Hitler’s Pre-Emptive War: The Battle for Norway, 1940 by Henrik Lunde (popular e readers .TXT) 📗

to contest German air operations, carry out attacks against shore targets, and provide limited support for ground operations.

The Allied evacuations in south and central Norway freed German air assets for use in the north. The opening of a land connection between Oslo and Trondheim allowed the Luftwaffe to base and support expanded air operations from Værnes Airfield and this soon made itself felt in the Narvik area. German close air support operations were, as already mentioned, hampered by two facts. First, the scale of Luftwaffe maps (1:1,000,000) made effective close air support practically impossible. The lack of ground-to-air communications was the second problem. While the 3rd Division received the necessary radio equipment on May 6, an air force liaison officer was not provided until May 20. His efforts increased the effectiveness of close air support operations and resulted in improved coordination and support from the air operation center in Trondheim, which directed all air operations in North Norway.

Increased German air presence in the Narvik area and the inability of the carrier aircraft to effectively contest this increased threat speeded up Allied efforts to establish shore-based air operations. The increased German air activity also began to take its toll on the British Navy. The battleship Resolution was withdrawn from the area after a German bomb penetrated three decks on May 18. The antiaircraft cruiser Curlew was lost on May 26 with many of her crew as she provided antiaircraft protection for the construction of the airfield at Skånland.

Ash writes that Admiral Cork “had been scouring the countryside for possible landing grounds since his earliest days in Norway.”14 In fact, construction of a new airfield at Skånland was started but never completed to the point where it could be used. Several fields that could be made operational with much less effort were available. There were fields at Bardufoss, Elvenes in Salangen, Banak, Bodø, and Mo but all had to be cleared of snow and improved to support fighter operations. Hundreds of civilian laborers were involved in making Bardufoss and the field at Bodø ready to receive British fighter aircraft. Within two weeks after the decision to station two squadrons of fighters at Bardufoss, a number of protective shelters for aircraft were built and snow was cleared from three 900-meter runways.

Because of the delayed decision to bring in land-based fighters, the Bardufoss Airfield was not ready to receive British fighter aircraft until May 21. The 263rd Gladiator Squadron took off from the aircraft carrier Furious. The weather was bad and two of the 18 aircraft crashed into a mountain on the way to Bardufoss. However, by the following day the Gladiators were established on the airfield and able to conduct air operations in the Harstad-Narvik area.

It was planned to have the 46th Hurricane Squadron operate from Skånland. This squadron took off from the aircraft carrier Glorious on May 26 and attempted to land at Skånland “but three out of eleven aircraft tipped on to their noses on landing as a result of the soft surface of the runway.”15 The squadron was diverted to Bardufoss from where it operated until the end of the campaign.

It was not until the middle of May that the British decided to establish an airbase at Bodø. The Norwegians provided a large labor force from the Bodø area and they had the field ready for operations on May 26. Initially, the ground proved too soft here as it did at Skånland but this was rectified when the runway was re-laid in 14 hours. Except for the three Gladiators that came down from Bardufoss, the British never used this airfield and its capture by the Germans after the British evacuated Bodø gave them an operational airfield close to Narvik.

The Norwegian air group was down to one serviceable aircraft in early May. The rest were shot down, had crashed, or were unserviceable due to lack of spare parts. The aircraft flown in from the southern part of the country performed well in support of the forward brigades but the lack of spare parts reduced their number because some aircraft had to be cannibalized to keep others flying. Some pilots without aircraft were sent to England to receive fighter aircraft training and new aircraft.

Norwegian-Allied Friction

There was growing bitterness between the Norwegians and the British as the operations in Norway progressed. Many Norwegians viewed British actions since the outbreak of war in 1939 as designed to pull their country into that conflict. The Norwegians were promised on April 9 that quick and large-scale assistance would be forthcoming. When the assistance did arrive it was inadequate in both quantity and quality. Continual promises and assurances during the operations in southern and central Norway never materialized. The displeasure over the adequacy of the assistance was closely tied to the question of strategy.

Norwegian recommendations on strategy failed to alter the British War Cabinet’s preoccupation with Narvik and the iron ore. The British decision makers failed to realize that control of central Norway would lead to eventual success in North Norway, while giving up in central Norway doomed any efforts in the north. Frequent Norwegian suggestions that the Allies use forces sitting idle in the Narvik area in Nordland Province were unheeded until it was too late. They could not understand the relative inactivity of the British Navy or the Allied failure to provide adequate air resources for the forces they sent to Norway. General Ruge’s comments on the air support situation in southern Norway were shared by his fellow officers in northern Norway:

It turned out that, as on many other subjects, the British had difficulties coping with the conditions in the country. They did not risk following our recommendations…. Our airmen were used to operating from frozen lakes in the winter… . The British pilots, not used to working under such conditions, did not venture to base their operations on such provisional arrangements and continued to search for what they called real airfields. In this way, much valuable time was lost.16

The British displayed an