Battle for Narvik
Burning Narvik
| date | April 9 to June 8, 1940 |
|---|---|
| place | Narvik , Norway |
| output | Withdrawal of the Allies because of the western campaign |
| consequences | Occupation of Narvik by the Wehrmacht |
| Parties to the conflict | |
|---|---|
| Commander | |
| Troop strength | |
| 10 destroyers 2,000 men Mountain troops 2,100 men destroyer crew |
Occupation: 2 Norwegian coastal armored ships First attack: 5 destroyers Second attack: 1 battleship, 9 destroyers 24,500 invasion troops |
| losses | |
|
Sea battles: |
Sea battles: |
.svg){kind=small}
.svg){kind=small}
The Battle of Narvik took place during the raid-like occupation of Norway in World War II and consisted of sea, land and air battles. In two sea battles off Narvik , the German fleet suffered considerable losses, all ten destroyers used were lost. The numerically inferior land forces of the Germans, reinforced by the crews of the sunken ships, faced a great defeat and had to withdraw. The Allies had already occupied the city when, due to the bad situation at the Battle of France, they were forced to withdraw their expeditionary forces by June 8, 1940. After the Allies withdrew, Narvik was reoccupied by the Germans.
prehistory
In order to secure the transport routes for the important iron ore deliveries from Sweden, the occupation of Norway was considered in the German High Command long before the war began. The Commander-in-Chief of the Navy , Grand Admiral Raeder , presented specific plans for this as early as October 1939. With Operation Wilfred, the Allies had also developed plans to occupy Norway and thus cut off the German Reich from supplies of ore from Sweden. When the German leadership became aware of this, at the beginning of April 1940 they felt compelled, contrary to the original war plans directed against the Soviet Union , to carry out the occupation of Norway at short notice and poorly prepared , which was reflected in the improvised transport capacities and high losses among the warships deployed. Apparently the German troops came just hours before an Allied landing. Officially, the intervention of the Anglo-French corps was conditional on a German invasion.
The Norwegian port city of Narvik was of particular importance here as it has a year-round ice-free port through which a large part of the iron ore was shipped. The iron ore was transported by rail to Narvik from the mines in nearby Kiruna, Sweden .
The German occupation of Narvik
The occupation of Narvik was the task of Warship Group 1 , consisting of ten destroyers under Commodore Friedrich Bonte with 2000 embarked mountain troops of the Mountain Infantry Regiment 139 (Colonel Alois Windisch ) of the 3rd Mountain Division under the command of, reinforced by artillery and reconnaissance units of the division Major General Eduard Dietl on board. It reached the entrance of the Ofotfjord around 4:00 a.m. on April 9 , where the group split up: three destroyers were parked to defeat fortifications, four more to occupy the training area at Elvegårdsmoen near Bjerkvik at the northeast end of the Herjangsfjord . Commodore Bonte was heading for Narvik with the remaining three ships.
The 40-year-old Norwegian coastal armored ship Eidsvold got in the way of the German flotilla, whereupon Bonte sent a negotiator to the Norwegian commander, frigate captain Odd Isachsen Willoch . When Willoch refused to let the German unit pass, the destroyer Wilhelm Heidkamp shot two torpedoes, which hit the Eidsvold and caused them to explode. Only six crew members survived. The sister ship Norge , whose commander Per Askim had been informed of the German intrusion by Willoch, headed for the port from a side fjord and met the German destroyer Bernd von Arnim , who was about to land the troops embarked on him to moor the pier . Both ships opened artillery fire on each other, but scored no hits. The Bernd von Arnim then fired a total of six torpedoes at the Norge , two of which hit and caused the ship to sink in less than a minute. Only about 90 crew members survived. A total of about 300 men died on the two Norwegian ships.
The occupation of the port and the city then went without a fight. The site commander of Narvik, Colonel Sundlo, was a sympathizer of the Nasjonal Samling under Quisling and surrendered the city without resistance. A Norwegian unit of about 250 men under the command of Major Sverre Spjeldnes managed to escape from the city, heading east along the railroad tracks.
However, a German ship was still lost: the freighter Bockenheim , which, as it was not included in the planning of the Kriegsmarine, was lying in Narvik by chance, was set on fire by its crew and set on the ground as they were the incoming destroyers for a British squadron held.
The first attack by the British Navy
The original schedule stipulated that Bonte and his destroyers should run out on April 9 after taking over fuel and return to Germany. Since only one of the tankers intended for refueling , the Jan Wellem , had arrived, the supply of the unit was delayed until the next day. Bonte had three destroyers take advanced guard positions in the fjord, one of them right at the entrance.
Meanwhile, on the evening of April 9, a British flotilla consisting of five destroyers reached the entrance to the Ofotfjord. It was their job to guard the port against German access. When commander Bernard Warburton-Lee received unclear reports about the situation in Narvik, he waited first. When he received the news that a German destroyer group of six ships and a submarine were in port, he decided to attack in the early hours of April 10th.
Forces in the first battle off Narvik
| Commander | Ships | Armament (per ship) |
|---|---|---|
| Bonte | Destroyers Wilhelm Heidkamp , Hermann Künne , Hans Lüdemann , Diether von Roeder , Anton Schmitt , Bernd von Arnim , Erich Giese , Erich Koellner , Georg Thiele , Wolfgang Zenker | 5x 12.7 cm guns, 8 torpedo tubes |
| Warburton-Lee | Destroyers HMS Hardy ( Flotilla Leader ) , HMS Havock , HMS Hostile , HMS Hotspur , HMS Hunter | 4x ( Hardy 5x) 12 cm guns, 8 torpedo tubes |
Course of battle
In extremely poor visibility due to snowfall, the five British destroyers, undetected by the German ship guarding the entrance, ran into the fjord around 1:00 a.m. The other two German destroyers did not notice the British, who reached the port around 4:45 a.m. Warburton-Lee detached two units to fight suspected land batteries on the Framnes headland , but they had already been made unusable by the Norwegians; the other three ( Hardy , Hunter and Havock ) opened fire at 4:20 a.m. on the German ships, which were completely surprised by the attack. The Wilhelm Heidkamp with Commodore Bonte and the Anton Schmitt under Korvettenkapitän Friedrich Böhme sank in the first minutes of the battle by torpedo hits. The Hans Lüdemann and Hermann Künne watching from the Jan Wellem bunkerten oil, were as lying at the pier Diether von Roeder damaged by artillery hits. The only reason the British destroyers escaped a torpedo compartment shot out of the harbor was because the depth setting of these torpedoes had not been changed (the torpedoes were set to 4 m for fighting enemy capital ships and not only 2 m for destroyers) and the torpedoes were therefore under the British ships passed through.
Warburton-Lee believed that he had hit the German armed forces decisively, since at that time he still assumed the presence of only six German units. He therefore set out on the way back with his undamaged ships, but met the German destroyers Wolfgang Zenker , Erich Giese and Erich Koellner , who had been lying in the Herjangsfjord at the start of the battle, as well as the Georg Thiele and the Bernd von Arnim , who were coming from Ballangen came. The German destroyer groups did not receive reports of the battle until after 5:00 am, then left and were able to attack the British unit from two sides, whereby the two destroyers approaching from Ballangen were able to carry out the naval war maneuver " Crossing the T " against the departing English . They were able to use their entire broadsides of five guns each against the two bow guns of the British lead boat. The flotilla leader Hardy was thus initially exposed to this fire alone and received heavy hits, was unable to maneuver and was stranded in shallow water. 70 crew members perished, Warburton-Lee was seriously wounded and died shortly afterwards. The second ship in the British line, the Hunter , was set on fire and the following Hotspur was hit in the steering gear and could no longer evade. She rammed her sister boat Hunter , which then sank. The other two British destroyers Hostile and Havock were able to damage the Georg Thiele and the Bernd von Arnim with their artillery before they retreated with the heavily damaged Hotspur , whereby they only with great luck escaped the five German submarines in these waters. The German ships broke off the battle because of a shortage of fuel.
Result
|
|
On their way to the exit of the fjord, the British met the German supplier Rauenfels , whom they boarded and blew up after the crew had disembarked. The submarine U 51 attacked the British destroyer association when entering the fjord, later together with U 25 again the three remaining destroyers when leaving. All attacks failed due to torpedo failures. During the British torpedo attack in the port of Narvik, the German freighter Planet and the British Blythmoor were hit and sank.
The days after the battle
After Bontes death, frigate captain Bey took command of the remaining German units. The Diether von Roeder was no longer seaworthy; the other ships were makeshift repairs with on-board resources. In the afternoon Grand Admiral Raeder ordered the rest of the unit to retreat to Germany. Bey initially only advanced with the undamaged Erich Giese and Wolfgang Zenker and sighted the light cruiser HMS Penelope with eight destroyers that the Royal Navy had dispatched during April 10 to block the entrance to the fjord. He then radioed to Berlin that an outbreak was impossible.
On April 11, the Penelope ran into a rock in pursuit of another German supplier and was so badly damaged that she had to be towed by a destroyer. The attack by the association on the remaining German ships off Narvik, which was planned for the next day, could not be carried out in this way. Instead, the battleship HMS Warspite with four destroyers set course towards Narvik. On the afternoon of April 13, the battleship ran into the Ofotfjord with five other destroyers from the Penelope formation under the command of Vice Admiral William Whitworth .
Bey, who had been warned of the attack by the German radio reconnaissance, planned to move his seven ships, some of which were only partially seaworthy, to side fjords and to attack the British units from an ambush. However, the lack of fuel delayed this; only Z 19 Hermann Künne and Z 13 Erich Koellner had, in view of the expected superiority of the enemy, brought a large part of their crew ashore except for gun operators and a machine guard and made their way to their positions when they saw the British battleship at 13: 00 o'clock.
The second British attack
Armed forces
| Commander | Ships | Armament (per ship) |
|---|---|---|
| Bey | Destroyers Bernd von Arnim , Erich Giese , Erich Koellner , Hermann Künne , Hans Lüdemann , Diether von Roeder , Georg Thiele , Wolfgang Zenker | 5x 12.7 cm guns, 8 torpedo tubes |
| Whitworth | Battleship HMS Warspite , destroyer HMS Bedouin , HMS Cossack , HMS Eskimo , HMS Punjabi , HMS Forester , HMS Foxhound , HMS Hero , HMS Icarus , HMS Kimberley | 8x 38.1 cm and 12x 15.2 cm guns ( Warspite ) 4-8x 12 cm guns, 4 to 10 torpedo tubes (destroyers) |
Course of battle
The Hermann Künne and Erich Koellner were on board aircraft of the Warspite , a Fairey Swordfish -Schwimmerflugzeug discovered and reported. The Erich Koellner sank after several hits from the Warspite and the destroyers Eskimo and Bedouin . After the remaining ammunition had been used up, the commander of Hermann Künne ran into the Herjangsfjord and put his ship aground in order to reach the bank with the crew. There the wreck was destroyed by a torpedo. In front of the port of Narvik, the Erich Giese and Diether von Roeder , who was immobilized on the pier, were destroyed, the latter being blown up by their own crew. The Cossack was damaged and ran aground. A simultaneous air attack by ten carrier aircraft of the HMS Furious scored no hits, two Swordfish were shot down. Meanwhile, the Warspite's aircraft sank the U 64 submarine .
The remaining four destroyers ( Georg Thiele , Wolfgang Zenker , Bernd von Arnim and Hans Lüdemann ) had withdrawn to the Rombaksfjord northeast of Narvik. After the Wolfgang Zenker , the Bernd von Arnim and the Hans Lüdemann had fired their ammunition, they were set aground at the eastern end of the fjord to rescue the crews, while the Georg Thiele took over cover and stopped the British unit in the Rombaksfjord. The pursuing British destroyer Eskimo received a heavy torpedo hit, which tore off its forecastle. When the Georg Thiele ran out of ammunition, it was set aground on the south side of the fjord.
The stern of Hans Lüdemann, which was broken in two , floated up again after the boat was blown up and was entered by a British boarding party. As the salvage of the wreck turned out to be impossible, it was destroyed by a torpedo. Ten German destroyers were thus lost in Narvik.
After the successful salvage of the two damaged British destroyers, Whitworth left the Ofotfjord on the evening of April 13, as he assumed the presence of German submarines. In fact, the Warspite narrowly escaped a torpedo attack when it entered the Ofotfjord, as the attacking U 46 ran into a shoal shortly before its torpedoes were fired and had to break off the attack.
Result
|
|
In the course of the second battle there were unsuccessful submarine attacks. U 25 attacked the British federation both on arrival and on departure. On April 14, U 25 and U 48 attacked the Warspite . All attacks failed due to torpedo failures.
Consequences of the naval battles
All ten German destroyers used were either destroyed or had to sink themselves. This result was a result of a lack of air support, many torpedo failures on the German side and the fact that the destroyer guns were hardly effective at distances of over 3 nautical miles. The approximately 2600 surviving crew members of the German destroyers were grouped under the command of frigate captain Fritz Berger , the previous chief of the 1st destroyer flotilla, in four battalions in the so-called Narvik Marine Regiment (renamed Marine Regiment Berger on April 18) and the mountain troops Subordinate to General Dietls. These troops were now cut off from all supplies: the German supply ships had been sunk or seized, and the British had absolute naval dominance in the waters off northern Norway. On April 24th, the Warspite was able to fire unhindered German positions in Narvik with three cruisers. The lack of supplies would play a significant role in the ensuing battles on land.
The day after the second battle, the Allied troops began landing in the Harstad area in the Vågsfjord and its branches such as the Salangen . The British General Staff considered a direct landing in Narvik to be too risky.
The fight on land
The Allies - Poland , France , Great Britain and Norway - landed 24,500 men, including marines, French Foreign Legionnaires and Polish mountain troops , who then advanced to Narvik. They faced only 4,600 Germans (2,000 mountain troops and 2,600 men from the sunken destroyers) under Lieutenant General Eduard Dietl . The balance of power was so clearly in favor of the Allies that on April 17th Hitler wanted to order the German troops to be interned in Sweden . After the intervention of the command staff of the army , Dietl received the order to defend the city.
On April 24th, Norwegian units under Major General Carl Gustav Fleischer began to attack the Germans. Some of these were holed up in the mountains around Narvik. The troops remaining in the city area had to evacuate Narvik on May 28, 1940 after tough fighting. They managed to hold the important ore railway against the Allies. On May 10, the German Reich had launched the western offensive against France . To reinforce their forces in France, the Allied troops were withdrawn from Norway on May 24th - at a time when it was probably only a matter of time before the German troops would have had to surrender. The German Wehrmacht was therefore able to occupy Narvik again on June 8th.
literature
- Hans-Martin Ottmer: "Weser Exercise" - The German attack on Denmark and Norway in April 1940 . R. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 1994 (= Operations of the Second World War, Vol. 1, edited by the Military History Research Office), ISBN 3-486-56092-1 .
- Peter Dickens: Focus on the ore port of Narvik. Stuttgart, 2nd edition 1996 (also from a British perspective).
Web links
References and comments
- ^ Rolf-Dieter Müller : The Second World War 1939-1945. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2004 (= Handbook of German History , Vol. 21), ISBN 978-3-608-60021-6 , pp. 75 f.
- ↑ a b Thomas Riederer: Military & History, April / May 2020 edition . S. 10-19 .
- ↑ Dickens 1996, p. 102 ff.
- ↑ Dickens 1996, p. 147 ff.
- ↑ Dickens 1996, pp. 160 ff.
- ↑ Dickens 1996, p. 187 f.
- ↑ Dickens 1996, p. 226.
- ↑ Dickens 1996, p. 259.
- ↑ The regiment was disbanded on July 1, 1940.
- ^ Richard J. Evans : The Third Reich - Volume III War . DVA, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-421-05800-3 . P. 162.