carried away by the storm.

A little before 8am on the eighth, the klaxons sounded aboard Glowworm, A destroyer had been sighted.

Glowworm’s Commanding Officer, Lt Cdr Gerard Broadmead Roope, asked for her identity. The signal lamps flashed through the gloom of a squally North Sea morning: SWEDISH DESTROYER G Ø T E B O R G. Gerard Roope was unconvinced.

The ‘Gøteborg’ was some 130 miles north-west of Trondheim.

Roope hoisted the battle ensign and engaged. His shots fell short of the ‘Gøteborg’ – actually Hans Lüdemann – which turned and fled into the mist. Another destroyer appeared on the scene, Bernd von Arnim. The two ships traded ineffective blows before the German threw up a smokescreen. Roope gave chase. When Glowworm emerged from the smoke and squalls she found a “bloody great German ship” in front of her: Admiral Hipper.

On the bridge of the 14,000-ton Kapitän zur See Hellmuth Heye hesitated. There were two destroyers before him. Two German? Two British? One German? One British?

Glowworm provided the answer.

When she asked for Hipper’s identity, Heye brought his 20cm guns to bear.

He hit the British ship with his first salvo.

Stoker Bert Lowman was in the petty officers’ mess feeding shells to the gun crews when a round from the Hipper exploded, knocking him out.

“When I came to, I found that the back of my left hand was gone and I had shrapnel in my left arm and leg,” he recalled. The mess deck was covered in blood – “it looked like a butcher’s shop”.

Lowman’s ship was hit repeatedly.

The foremast and wireless antennae were carried away, the captain’s cabin wrecked. She struck back. A spread of five torpedoes were fired at the cruiser. All missed. She tried again, suffering fearful damage as she crossed Hipper’s bow to launch another salvo of torpedoes. All missed again.

Gerard Roope played his final card. “Stand by to ram,” he ordered.

Glowworm turned sharply and smashed into Hipper’s starboard. She struck amidships, tearing away about 100 feet of the German’s armourplating, wrecking the starboard torpedo tubes and puncturing two fresh water tanks. Her bow shattered, Glowworm pulled away, drawing withering fire from the Hipper until Heye ordered his guns to cease fire.

It was clear his foe was crippled.

Gerard Roope ordered his men to abandon ship. With typical British stoicism, the keen sportsman remarked to a senior rate: “I don’t think we’ll be playing cricket for a long time yet.” Legend has it that Roope shook the hands of his

shipmates in gratitude. Others say that his dog, which sat throughout the action between his master’s lap, was killed by shrapnel. Others still say the dog survived. We will never know, for Glowworm’s captain did not live.

Thirty of his men did, however.

Bert Harris reached the upper deck of the destroyer to find shipmates were already jumping over the side.

He also found the Hipper – “a huge ship with her swastika painted on her foremost deck” – before him. He crawled on hands and knees to grab a lifebelt from a locker. Despite his captain’s orders, Harris was reluctant to leave Glowworm behind and throw himself at the mercy of the North Sea – and the Germans. He comforted one stoker who had lost his leg.

Another locked himself in the galley out of fright. A third jumped over the side, only to be carried back onboard by a wave. He refused to jump again – the waters were too cold.

In the end, Glowworm made Harris’ decision for him. She rolled to starboard, forcing the sailor to scramble down the destroyer’s port side and into the water. After swimming away from the stricken vessel he let his lifebelt take the strain and bobbed up and down.

With shipmates still standing on the mangled hull, Glowworm’s boilers exploded and she plunged beneath the waves.

Hipper picked up what survivors there were. Gerard Roope was among them. He reached the side of the cruiser and hauled himself half-way up a rope until his strength failed him. He fell back into the water and drowned.

Gerard Roope would earn the posthumous VC for his verve that Monday – but not until 1945. The recommendation for that decoration for bravery would come from his former adversary, Hellmuth Heye.

PEACE WANES WARNING SIGNS IGNORED The mining of Vestfjord, the clash between Hipper and Glowworm, the sinking of a German trooper, Rio de Janeiro, in the Skagerrak by a Polish submarine later that morning – all signalled that an invasion of Norway was imminent. Yet in London and Oslo, Monday April 8 was a confused and confusing day. The Norwegians were more preoccupied with the Allied threat than the German one – although they still failed to order general mobilisation. Neither the head of the Navy, Commanding Admiral Henry Diesen who told one of his commanders “war is coming”, nor the Army’s Chief-ofStaff Rasmus Hatledal, who was convinced his land would become a battlefield, took decisive action. The latter retired to bed after a fruitless day trying to persuade politicians to mobilise. He was only to be woken if hostilities broke out.

In the Admiralty, intelligence officers tried to piece together the fragmentary reports from radio intercepts, sightings, RAF reconnaissance flights and agents’ reports. By dusk, it decided the Germans were bound for Narvik – and had to be stopped.

Too late. Renown and her escorts were heading south towards Glowworm’s last reported position.

In the North Sea storm – now at its height – there was no hope of reaching the approaches to Narvik; the destroyers were doing their best simply to stay afloat.

INTO NARVIK DIETL AND BONTE ‘WE’RE GOING TO FIGHT’ By 10pm on the eighth, the destroyers of Naval Group I were finally out of the storm and enjoying the comparative shelter offered by the Lofoten Islands. Aboard the flagship Wilhelm Heidkamp, Eduard Dietl gathered the leaders of his 3rd Gebirgs Division. Dietl was a veteran Nazi – he joined the Party in its earliest days – and as hard and unforgiving as the Bavarian landscape from which he came. The general had been unaffected by the ferocious seas. Not so his men. As Dietl issued orders to his commanders in the destroyer’s wardroom, platoon leader Hans Rohr lay on his stomach, a bucket at his side. His general spread out a detailed map of Narvik, detailing the plan of attack. “All the time there’s the mighty crack of thunder, the small destroyer creaks and moves from side-to-side,” wrote Rohr. “All this is accompanied by flurries of snow which sweep across the ships and intermittent fog which envelops the entire armada.” It was, the mountain infantryman observed, “unbelievable what the ships have to endure here – and what is demanded of the sailors.”

His briefing done, Dietl returned to the Heidkamp’s bridge and stood next to the group’s leader, Kommodore Friedrich Bonte. Until three days ago, the general had never seen the sea. He was moved by its power – and by how Bonte’s force had coped with the battering.

To Eduard Dietl, the occupation of Narvik was running entirely to plan.

“A masterpiece in every sense of the word,” he remarked to Bonte. The commodore dampened the general’s euphoria. “Don’t be too quick with your praise,” he warned Dietl. “There must be some Norwegian warships somewhere.”

There were. Two to be precise, guarding Narvik harbour. Shortly after 5am on April 9, Wilhelm Heidkamp encountered the first of them.

The coastal defence ships Eidsvold had been laid down the previous century by the world-renowned Armstrong-Whitworth yard on the Tyne. Despite her age, she was the most potent warship in the Norwegian arsenal.

The Heidkamp lowered her boat into the water and sent two officers, led by one of Bonte’s staff Heinrich Gerlach, to negotiate. “The German Armed Forces have taken over the military security of Norway in the face of English warships,” Gerlach explained aboard the Eidsvold.

“Germans come to Norway not as enemies rather as protection against a common foe.”

Eidsvold’s captain, Odd Willoch, was in no mood to negotiate. “I will shoot if you do not leave the harbour immediately,” he told the German emissaries bluntly.

Crestfalen, Gerlach and his comrade returned to their launch to cross Narvik bay. As they did, one of the men fired a red flare from his Very pistol while the Eidsvold manouevred into position.

“På plass ved kanonene. Nå skal vi slåss, gutter!” Willoch told his men.

“Man the guns. We’re going to fight, boys!”

Friedrich Bonte also reacted in a flash: “Full speed ahead with both engines!” The Heidkamp lurched forward, then brought her torpedo barrels to bear before the venerable Norwegian colossus could open fire.

It took the salvo just seconds to cover the 330 yards to their target. Three torpedoes struck the Eidsvold. One struck the ammunition hold, tearing the ship apart. She sank in just 15 seconds, taking all but six men with her.

With the ‘obstacle’ out of the way, the occupation of Narvik could begin.

Bernd von Arnim came alongside the mail pier in a driving snowstorm.

Georg Thiel anchored a few yards offshore. As they began to offload men and material, the crash of guns reverberated around the fjord. “What was that?” Dietl snapped.

That was the Eidsvold’s sister Norge, opening fire with her 21cm and 15cm guns. In the blizzard, not one of her shells hit the von Arnim, which responded with a clutch of torpedoes. Only the third salvo struck the Norge. She lasted barely any longer than her sister, capsizing in under a minute. Her propellers were still turning as she went under, condemning more than 100 men to a watery grave.

The destruction of the two coastal defence ships brought resistance on the water to an end. On land, the mountain infantryman faced no resistance – the occupation of Narvik caught civilians and soldiers by surprise.

The latter were still mustering in a school when they were surrounded

by Germans. Dietl was quickly driven to the school to meet the town’s commandant, Colonel Konrad Sundlo. The German was formal but polite, the Norwegian curt, his face red with anger. Dietl told him the guns of the German fleet were trained on Narvik and were prepared to open fire. “Resistance would only mean futile bloodshed.” Sundlo pleaded for time to negotiate. Dietl would give him none. “Surrender the town immediately!” he demanded.

Sundlo’s red face turned white. “I surrender the town,” he meekly responded.

Dietl’s men quickly occupied the rest of Narvik. The barracks at Elvegaardsmoen surrendered without a shot. The hospital was occupied. As the German troops set up machineguns and mortars around its grounds, a truck carrying the first Norwegian dead from the Eidsvold and Norge arrived. Hospital staff flashed their eyes angrily at the Germans in their midst.

As for the rest of Narvik’s residents, they wandered around their town in stunned disbelief. The swastika flew over the market square.

And the telegraph office. The town hall too. Signs began to appear: the liquor store must be closed; disloyal merchants will have their stores confiscated.

At 8.10am, Friedrich Bonte signalled his masters in Wilhelmshaven: “Narvik surrendered to the German Army commander.”

Bonte had no intention of staying in Narvik any longer than he needed to – one night, perhaps two – as he refuelled his ten destroyers for the journey back to Germany. It was a slow process. Four warships clustered around his tanker Jan Wellem, the rest patrolled the approaches to Narvik to fend off any attack, while three U-boats stood guard in the

● The conservative – and ambitious – Erich Raeder who warned that ‘war with England would mean Finis Germania!’ yet risked his fleet to seize Norway

fjords. They would sight any British force – and sink it.

The commodore did not know what his masters knew – that “powerful and superior British and French naval forces” were gathering in the North Sea. Within 24 hours, Bonte would be dead. Within 96, his flotilla would cease to exist.

BRITAIN RESPONDS THE FIVE Hs ‘INTEND ATTACKING AT DAWN’ Aboard HMS Hardy, the staff of the 2nd Destroyer Flotilla waited anxiously. Their commanding officer had retreated to his cabin after a council of war to determine his course of action. Few men understood destroyer actions better than 44-year-old Capt Bernard Armitage Warburton Warburton-Lee. A sailor for a quarter of a century, 2nd Destroyer Flotilla was his sixth command. His quiet and perhaps somewhat aloof nature belied the fact that he was a man of action. He opened his cabin door and told his staff to signal the Admiralty: “Intend attacking at dawn.”

Hardy’s sailors gathered in her forward messdeck where a blackboard had been set up, a sketch of the waters around Narvik marked in chalk. “Surprise was the keyword of success,” recalled torpedoman F A Mason. “We hoped to sneak close into the harbour at the very first light of day and blast away.”

By the small hours of April 10th, Warburton-Lee’s force – Hardy, Havock, Hunter, Hotspur, Hostile – had passed the first of Bonte’s traps, U25, and steamed into Ofotfjord.

By 2.30 he had evaded a second U-boat, U46, even though the waters were barely two miles wide. There was still one final sentry to avoid, the Dietrich von Roeder, patrolling the harbour entrance on a diagonal course. Warburton-Lee hugged the southern shore of the fjord. In the pre-dawn half-light and intermittent flurries of snow, German did not see Briton – and Briton did not see German.

Hardy’s crew enjoyed a final drink before action – tea laced with rum – before their ship ghosted into the harbour entrance. They found Narvik

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NAVY NEWS, NARVIK 70th ANNIVERSARY SUPPLEMENT APRIL 2010

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HMS Hunter Rauenfels

● Kommodore Friedrich Bonte, senior German naval officer at Narvik. He was killed instantly when a shell struck his flagship Wilhelm Heidkamp (pictured, right, sinking after her stern was blown off) in the opening minutes of the first battle for Narvik

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Continued from page iii asleep: a good twenty merchantmen at anchor in the roadstead – plus the unmistakeable sight of the masts of at least two German warships. “There they are!” a crewman on Hardy’s bridge breathlessly remarked. Her torpedo officer was equally taken aback. “There’s a torpedo target such as I’ve never seen in my life!” he gushed. Warburton-Lee’s response was typically restrained. “Well, get on with it then.” He did.

The first torpedo missed its target – Wilhelm Heidkamp – and took the bow off a merchantman. The second found its mark.

On the bridge of the Wilhelm Heidkamp, Korvettenkapitän Hans Erdmenger could hear the enemy, but in the driving snow he could see nothing.

The watch had sounded the alarm when they heard the thunder of cannon somewhere off the harbour entrance. Shells suddenly crashed into a boat nearby. Seconds later the destroyer was rocked by two explosions. The first was a hammer blow, the second cataclysmic as the aft

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magazine detonated. Her two 12.7cm guns were tossed into the night by the blast. One crashed into the boiler room, the other destroyed the port side of the bridge. At the same time a British shell smashed into the signal shack, adding to the devastation on the bridge. “The bridge looked like a desert,” wrote Erdmenger. “Ruins, bent pieces of iron, holes caused by shell splinters.” Friedrich Bonte was dead, killed instantly; he still wore the edelweiss – the emblem of the German mountain infantry – presented to him by Eduard Dietl.

Most of Bonte’s staff were dead too, and the flagship was dying. Her stern simply ceased to exist. The harbour waters lapped against the aft funnel, while black smoke clouds enveloped the destroyer.

After Hardy came Hunter, which fired as many as eight torpedoes into the harbour. They did for the Anton Schmitt, whose crew had been woken by the explosion on the Heidkamp – all except their commanding officer.

Friedrich Bohme was in a deep sleep, his first in 48 hours. Not the sound

of shell fire nor the crippling of the Heidkamp could rouse him. By the time he awoke, he no longer had a command.

The first shell crashed into the bow, followed seconds later by an almighty explosion which shook the entire ship as a British torpedo destroyed the boiler room. The blast jammed the door of Bohme’s cabin.

When he finally freed it, he ran aft to inspect the damage. A second torpedo struck the Anton Schmitt, tearing her other boiler room apart.

The blast threw Friedrich Bohme overboard. As he bobbed in the water he watched his ship break into two. The bow capsized, the stern protruded from the harbour waters.

It was half an hour before the 40-year-old Korvettenkapitän struggled ashore on the nearby railway pier. Eighty-three of his shipmates never did, killed by the explosions or drowned in Narvik harbour.

The second torpedo which crippled the Schmitt came from the tubes of HMS Havock – one of a trio of ‘tin fish’ which all hit shipping in

the harbour. As she turned to leave the bay after her run, the Germans belatedly responded. Their gunnery was ineffective. But not the Havock’s, commanded by the aptly-named Lt Cdr Courage. Her guns crippled the Hans Lüdemann. ●♦ ●

And so ended the first round of the first battle of Narvik. There was little pause before Warburton-Lee turned his ships about for a second run.

Three of the German destroyers in harbour were still capable of offering a fight, none more so than the Diether von Roeder, which fired a spread of torpedoes at the incoming British.

All eight raced towards the harbour mouth. All eight were evaded. The British response was devastating.

Shells and torpedoes turned the von Roeder into a blazing hulk from bow to stern.

Again Warburton-Lee regrouped his ships for a third run. The guns of the Hans Lüdemann and Hermann Künne were still firing. On the crippled flagship Wilhelm Heidkamp, Hans Erdmenger observed the muzzle flashes of the British ships. The crash

of guns – British, German, naval turret or machine-gun – reverberated constantly around the sides of the fjord. A thick layer of oil covered the waters of the harbour as German sailors struggled to swim ashore.

Erdmenger could do nothing to influence the battle. His port guns faced in the wrong direction and could not be brought to bear against the foe. He watched helplessly as the wake of a torpedo lanced through the harbour; it passed ahead of the Wilhelm Heidkamp and exploded against the pier.

What Hans Engmenger could do was salvage any working equipment and destroy all secret equipment. Code books and confidential documents were stuffed into bags and tossed to the bottom of the fjord. Ammunition and a handful of anti-aircraft guns were carried ashore. The destroyer’s crew found temporary quarters in a school. They would not return to sea for two months.

THE HUN RESPOND HUNTER, HARDY LOST ‘KEEP ON ENGAGING THE ENEMY’ As he turned away following his third run, Warburton-Lee sighted three enemy ships bearing down on him from the north, out of Herjangsfjord.

The attack on Narvik had woken the sleeping giants – Wolfgang Zenker, Erich Koellner and Erich Giese.

Bernard Warburton-Lee had pushed his luck sufficiently this Wednesday morning. He turned to a shipmate on the bridge: “This is our moment to get out.”

Fully fuelled, the Georg Thiele and Bernd von Arnim had spent the

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The First Battle of Narvik, 0430-0645 Hours, April 10 1940 night of April 9-10 sheltering near Ballangen, 15 miles west of Narvik.

With hell raging in the port, they received orders to make haste for Germany. But as they sailed into Ofotfjord, they sighted the five British destroyers racing west. They engaged. It was now five against five.

What followed was a confused and confusing action, lost in a swirl of smoke, snow squalls, clouds of cordite. Hardy, in the vanguard, was hit at least twice, one shell killing or incapacitating everyone on her bridge. Her gunners fought back, struggling to keep their footing in the snow on deck. The destroyer heeled out of line with the attention of two German destroyers focused on her.

Only momentum carried her forward now – there was no steam from Hardy’s wrecked boilers. She came

to rest on rocks at Vidrek, about nine miles from Narvik.

Suffering terrible head wounds, Bernard Warburton-Lee briefly rallied and stood up, pointing to the shore. “Swim lads, swim!” he urged as his comrades carefully carried him off his flagship and on to a raft, but he died before he reached dry land. His battle cry still flew from Hardy’s halyards: Keep on engaging the enemy.

Warburton-Lee’s men had perhaps 100 yards to swim, then another 200 to wade before reaching safety.

“It was so cold that a moment after we got into the water, there was no feeling in our hands or feet,” one survivor recalled. “And all the time we were under fire. German shells were dropping around us.”

AB Stanley Robinson found himself “swimming for my life”. He reached

● Survivors from HMS Hunter are fished out of Ofotfjord by the Erich Koellner

the shore and lay there, exhausted, with fellow survivors. “A big Norwegian civilian picked me up and carried me to his house,” he recalled.

He remained there until German troops began scouring the area. There followed a 15-mile trek through the snow “with virtually no clothes on” to the small mining community of Ballangen. By day, the sailors hid in the phosphate mines; by night, they emerged for sustenance – the local populace provided bread, milk and fish.

Around 80 Hardy survivors took shelter in the home of a Norwegian housewife, Mrs Christiansen, and her daughter. LS F A Mason struggled ashore minus his boots and walked into the Christiansen’s home. “The house was crammed full of Hardy survivors in all sorts of stages of undress being thawed out before a

great roaring fire.” The mistress of the house handed out cups of hot coffee.

When the battle moved on, Hardy’s torpedo officer, Lt Heppel, returned to the blazing wreck of the destroyer. The steel chests in the captain’s cabin, containing confidential papers, were blown up before Heppel found Hardy’s badlywounded navigator still aboard. He carried him ashore. ●♦ ●

Out in Ofotfjord, the new leader HMS Havock was trying to lead the rest of the flotilla to safety. The two antagonists – two German, four British destroyers – steamed westwards parallel at full speed.

Havock ran down the British line to draw the enemy fire and find out what happened to Hardy, leaving Hunter to lead the line. The decision

sealed Hunter’s fate. She suffered a succession of hits. Hotspur was hit. So too the Georg Thiele took hits to her boiler, her fire control room and her fire-fighting system.

But the Thiele could still fight: she focused her secondary armament on the Hunter, then sent a torpedo into her side. The coup de grâce was delivered by her own side, however.

In the smoke of battle, the damaged Hotspur collided with the Hunter.

When she finally pulled away again, Hunter rolled to starboard. As she heeled over her siren shrieked above the noise of battle, the death rattle of more than 100 men – perhaps half of them stokers. They were trapped below when escape hatches buckled and jammed as a result of the battering the ship suffered.

Around 45 Hunters were rescued from the fjord by the Germans.

● Capt Bernard Armitage Warburton Warburton-Lee, Commander 2nd Destroyer Flotilla. A man of action, he was fatally wounded by a German shell which hit the bridge of his flagship, HMS Hardy “We’ve picked up 16 men from the Hunter,” Erich Koellner’s executive officer Reitsch – brother of legendary German aviatrix Hanna Reitsch – told his captain, Alfred SchulzeHeinrichs. “Some of them have pretty much had it.”

The Thiele and von Arnim now focused their attention on the battered Hotspur. Her surviving sisters, Hostile and Havock, had escaped the German clutches. Now they turned about and concentrated their fire on the two enemy destroyers.

Their actions saved the Hotspur.

Georg Thiele was badly damaged.

Fires raged, the water mains failed, the ammunition lockers were threatened. The Germans broke off the battle, the battered remnants of 2nd Destroyer Flotilla sped west for  Continued on page vi

● The upturned wreck of HMS Hardy in Ofotfjord

vi NAVY NAVYNEWS, NEWS, JANUARY NARVIK 70th 2010 ANNIVERSARY SUPPLEMENT APRIL 2010

● (Above) The capsized remains of the Bernd von Arnim, scuttled after expending her ammunition at the head of Rombaksfjord ● ‘A ship graveyard with wreckage wherever one looked’...

(Left) The hulks of sunken merchant ships and German destroyers in Narvik harbour ● (Right) Her bow torn off by a torpedo hit from the Georg Thiele, the battered HMS Eskimo is inspected after the battle

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Continued from page v open water. As they did, they came across the steamer Rauenfels making her belated way to Narvik with supplies for the mountain troops and destroyers – shells, field guns, flak.

The transporter was driven aground, then destroyed by the British guns.

“The German ship literally erupted and a column of flame and debris rose to over 3,000 feet,” recalled Havock’s Lt Cdr Courage. So high was the cloud of smoke and ash that it towered above the mountains and could be seen by the Hardy’s survivors.

It was the last act of the first battle of Narvik. ●♦ ●

“When the sun finally breaks through the swaths of fog this morning, it casts light on a scene of destruction,” German war correspondent Otto Mielke wrote. Only two of the ten destroyers of Naval Group I had not been hit. Wilhelm Heidkamp and Anton Schmitt were sinking, Diether von Roeder was a floating wreck, Bernd von Arnim and Georg Thiele needed extensive repairs, the rest of the now-dead Bonte’s force required lesser attention.

The battle in the confined waters of Narvik harbour had turned it into what the Germans called the Schiffsfriedhof – ship’s cemetery. “A large number of freighters lying by the quay have been hit by torpedoes or have been riddled with English shells,” Mielke noted. “They have sunk so that only the funnels and tips of masts stick out of the water, or lie burning at their berths. Thick black smoke rises over them and rolls gently across the harbour basin.”

In Narvik, there were so many German dead piled up in the small hospital, staff could not cope.

Mayor Theodor Broch was summoned to the Royal Hotel by Eduard Dietl. On his way, Broch noticed yet more posters appearing, hurriedly pasted up by the town’s new Nazi overlords: the Germans were here for Norway’s protection, any resistance would be broken, the perpetrators shot as traitors. In the hotel, Broch begged the general for permission to evacuate the town.

Dietl refused. “The British have already sustained one defeat,” he snapped. “It is not likely they will return for another.”

Eduard Dietl was wrong – on both counts.

STAY OF EXECUTION HUN SHIPS TRAPPED WARSPITE ARRIVES For matelot and Matrose, there was now a brief respite in the struggle for the fjords. The Germans attempted to repair battle damage while their new commander, the chubby-faced Erich Bey, contemplated his position. Bey’s performance on the tenth had been underwhelming. The three ships he led out of Herjangsfjord – Wolfgang Zenker, Erich Koellner and Erich Giese – could have tipped the battle in the Kriegsmarine’s favour, or at the very least evened the ‘score’.

They did not – but they did expend half their ammunition and were all out of fuel.

Wilhelmshaven demanded Bey’s battleworthy destroyers return immediately. That night, the Zenker and Giese headed down Ofotfjord.

The weather, which had helped the British sneak up on Narvik now ensured the two German destroyers were sighted. Bey ran into one cruiser, HMS Penelope, and two destroyers. He immediately turned about and scurried back for Narvik.

Despite more urging from Germany, Erich Bey refused to attempt break out – even when the weather closed in. His lack of dash condemned his flotilla to death.

In the small hours of Saturday April 13, the flag of William ‘Jock’ Whitworth was hoisted aboard His Majesty’s Ship Warspite some 100 miles to the west of Narvik. The vice-admiral’s mission was singular – “destruction of German warships, merchant ships and defences in Narvik area” – his means overwhelming.

Nine destroyers mustered around the dreadnought, veteran of Jutland.

HMS Hood may have been mighty, but Warspite was Britain’s greatest battleship. No single ship would acquire more battle honours than the eighth ship to bear a name which dated back to the days of the Virgin Queen.

In the spring of 1940, just two had been added to her honours board: Jutland 1916, Atlantic 1939. By the day’s end, Narvik 1940 would join them.

Through scattered snowstorms, ‘mother hen’ Warspite charged up Vestfjord at 22kts, protected by her ‘chicks’. Whitworth spurred his destroyers on. “I am sure that any resistance on the part of the enemy will be dealt with in the most resolute and determined manner,” he signalled from his flagship. “I wish you all every success.”

Perhaps it was signaller Donald Auffret who flashed Whitworth’s message from Warspite’s bridge. To the young sailor the narrow confines of the fjord, its sides “all grey with snow”, looked “a very, very grim place”.

Grim or not, the weather did not prevent Warspite from sending her seaplane aloft. Shortly before midday, and some 30 miles from Narvik, her Swordfish was catapulted into the sky over the entrance to Ofotfjord.

Pilot PO ‘Ben’ Rice steered the redoubtable aircraft east at 85kts. He could fly no higher than 1,000ft thanks to the low

cloud, but that offered the senior rating and his two colleagues, observer Lt Cdr ‘Bruno’ Brown and telegraphist LA Maurice Pacey, as good a view of the battle as any men this Saturday.

Within ten minutes, the Swordfish had spied Bey’s nightwatchman, Hermann Künne, patrolling in the middle of the fjord, shortly followed by the Erich Koellner further east.

She opened fire on the biplane, while the destroyers in Narvik harbour gathered steam for the impending battle.

BATTLE BEGINS EXCITEMENT AND FEAR U-BOAT SUNK Aboard Warspite, Royal Marine Duff Cooper was filled with “a combination of excitement and not a little fear” as the men closed up in the turrets.

“The sweet, sickly smell of cordite permeated the turret as the silk bags of explosive were rammed behind the huge 15in shell,” he recalled.

“The breeches closed, we stood – and waited.”

Above, Rice scoured the inlets of Ofotfjord, turning up Herjangsfjord around 1220. It took three minutes to hug the northern shore of the bay and there, right at the tip of the fjord, was the unmistakable outline of a submarine, on the surface, anchored a few yards from a jetty. It was Rice, not the aircraft’s commander Lt Cdr Brown, who was determined to “have a go” at the U-boat. Which he did. From 300ft, he dropped two 100lb bombs while Pacey traded bullets with the German submarine: the latter from its 37mm flak, the former from his machine-gun. It was the bombs which did for the boat, however. One hit its bow, the other struck at the base of the conning tower.

U64, which had left Wilhelmshaven just a week before, sank by her bow in under a minute. The waters were sufficiently shallow that her stern stuck out. All but eight of her 46 crew scrambled to safety.

The Swordfish had yet more to offer.

The Erich Koellner – unseaworthy after accidently running aground in the fjords – lay in wait in a cove near Djupvik, her guns and torpedo tubes directed into the fjord. She was sighted by ‘Bruno’ Brown, reported, and the danger was averted.

As for Bey’s other guardship, Hermann Künne, she was scurrying east down the fjord laying a smokescreen over the water while her comrades emerged from Narvik harbour to join her.

That they did. The Künne, Wolfgang Zenker and Hans Lüdemann zig-zagged furiously across Ofotfjord, posing a tricky target for Whitworth’s advancing force.

For the first ten or so minutes, this was a destroyer’s battle, but one minute to 1pm, the 15in guns of the Warspite entered the fray. In the confined waters of the fjord, the morale effect alone was awesome.

“The cumulative effect of the roar of Warspite’s 15in guns reverberating down and around the high mountains

● The lacklustre Erich Bey to whom command of the remaining destroyers fell after Friedrich Bonte was killed

of the fjord, the bursts and splashes of these great shells must have been terrifying,” the vice-admiral wrote.

And it was. The crippled Erich Koellner was the first to feel the force of the battleship’s guns. The German destroyer had already been battered by four British warships before the dreadnought trained her turrets on her.

“Imagine, if you can, four 15in shells, each weighing a ton, packed with high explosive, hitting a thinskinned destroyer,” recalled AB H Banks on Warspite. And we can only imagine, for none of the Koellner’s crew has left an account of the battering she received.

Donald Auffret watched half a dozen 15in shells crash into the illstarred destroyer simultaneously.

“She was literally lifted out of the water, up on to the beach, and then slid down again,” he recalled.

Some of the Koellner’s crew did survive. They scrambled up the fjord side, but without the proper mountaineering kit, most struggled.

Some sank up to their arms in the snow, others tore their fingers and jackets to shreds on the rocky outcrops.

Most abandoned their attempts to escape the British guns and simply dug into the snow, awaiting the end – or awaiting the silence of the guns.

THE FIGHT RAGES SUICIDE MISSION ‘A MESS FROM START TO FINISH’ There were now five German destroyers in battle. Bernd von Arnim and Georg Thiele had belatedly raised steam to join battle. In all there were more than a dozen men o’war in Ofotfjord, their guns belching fire and steel, their torpedo tubes occasionally hurling their weapons into the water. Their quarries took evasive action, maneouvring sharply despite the restricted waters. It went on like this for a good half hour. In the midst of all this chaos, ten Swordfish from carrier HMS Furious swept down and threw their 250lb bombs at the German destroyers from less than 1,000ft. They hit none.

Indeed, for all the bluster, it was all huff and puff. Apart from the Koellner, there was no significant damage. “The whole thing was a mess from start to finish,” HMS Foxhound’s CO Lt Cdr Peters drily observed.

Mess though it was – and war invariably is – it was a mess increasingly in the Royal Navy’s favour. With ammunition supplies running low, Erich Bey ordered his ships to head for their last refuge, the long, thin Rombaksfjord. It was a Himmelfahrtskommando – suicide mission. There was no escape.

In the smoke of battle, not all his flotilla received the order. The Hermann Künne headed alone up Herjangsfjord. There was no fight left in the destroyer – literally. She had even fired her star shells. Her captain, Friedrich Kothe, was not a ‘death and glory’ leader. He chose to beach his ship and scuttle her.

Which perhaps he did. For as the seacocks were opened and scuttling charges fired, the Hermann Künne was rocked by an explosion. She died, possibly by her own hand, or possibly by a torpedo from HMS Eskimo.

THE DEATH RIDE COSSACK MAULED In Narvik harbour, Erich Giese – dogged by engine problems – was finally under way. It was too late to join the remainder of the flotilla making for Rombaksfjord. She would face the entire British force alone. Her captain, Karl Smidt, was no death and glory leader either, but he understood his bitter duty.

Smidt had only enough ammunition for a ten-minute fight. He could have scuttled his destroyer in harbour and put his men ashore. Karl Smidt chose to fight, as Gerard Roope had chosen to fight, in the face of overwhelming odds, determined “to inflict as much damage on the enemy as possible”.

He knew his ship would not survive the battle.

In fact, Erich Giese struggled to enter battle. Barely had she cast off than she broke down, stuck in the harbour entrance for 13 minutes.

Despite being at the mercy of the British guns and torpedoes, she fought valiantly – but to no avail.

Her torpedoes scored no hits, while the Royal Navy response – a cluster of torpedoes from Bedouin and Punjabi raced past the Giese and smashed into the quay, rocking the crippled Diether von Roeder, berthed alongside.

The two German vessels directed their ire – and their fire – at the Punjabi, which was hit repeatedly.

Finally it became too much for the British destroyer which signalled her flagship forlornly: “Am damned sorry, I have to come out of it.”

Punjabi had done her duty, for her foe was dying. “Wounded and dying were lying everywhere” on the Erich Giese. “Firing had ceased – all guns were out of action or short of ammunition.” Smidt ordered his men to abandon ship. They leapt into the fjord where – according to official British reports – “many succumbed to the cold”, while – according to German reports – “the enemy opened machine-gun fire upon the survivors swimming in the water”. There is, at least, no dispute about the fate of some of her crew who made it to shore... “A shell from HMS Warspite struck the face of the rocky cliff, bringing down an avalanche of rock,” the official Admiralty account records.

In harbour, there was still the von Roeder to despatch – and she fought as well as any German ship that Saturday, despite being unable to move. In the space of two minutes, she sent seven shells into HMS Cossack – the Altmark’s nemesis – sending the British destroyer out of control and causing her to run aground.

And now too Diether von Roeder bowed out of the fight. Her ammunition expended, her crew set the scuttling charges and ran ashore.

The destroyer exploded and settled in the shallow water by the jetty just as a boarding party from HMS Foxhound prepared to leap onboard.

The drama of the Second Battle of Narvik was hurtling towards its dénouement. By 2pm, the four surviving German destroyers – Hans Lüdemann, Wolfgang Zenker, Bernd von Arnim and Georg Thiele – were steaming into Rombaksfjord from whence there would be no return.

Only the Thiele and Lüdemann still had fight left in them; their sisters

had used up all their ammunition and made for the end of the 14-mile fjord where they were run aground.

The Georg Thiele covered the flight, throwing smoke across the fjord’s mouth before snaking her way up the waterway, through the Straumen narrows. The Royal Navy pursued. Not Warspite – these waters were too treacherous for the battleship – but five destroyers. HMS Eskimo led the charge, knowing – thanks to the sterling service of Warspite’s Swordfish – the Germans were lying in wait. Her captain, Cdr St John Mickelthwait acknowledged that he was “running a certain amount of risk” entering the beast’s lair. It was a risk he readily accepted.

As she passed through the narrows, Hans Lüdemann sent her four remaining torpedoes racing down the fjord and opened fire simultaneously.

The torpedoes missed – by inches thanks to some particularly deft manoeuvring from Eskimo. In avoiding Lüdemann’s ‘fish’, Mickelthwait presented the Georg Thiele with an unmissable target. Her torpedo officer, Oberleutnant zur See Sommer, aimed and fired his ship’s very last torpedo.

Sommer could not have fired a truer shot. The torpedo struck Eskimo’s forecastle beneath No.1 turret. The devastation was tremendous. According to one account “the explosion carried away the bows of the ship and the forward medical station disappeared with its staff.” The destroyer’s bow hung vertically in the water momentarily before breaking off and disappearing into the fjord. Fifteen men died instantly, two more succumbed to their wounds.

And yet Eskimo continued the fight. Her No.2 turret continued firing “as if nothing had happened,” one admiring eyewitness recalled.

HMS Hero sailed past the mauled ship. Her sailors cheered the brave men of Eskimo.

Aboard the Georg Thiele there was a momentary double celebration.

They had hit the Cossack and avenged the Altmark. They hadn’t.

The British ship sank. She didn’t. She was towed to safety, subsequently repaired, and fought with distinction to the war’s end.

The war’s end was nigh for the Thiele as the fire of every British ship was directed at her.

“Our gunfire had become irregular and weak, consisting largely of single shells fired at random,” her captain Fregattenkapitän Max-Eckart Wolff wrote.

“With the gunnery officer lying momentarily stunned on the deck, the fire-signaller ordered rapid fire on his own initiative. When nothing happened, the gunnery officer called the bridge and reported: ‘Am receiving no more ammunition!’”

Wolff ordered full ahead and ran his ship aground, smashing into the rocks which rose steeply out of the water. Some of his men jumped into the water, others jumped ashore from the forecastle. The captain destroyed confidential papers and equipment, tossing them into the fjord, then left the Georg Thiele as the last man.

“Our ship was now burning brightly forward and aft,” he recalled.

“Later she capsized, the stern broken off at the forward funnel, and sank after heavy explosions.”

Despite losing their shoes and coats coming ashore, many of Wolff’s ship’s company scrambled up the fjord side and reached the ore

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The sacrifice of the Georg Thiele – 16 dead and 28 wounded – was not in vain. For while the ship was the focus of the Royal Navy’s attention, her three comrades were run aground at the fjord head, Rombaksbotn, where demolition teams placed charges.

The Wolfgang Zenker heeled to starboard and was half-submerged – but only just, and just in time. She stubbornly refused to die, despite the best efforts of her scuttling party, led by Erich Bey. It took three depth charges beneath her stern to finally send the Zenker on her way. As Bey and three comrades left the wreck in a cutter, British shells began to crash down.

The Bernd von Arnim died rather more willingly by her own hand. She rolled over, her upturned bow rising forlornly from the water.

Not so the Hans Lüdemann.

Her scuttling charges either failed to detonate properly or had been misplaced, for she did not sink.

Boarding parties from HMS Hero and Icarus tentatively went aboard.

They found the ashes of confidential paper on the bridge, the headless bodies of two radio operators in the wireless office, fires raging aft, and water filling the engine room. The White Ensign was hoisted, a fine haul of Nazi souvenirs collected, and the boarders withdrew. Briefly, the two British destroyers pondered salvaging their prize, but Admiral Whitworth had other ideas and ordered the ship destroyed. Hero obliged with one well-placed torpedo.

A SHIP GRAVEYARD THE LAST ACT OF BATTLE A MONSTER’S PLAYGROUND After an eight-hour climb, two German sailors from the Erich Koellner reached the 4,000ft peak of Fagnernesfjeld, towering over the fjord. They were drenched in sweat but were soon chilled by the icy wind driving sleet against the mountain top.

By the time they reached the summit night had fallen and the guns were silent. So too the fjords. But Narvik was aflame in several places, and the wrecks of at least three ships were still on fire. The acrid smoke carried the smell of burning flesh and paint across the fjord.

Indeed, the harbour was “a ship graveyard with wreckage wherever one looked”, mayor Theodor Broch recalled. Explosions had tossed parts of ship ashore amid the wreckage of the pier and the new refrigeration plant, destroyed by the two days of battle.

And then there were the remnants of Friedrich Bonte’s destroyer force.

“It was the strangest sight I had ever witnessed,” wrote Broch. “I felt as though I were walking around the playground of a huge monster who had suddenly tired of his toys. The whole inside of a warship seemed strewn around.”

Now at anchor off Narvik, Warspite began to receive wounded from the

destroyers; her sick bay was better equipped to cope with the number of casualties. At least 40 operations were performed by the battleship’s surgeons.

Stokers had to step over the wounded on their way to the engine room. “You knew this was definitely for real,” recalled one, “especially when a young fellow asked me to cover his legs as they were cold.”

The stoker agreed, even though the sailor’s legs had been blown away.

Also transferred to the flagship was a handful of German prisoners.

They didn’t, to AB Banks’ surprise, “have two heads, nor had they horns or cloven hooves”.

They were, rather, “just seamen like ourselves”.

To his shipmate Donald Auffret, however, the captured enemy lived up to every stereotype of a Nazi. “They thought this defeat at Narvik was only a temporary thing – Germany would win in the next six months, so they were not too bothered about being taken prisoner.”

On the flag bridge, Admiral William Whitworth mulled over his course of action. In the fading light, he toyed with putting 200 sailors and Royal Marines ashore to occupy Narvik.

He chose not to, for the men were exhausted after the exertions of the day, and landing weary and ill-equipped men in the face of hardened German mountain infantry “would be to court disaster”. At dusk, her job done, the great battleship slipped down Ofotfjord for the more open waters of Vestfjord.

As the force retired, HMS Ivanhoe manoeuvred alongside a pier at Ballangen, fifteen miles west of Narvik, as Saturday April 13 turned to Sunday April 14. The survivors of the Hardy climbed on board.

Germany calling. Germany calling.

The nasal voice of William Joyce – Lord Haw Haw – was laced with Schadenfreude as he addressed the British people on Berlin’s Englishlanguage propaganda station. “We said we would get the Cossack and we have,” he sneered. “She is lying a blazing wreck in Narvik harbour and her captain is dead.” He was wrong on both counts.

The destroyer was stranded until high tide in the small hours of April 14. She made her way to the sheltered waters of Skjelfjord – dubbed Norway’s Scapa Flow by Churchill – near the western tip of the Lofoten Islands, where she joined Eskimo and two covering destroyers.

Locals helped the ship’s company patch Cossack up. In gratitude, the sailors threw a tea party for them.

The destroyer eventually limped to Portsmouth – but only thanks to her crew continuously baling out flooding on the way.

As for her ‘dead’ captain, Robert St Vincent Sherbrooke would be the scourge of the Nazis once more, confounding the Kriegsmarine in the

HMS Eskimo

NARVIK

HMS Cossack

Diether von Roeder

Wolfgang Zenker Georg Thiele

Bernd von Arnim Hans Lüdemann

HMS COSSACK After-action report Hit No. 1 Exploded on impact with port side between the upper and forecastle decks about 20ft forward of “A” gun mounting causing minor structural and splinter damage.

Hit No. 2

Barents Sea on New Year’s Eve 1942. He received the Victoria Cross for his actions that day.

Eskimo too was repaired – slowly. She spent six weeks in Norway, first in Skjelfjord, then at Harstad.

It was late May before she was towed for England and early June before she arrived in Barrow, where shipwrights found the cadavers of her sailors still trapped in her mangled forecastle. Yet by August, Eskimo was back at sea.

Within a month, she had rejoined the Home Fleet.

THE MOUSETRAP THE DEAD HONOURED And so the Second Battle of Narvik ended. It ended like the first – in a British victory. An overwhelming British victory. It is a classic destroyer action, perhaps the classic destroyer action. For two vessels lost, four damaged and 188 dead, the Royal Navy scythed Germany’s destroyer fleet in two. It would be a negligible factor when Britain and Germany squared up to each other across the Channel in the high summer of 1940.

News of the massacre at Narvik reached Berlin that evening where the mood, the Kriegsmarine’s Chiefof-Staff Admiral Otto Schniewind observed, was “serious and depressed”. He continued his diary: Ten of our modern destroyers – half our powerful and urgently-needed destroyer force – are shot-up, damaged of destroyed. For our forces, Narvik has been a mousetrap.

The 2,500-plus surviving crew of the destroyers joined their mountain infantry comrades on land and fought alongside them for the next two months. They gave Eduard Dietl and his hard-pressed soldiers invaluable service. Some helped hold the iron ore rail line for which Narvik had been seized. Others performed guard duties or maintained equipment.

Nazi propaganda proclaimed their

work ashore “heroic”. Pessimism quickly crept in. “Everything we’re doing here’s a waste of time,” they complained. “Things will go belly-up very quickly.”

Nearly 300 Norwegians went down with the aged coastal defence ships, Eidsvold and Norge. Six days after the ships’ destruction, the bodies which had been recovered from the harbour were laid to rest with full military honours.

As the Norwegian dead were buried, one of Bonte’s staff officers, Heinrich Gerlach, was describing for the Kriegsmarine’s leaders how the late commodore’s fleet had fought “to the last shell and to the last torpedo”. His report “fills the Naval Staff with pride”, wrote Otto Schniewind.

Myth would envelop the fateful struggle of the German destroyers at Narvik, ideally suited with the Nazi ideal of heroic death on the battlefield. The Narvikkämpfer – Narvik warrior – would, in time, receive the Narvikschild – Narvik shield (pictured, left). It was one of the few decorations for a specific battle issued by a regime otherwise besotted with awards.

Flotilla commander, Friedrich Bonte, posthumously earned Germany’s highest decoration, the Ritterkreuz – Knight’s Cross.

Despite his uninspiring leadership Erich Bey too received the Knight’s Cross for Narvik – perhaps it was a Nazi smokescreen to cover up his failings. He would rise to command the Scharnhorst – and he would go down with her at the North Cape on Boxing Day 1943.

After their victory in Norway, the Nazis erected a plaque in Jøssingfjord: Here, on February 16 1940, the Altmark was attacked by an English pirate.

It is no longer there.

No foe would sink HMS Continued on page viii



Exploded on impact with port side between lower and upper decks about 25 ft. forward of ‘A’ gun mounting causing minor structural and splinter damage.

Hit No. 3 Entered port side just below lower deck level about 20 ft. forward of ‘A’ gun mounting and passed out through starboard side just forward of ‘A’ gun mounting without detonating. The exit hole was below the waterline causing flooding which put the ASDIC out of action.

Hit No. 4 Stuck the port side about 6” below the upper deck level abreast No. 2 boiler room. Minor structural and splinter damage was caused and, due to perforated steam pipes, the steam supply to No. 1 boiler was cut. No. 2 boiler room was filled with superheated steam and was put out of action while No. 3 boiler room was immobilised because of steam entering through splinter holes. The splinters also put out of action the steam dynamos, steering telemotor gear and port engine room telegraphs.

Hit No.5 Exploded on impact with the edge of forecastle deck slightly forward of ‘B” gun mounting causing slight structural and splinter damage.

Hit No. 6 Exploded on impact with port side between upper and forecast le deck causing minor structural and splinter damage. The transmitting station was hit by splinters and No. 1 magazine was flooded deliberately as a fire precaution.

Hit No. 7 Exploded on impact with port side of forward superstructure just forward of ‘B’ mounting causing minor structural and splinter damage.

Hit No. 8 Exploded on impact with port aft backstay of forward funnel causing splinter damage.

Near Miss Exploded on impact with water on the starboard side abreast ‘B’ gun mounting causing splinter damage that led to minor flooding.

Fighting Efficiency Severely impaired.

Remarks Nine killed and 23 ship’s company wounded. Two later died of wounds – one on the 13th and one on the 14th. One shell exploded in forward structure (Petty Officers Mess) killing all of the ammunition supply party for “A” gun. Other hits in Boiler Rooms subsequent loss of power causing the ship to go aground on the south shore opposite the harbour where she remained for the next 12 hours.

viii

h

NAVY NEWS, NARVIK 70th ANNIVERSARY SUPPLEMENT APRIL 2010

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Continued from page vii Warspite – despite the best efforts of the Germans. No single ship in the history of the Royal Navy earned more battle honours than ‘the grand old lady’. Reluctant to die to the bitter end, she ran aground when under tow to the breaker’s yard in 1947.

Written by Richard Hargreaves.

Maps by Andy Brady. With thanks to the staff of the Naval Historical Branch, Portsmouth, the Imperial War Museum, London, and Ken Batchelor of the HMS Cossack Association.

In addition, the following books and internet sources have been used:

U64 never reached the scrapyard, either. Her wreck was raised in the late 1950s for breaking up. It sank under tow off the Norwegian coast.

No-one has tried to salvage the twisted, now orange-brown remains of the Georg Thiele. To this day, her bow protrudes from Rombaksfjord, resting against rocks at the water’s edge.

Other German wrecks around Narvik – the Wilhelm Heidkamp, Anton Schmitt, Hermann Künne, Diether von Roeder – are popular with frogmen. Not so the remains of the Eidsvold, Norge and Hardy. All are off-limits to divers. ●♦ ●

For nearly seven decades, one wreck at Narvik proved elusive. Warships plough these waters regularly – almost every year the Royal Navy can be found in Ofotfjord conducting winter exercises.

l Hunter’s ship’s badge, still clearly identifiable after seven decades below the water and (above right) a cluster of .5 calibre machine-guns point forlornly skywards on Hunter’s wreck

Video stills: Royal Norwegian Navy

The late winter of 2008 was no different. A sizeable amphibious force made for Narvik for Exercise Armatura Borealis.

As the war games reached their climax, the Norwegian minehunter HNoMS sailed up and down Ofotfjord, searching for dummy mines.

For 14 hours, that search was fruitless – until her echo sounder picked up the hull of a sunken vessel on the bed of fjord, nearly 1,000ft below, and she sent down her robot

mini submarine to investigate.

The pictures it beamed back were crystal-clear pictures, the arrows and crossbow of the ship’s badge still discernible in the gloom, the ship’s name unmistakable: H U N T E R. A few days later, WarburtonLee’s battle cry was hoisted aboard amphibious assault ship HMS Albion – Continue engaging the enemy – as a procession of Allied warships, four British – Albion, Bulwark, Cornwall and RFA Mounts Bay – and one

Norwegian Coastguard vessel – NOCGV Andenes – formed a line and sailed past the wreck site.

Each ship paid her respects by casting a wreath into the icy waters and pouring a tot of rum over the side.

As the force left Ofotfjord behind, the Aldis lamps flashed into life as a final tribute: F a r e w e l l w e ’ l l m e e t a g a i n.

Long is the shadow – and the spell – of the Battle of Narvik.

Ballantyne, Iain, The Warspite Barnett, Corelli, Engage the Enemy More Closely: The Royal Navy in the Second World War Bekker, Cajus, Hitler’s Naval War Broch, Theodor, The Mountains Wait Dickens, Capt Peter, Narvik: Battles in the Fjords Führer Conferences on Naval Affairs Haarr, Geirr, The German Invasion of Norway April 1940 Glowworm survivors’ testimonies (www.hmsglowworm.org.uk) Hawkins, Ian, Destroyer: An Anthology of First-hand Accounts of the War at Sea 1939-1945 ‘Interrogation of Survivors, October 1939-December 1940’ (National Archive ADM 186/805)

Kersuady, François, Norway 1940 List, Fritz, Kurs Norwegen Lochner, R K, Als das Eis brach Mason, F A, HMS Hardy (www. bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/ user/39/u1507239.shtml) Mielke, Otto, Die Heldenkampf um Narvik ‘Naval Operations of the Campaign in Norway’ (National Archive ADM 186/798) Plevy, Harry, Destroyer Actions Poolman, Kenneth, The British Sailor Rhys-Jones, Graham, Churchill and the Norway Campaign Salewski, Michael, Die deutsche Seekriegsleitung 1935-1945 Tarrant, V E, Battleship Warspite www.uboat.net War Diary of the German Naval Staff (held by the Imperial War Museum) Waage, Johan, The Narvik Campaign Wegener, Wolfgang, Die Seestrategie des Weltkrieges Wiggan, Richard, Hunt the Altmark

l HMS Albion leads her sister Bulwark, frigate HMS Cornwall, Norwegian coastguard vessel Andenes and RFA Mounts Bay past the wreck site of HMS Hunter in Ofotfjord, April 2008 Picture: LA(Phot) Dan Hooper