Namsos Campaign
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In April and early May, 1940 Namsos was the scene of heavy fighting between Anglo-French, Polish and Norwegian naval and military forces and German military and air forces. It was one of the first occasions during World War II when British and French land forces encountered the German Army.
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[edit] Background
When World War II broke out in September 1939 Norway followed a policy of neutrality, as it had successfully done in World War I, hoping to stay out of the war once again engulfing Europe. So Norway was at peace in April 1940 when it was suddenly attacked by naval, air and military forces from Nazi Germany. Unlike the case during the First World War, the Norwegian military was only partially mobilised, with the Royal Norwegian Navy and the coastal artillery being set up with skeleton crews. The Royal Norwegian Army activated only a few battalions in North Norway (amongst others the Alta Battalion) as a precaution in connection with the Soviet Winter War invasion of Finland. Although the Norwegian government had carried out a hurried modernisation of the military in the second half of the 1930s the armed forces were still in a shambles. Effects of the wide ranging budget reductions carried out during the pacifist policies of the late 1920s and early 1930s were still apparent. In 1940 the Norwegian armed forces were among the weakest in Europe.
There were several reasons for the German attack. Not least was a desire to secure the flow of iron ore from mines at Kiruna in the north of Sweden to Germany's war industries.
Germany did not have a sufficient domestic supply of iron ore, used in the production of steel. Steel was far more important in 1939 than today, as plastics and composite materials were little used. During peace time large quantities of iron ore were imported from mines in the French province of Lorraine. Since September, 1939, this supply was no longer available. So shipments from the other large supplier, Sweden, were essential for the production of tanks, guns, ships, rail cars, trucks and other implements of war. The northern part of the Baltic Sea, called the Gulf of Bothnia, had a principal Swedish port called Luleå from where in the summer a quantity of ore was shipped. It was frozen in winter, so for several months each year the Swedes shipped most of their iron ore by rail through the ice-free port of Narvik, in the far north of Norway. In a normal year, 80% of the iron ore was exported through Narvik. The only alternative in winter was a long rail journey to Oxelösund on the Baltic, south of Stockholm, which was not obstructed by ice. But, British information suggested that Oxelösund could ship only one fifth the weight Germany required.
The British Admiralty was investigating the possibility of introducing a Royal Navy fleet into the Baltic Sea in the spring of 1940, to interdict German seaborne trade during the summer months in that inland sea, Project Catherine. This, however, would be ineffective if the Narvik route remained open. But events overtook the Baltic scheme.
The Germans rightly suspected that that the British were planning to mine the Norwegian coastal waters used by German ore ships. British plans were well under way, spearheaded by the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill. The Germans got to Norway first.
[edit] Allied counter-attack plans
Narvik, Trondheim, Oslo, Bergen and other major Norwegian towns were seized on the first day of the campaign in a surprise attack. Elements of the Norwegian army were fighting the Germans north of Oslo. Both the British and French prime ministers and their military advisers were of one mind in deciding to retake Trondheim, link up with the Norwegians and block a German advance north. This would enable the Allies to interdict much of Germany's iron ore supplies. A bonus would be air and naval bases in northern Norway.
It is at Trondheim that Norway becomes narrow, making it easier to block the Germans than further south. To turn the position Germany would have to attack through Sweden, bringing that nation into the war on the Allied side.
Retired Admiral of the Fleet Sir Roger Keyes, MP, repeatedly urged Churchill to seize Trondheim from the Germans, using obsolete battleships if necessary, and offered to lead the attack.
It was planned to force the entrance to Trondheimsfjord with battleships knocking out the Norwegian coastal artillery forts at the entrance, recently captured by the Germans. Then an amphibious landing would take the city. It was also decided to land forces north and south of the fjord for a pincer attack on the City. The military officers responsible for these decisions were the chiefs of staff of the armed forces, Sir Dudley Pound of the Royal Navy, General Sir Edmund Ironside of the Royal Army and Air Chief Marshal Sir Cyril Newall of the Royal Air Force.
But the Chiefs of Staff of the British armed forces got cold feet. The forcing of the narrows was reduced to a demonstration, with the main thrust being the two pincers. This eliminated the immediate use of the Trondheim airfields by the RAF. It also meant that the military forces would face German naval units in the fjord as well as Luftwaffe units in the air. Churchill was very disappointed, but faced the combined opposition of his naval advisers as well as the heads of the army and air force. He had to back down. Keyes was apoplectic, and this event, more than any, convinced him to join in an attack on the Government at the end of the Norwegian Campaign. See the Norway Debate for particulars.
Namsos, then a town of 3,615 people, was felt to be the logical spot to land the troops assigned to the northern pincer, because of its location and facilities. The harbour and approaches to Namsos are ice free all year. Because of the trade in lumber, by 1940 Namsos port was furnished with three good wharves (one of stone) with a depth alongside of 18 to 30 feet and lengths from 320 to 770 feet. This made it suitable for smaller warships and transports to dock and to land troops and supplies for the recapture of Trondheim. In addition, Namsos was on a branch line connecting to the Nordland railway line. A gravel road led some 40 miles south to Trondheim.
[edit] Screening force
Captain F. H. Pegram of the cruiser HMS Glasgow, accompanied by the Cruiser HMS Sheffield and ten destroyers, landed a small party of Royal Marines in Namsos on April 14, 1940. The landing party was under the command of Captain Edds and took up blocking positions in the hills outside town. They soon attracted German aircraft. Lieutenant General Sir Adrian Carton De Wiart, V.C., designated force commander, flew in the next day ( April 15) and had a foretaste of what was to come when his Short Sunderland Flying Boat was machine gunned by German aircraft as it landed. His aide was wounded and had to return to the United Kingdom. De Wiart was an energetic and competent commander who inspired his troops by his bravery during air attacks. But no Allied aircraft were available over Namsos to provide protection against the Luftwaffe.
De Wiart made the decision, because of unopposed enemy air activity, to divert his large, slow and vulnerable troopships one hundred miles northwards to Lillesjona in Nesna where they would be offloaded to destroyers for a fast run into Namsos. He himself arrived there on April 16 to supervise the trans-shipment. Less than an hour into the process, German bombers arrived, and the British naval commander ordered the destroyers to sail with the troops and equipment they had on board. HMS Afridi, Nubian, Matabele, Mashona and Sikh got under way for Namsos carrying De Wiart with 36 officers and 1,208 other ranks. Though repeatedly attacked during their voyage, they arrived unscathed, if not rested, and got into Namsos about 9pm on April 16th.
[edit] Ashore and south
Carton De Wiart showed considerable vigour in managing the landing and dispersal of troops and supplies in such a way as to get them off the ships and into the hills during the five hours of darkness prevailing in Namsos in late April. On several occasions German reconnaissance aircraft were unaware that landings had occurred the previous night. He wasted no time in setting up a headquarters in Namsos and sent out guards to the long bridge over Namsosfjord, essential to one of the two roads south and moved others to occupy the village of Bangsund further south. He also sent 300 troops due east along the second, less direct, route south to Grong where they linked up with small numbers of Norwegian militia under Colonel Ole Getz. Smaller groups were sent south of Bangsund in an attempt to reach Breitstadfjord, at the head of Trondheimfjord.
Carton De Wiart realized that the quicker he got his forces south, the better were his chances of taking Trondheim from the Germans. The first priority, he felt, was to reach Steinkjer where the two roads south met, before the Germans got there from Trondheim.
In the meantime, the naval commander, Admiral Layton, decided that taking his destroyers into Namsos was too risky. He would send troops and supplies in on the Polish transport SS Chrobry. Since most of the remaining troops at Lillesjona were aboard the SS Empress of Australia, much time was wasted with further trans-shipping, and the Chrobry, accompanied by HMS Vanoc got into Namsos just before sunrise on April 17th. In the mad hurry to get away before the German bombers arrived, the soldiers landed without much of their kit. But, De Wiart succeeded in getting the troops dispersed before a reconnaissance aircraft arrived.
At this time, Carton De Wiart was not aware that the attack directly into Trondheimfjord was called off. Throughout his time at Namsos, he was left completely uninformed of what was happening elsewhere in Norway.
[edit] The French arrive
Two battalions of French Alpine troops landed on April 19 under heavy air attack. One of the transports conveying the French was too long to enter the harbour and returned to the United Kingdom without landing many of the French supplies, leaving the troops without straps for their skis or the mules they used for transport. The French stayed put in Namsos, enduring air bombardment against which they had little protection. The French cruiser Emile Bertin was damaged by bombing during the disembarkation (no casualties) and was replaced by the Montcalm. In total some 6,000 Allied troops were put ashore.
The French troops, for the most part, were not used in the short campaign, because of a lack of supplies. Towards the end, they were engaged somewhat as the Allied troops fell back on Namsos, preparatory to evacuation.
[edit] Clash in the south
By April 21, British forces had advanced quickly as far south as the hamlet of Verdal where both road and railway bridges crossed the River Inna, a few miles inland from Trondheimsfjord. This was about halfway between Trondheim and Namsos, some miles down the fjord. Ominously, they spotted a German gunboat, two armed trawlers and a destroyer in the fjord, on their flanks, well able to land troops behind them and direct fire at them, to which they lacked the means to respond.
When De Wiart landed at Namsos on April 15, the Germans had about 1,800 troops in the Trondheim area, some in the city and some along the railway to Sweden. Their possession of the Værnes airfield enabled them to fly extra troops in daily, and by April 18th, they had 3,500 men available in the area, the next day 5,000. They were generally well equipped, but lacking in field artillery. Some German troops were diverted to Hegra, where an improvised force of 251 Norwegians[3] were holding out in an old border fort. They began pushing up the fjord and forward patrols reached Verdal on April 16.
The Verdal bridge was defended by some 80 Norwegian militia, armed with Krag-Jørgensen rifles and Colt M/29 heavy machine guns. When the Germans attacked on the morning of the 21st, the Norwegians were supported by a section of Royal Engineers who happened to be in the area. For an hour and a half this force held the German attack off. The majority of the British forces were a little further back. But, the Germans landed forces at several points behind them in an attempt to outflank, drawing the attention of the main British forces. Fearing to be cut off, the Norwegians and the Royal Engineers withdrew.
A battle developed. Advantage was with the Germans, who were equipped with snowshoes and skis, and sledge mounted heavy mortars, and light field guns. They possessed air support from an airfield 35 miles away and had supporting naval gunfire.
There was no panic among the British and Norwegian forces and they succeeded in countering the first moves of the Germans. Heavy fighting occurred around the small village of Vist. Initial attacks were repelled, but the Germans outflanked the British positions by going around them on skis through the deep snow.
The Luftwaffe attacked and destroyed the British forward base at Steinkjer on 21 April, causing the loss of much of their supplies and destroying 242 houses, leaving over 1,800 Norwegian civilians homeless.[4] Although 80% of the town was destroyed in the attack no lives were lost in the bombing.[5]
[edit] Air attacks
German bombers destroyed much of the wood-constructed town of Namsos on April 20. Attacks lasted throughout the day and most of the wood houses, as well as the railway terminal, a church, the French headquarters and the two wooden wharves were burned. The stone wharf was damaged. The Norwegians paid dearly for the help the Allies brought. Fortunately, only one Allied ship was present in the harbour when the attack occurred. Fourteen German bombers went after the tiny anti-submarine trawler, HMS Rutlandshire, and badly damaged it just down the bay from Namsos. The ship was beached and the survivors were machine gunned in the water. None were killed and only two injured. They were later rescued by the destroyer HMS Nubian, sister ship of HMS Afridi.
Air attacks on Namsos continued throughout the campaign.
The British felt the need to provide protection from submarine attack for their ships entering and leaving Namsos. Lacking air cover, the small, slow anti-submarine sloops and trawlers used were very vulnerable to air attack. On April 30th, the sloop HMS Bittern was sunk by Junkers Ju 87 dive bombers off Namsos. On May 1st, three British anti-submarine trawlers at the entrance to the Namsfjord, HMS Gaul, HMS St. Goran and HMS Aston Villa were destroyed by aircraft, the latter managing to make it back to Namsos where she burned.
The Royal Norwegian Air Force had no units in the vicinity. The only Allied air presence to counter the Luftwaffe was during the first British landings. A brief patrol was mounted well offshore by several obsolete biplane fighters, Gloster Gladiators, operating from the aircraft carrier, HMS Glorious. They claimed three German planes shot down. Some eighteen Gladiators were flown off the Glorious and briefly operated from the frozen Lake Lesjaskogsvatnet at Lesjaskog, but these were too far south to help Namsos.
[edit] Evacuation
General De Wiart received orders on April 28 to evacuate Namsos, and on April 29, an evacuation convoy of destroyers, three British and one French, left Scapa Flow in Scotland under the command of Lord Louis Mountbatten. A larger naval force followed at a distance to protect them against attack by German battle cruisers. They were bombed on May 1st as they crossed the North Sea. That evening they encountered thick fog 40 miles short of their rendezvous point at Kya Lighthouse, which was forty miles by sea from Namsos. Plans to evacuate that night had to be cancelled. Meanwhile German troops were closing in on the rearguard in the hills outside Namsos, and the convoy ships were vulnerable to air attack if the fog lifted in daylight.
Rather than wait for the evening, Mountbatten took his ships in on May 2, moving from fog bank to fog bank. This was a very dangerous enterprise on a rocky coast. Despite the fog, the ships were bombed. The ships' masts were sticking out above the fog, giving the German bombers an approximate target. When they reached Namsos, the fog lifted, revealing a burning town and swarms of German bombers. Since it would have been suicidal to enter in these conditions, the British ships ducked back into the fog and returned down the bay.
The next day, May 3rd, the last possible for evacuation, dawned as foggy as before. Admiral John H. D. Cunningham, in overall command of naval forces in the area, screened the evacuation convoy with two cruisers and four destroyers at Kya Light and sent the cruiser, HMS York, five destroyers and three transports in. Mountbatten led in HMS Kelly at 26 knots as the sun was going down. When they rounded the last bend of the fjord they saw Namsos on fire. Mountbatten at this point did not know if the Germans were in possession of the town. A burning anti-submarine trawler, HMS Aston Villa, lay just ahead. As he closed the wharves, Mountbatten could see that everything was ablaze. But, Carton De Wiart was there with 5,500 troops lined up in good order, waiting to get off.
Evacuation began at 10:30 pm. Two of the transports were able to get alongside the damaged quay and filled up with troops. The destroyers took off the other men and ferried them to the York and the third transport, before taking a last load themselves. Meanwhile the rearguard was engaging the Germans to cover the evacuation. A tricky disengagement followed and a rush for the last ship, HMS Afridi. There was no time to destroy supplies left on the wharves, so the Afridi shelled the equipment as she pulled away from Namsos. It was 2:20 am, May 4th.
They knew to expect trouble when day broke and the German bombers sought them out. At 4:30 am the rear of the British convoy was sighted by German reconnaissance aircraft and bombers soon followed. The force was attacked continuously until late afternoon.
During the third attack of the day the French destroyer, Bison, was hit in the forward magazine and exploded with 136 killed. The other destroyers turned back to pick up survivors who were being machine gunned in the water. After the Afridi had picked up some of the French sailors and Allied soldiers, she was hit by two heavy bombs and capsized with the loss of a hundred men, including some of the rearguard and the wounded from the Bison.
British anti-aircraft fire destroyed a number of German aircraft. The convoy reached Scapa Flow on May 5th, Carton De Wiart's 60th birthday.
[edit] Aftermath
The Namsos Campaign was not a success for the Allies, though the troops and naval forces and their commanders acquitted themselves well. Failure can be attributed to several factors. The first is that the British and French were responding to a German initiative and didn't have the same lead time to plan. Troops were not properly equipped, the British arriving with heavy fur coats and boots which made them practically immobile. And the Germans had seized the southern Norwegian air fields before the British arrived.
However, the popular misconception that British commanders were dilatory and lacking in offensive spirit is simply not true. Great enterprise was shown in speedy disembarkation and concealment of troops from German bombers. Troops were moved south with all dispatch. They were ably led and showed pluck in battle. The Norwegian militia also gave a good account of themselves. Although the naval high command can certainly be faulted, Mountbatten showed enterprise and daring.
Lack of air cover was a great disadvantage. Norway's few obsolete aircraft were stationed further south. Since the Germans had seized the Norwegian airfields, naval aircraft were all that the Allies could use. Two factors here deserve mention. Low defence expenditure during the 1920s and 30s meant that the United Kingdom did not have enough aircraft carriers to provide air cover for a seaborne invasion force. And putting the Fleet Air Arm under the RAF meant that getting the most modern aircraft for naval use was not a priority. The United Kingdom fell well behind Japan in this respect. The Gloster Gladiator fighter and the Blackburn Skua dive bomber were simply not a match for German land based aircraft such as the Messerschmitt Bf 109, Messerschmitt Me 110 and the Heinkel He 111. The French had only one aircraft carrier, the Bearn, and it was not deployed in Norway.
The lack of air cover interfered with the landing of supplies. Carton De Wiart was to bitterly regret the lack of artillery, anti-aircraft guns and motor transport. The high quality French Alpine troops were rendered useless through lack of vital equipment.
Finally, the failure of the navy to force the entrance to Trondheimsfjord meant that the campaign had little prospect of success. The back and forth dithering of the chiefs of staff wasted time and soon the group took the counsel of its fears. The southern arm of the attack which landed at Åndalsnes, was soon drawn into a fight alongside the Norwegians to block the northward advance of the Germans from Oslo and was no longer available to attack Trondheim.
Despite the defeat the Allied effort was remarkable enough. If France had not fallen, the Allies may well have been able to hold Narvik further north and block Swedish iron ore shipments to Germany during the winter months. So in this context, the Namsos Campaign can be seen as a check to German overland movements north until the Allies could seize Narvik, which they did soon afterwards. But, with France in danger of falling, the decision was reached to withdraw from Norway.
The local Allied military and naval commanders here did well under trying circumstances. It really came down to air cover.
[edit] References
- ^ Steinkjer Encyclopedia: Regiment no. 13 (Norwegian)
- ^ Norwegian army units in 1940 (English)
- ^ Hegra Fortress home page (Norwegian)
- ^ Steinkjer Encyclopdia: Steinkjer during World War II (Norwegian)
- ^ Steinkjer Encyclopedia: Bombing Sunday (Norwegian)
[edit] Literature
- Buckley, Christopher (1977 (first published in 1952)). Norway, The Commandos, Dieppe. Her Majesty's Stationery Office, London,. ISBN none.
- Churchill, Winston S. (1961). The Second World War, Volume I, The Gathering Storm. Bantam Books, New York,. ISBN none.
- De Wiart, Adrian Carton (1950). Happy Odyssey. Jonathan Cape, London,. ISBN none.
- Jackson, Robert (2001). Before the Storm, The Story of Bomber Command, 1939 to 1942. Cassell and Co., London,. ISBN none.
- Kersaudy, François (1987). Norway 1940. St. Martin's Press, New York. ISBN 0-312-06427-6.
- Poolman, Kenneth (1980). HMS Kelly. New English Library, London,. ISBN none.
- Terraine, John (1988). The Right of the Line. Septre, Seven Oaks, Kent,. ISBN none.
- unknown (1943). Norway, Vol. 2. Naval Intelligence Division, London,. ISBN none.
