The Whale Has Wings Vol 1 - Rebirth (20 page)

This activity was reported to the Norwegian cabinet in Oslo. The cabinet ordered a mobilization, however for reasons which were not understood at the time
(or indeed later), the Defence minister did not point out a secret mobilization would be done by post and take days; he had already refused repeated calls for mobilization from his senior generals.

Further north, Whitworth in HMS Renown was waiting for support and for the weather to ease to launch a new search for the enemy units he was sure were close-by. In view of the weather and very limited visibility, he did not want to leave the carrier unprotected - the mix of bad weather, poor visibility and possible heavy enemy units in the vicinity being the 'worse case' scenario discussed before the war
, allowing a carrier to be surprised by a surface force. His problem was the same as Forbes; actually finding the enemy. He was reluctant to simply run around chasing (possibly misleading) sighting reports, as this could do more harm than good. Once he had a cruiser and some more destroyers, he would detach the carrier with protection and close the Norwegian coast while the carrier planes hopefully located the enemy for him to attack. His decision making was not helped by the rather contradictory information coming from the Admiralty.

Despite the bad weather, his force then encountered two German destroyers (they were part of Gruppe 1 heading for Narvik, separated from the main force due to the terrible weather conditions and having eased further away from the
notoriously dangerous Norwegian coast.. These made the mistake of running into Renown and her escorting destroyers. The carrier kept her distance with her two escorts while the Renown and her destroyers engaged the German ships. One of them was sunk quickly - 15" shells and destroyers do not make a good combination, while the second was pursued by the British ships. She was soon hit and disabled by one of the British destroyers, and then, surprisingly, surrendered. She was found to be heavily laden with troops (presumably why she had surrendered), but it took some time to establish this and that they had intercepted part of a force landing at Narvik.

Whitworth hoped that his
interception of two of the nine destroyers heading for Narvik would help the defenders. Sadly, this made no difference, as the Norwegian commander surrendered immediately to the German troops without a fight (He was later tried and sentenced for treason). To try and aid the Norwegians, Whitworth detached six of his destroyers with orders to enter the fjord and sink the German destroyers. The weather was easing, and he expected to be able to support them with an air search and strike from Colossus. The other search planes were tasked to locate the heavy ships apparently with the German force (unknown to him, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were now to seaward of him). HMS Repulse would soon join his force, and once he had located the enemy he intended to attack with the battlecruisers and their supporting destroyers (with, if possible, a disabling air strike from his carrier). The attack on the fjord was planned to go in at 1000 on the 10th - given the poorly charted and rugged nature of the fjord, and the availability of air cover in daylight, a night attack was considered too risky. It would hopefully allow him to locate the German ships sometime during the day; if he found them, then the destroyer force would keep station outside the fjord and keep them bottled up until he could destroy them at odds (he saw no reason to offer the Germans anything like a fair fight if he could avoid it), although the decision on when and how to engage was left up to the destroyers.

Four of the cruisers currently ready in Britain were ordered to Scapa to join up with HMS Formidable. This would give a second force capable of pinning any German units found against the heavy ships of the Home Fleet.

The landing by Gruppe 2 at Trondhiem encountered only minor resistance, the Hipper engaging the defensive batteries while the destroyers steamed past. Only one of the destroyers received minor damage. Once the landings had taken place, the examination started of the Hipper to determine exactly what damage had been done in the ramming so she could be patched up to get back to Germany safely where she could be properly repaired.

The landing by Gruppe 3 at Bergen were subject to more resistance, and the fortifications damaged both the light cruiser Konigsberg and the artillery training ship Bremse. The damage to Konigsberg was serious, and would take some time to repair sufficiently for her to travel safely to Germany
(the poor weather lead the Captain to insist on making the ship seaworthy before sailing). The forces landing ships, were, however, able to dock without serious opposition, and the fortifications surrendered when Luftwaffe units arrived overhead.

Gruppe 4 encountered much stiffer resistance at Kristiansand, the fortifications twice repulsing the landings and damaging the cruiser Karlsruhe, which nearly ran aground as it attempted to evade their fire. However there was confusion among the defenders when the Norwegians received a general order not to fire on French or British units, and the Germans had captured codes from Horten which they also used to deceive and confuse the defenders. This allowed the Germans to reach the harbor and the town was captured by 1100
.

The most serious resistance
to the landings was encountered by Gruppe 5 in the inner defensive fortifications of the Oslofjord. The heavy cruiser Blucher approached the forts, apparently with the idea that they would be taken by surprise, but instead the ship was fired on when it reached point blank range, finally being sunk by a salvo of40-year old torpedoes from land-based tubes. The light cruiser Lutzow was also damaged, and withdrew 12 miles south to Sonsbukten with the rest of Gruppe 5, where they unloaded their troops. This delayed the arrival of these troops to Oslo by 24 hours, but the city would be captured in less than 12 hours by troops flown into Fomebu airfield.

There was no significant opposition to Gruppe 6 (aided by paratroops) at Stavanger and the objective was captured without loss.

While these landing has been going on, the Royal Navy
had belatedly deduced that the German operation was an invasion of Norway rather than at attempt at a breakout. There were currently two main forces at sea; heavy forces of the Home Fleet with HMS Illustrious (currently sailing north around 70 miles west of Bergen), and the battlecruisers with HMS Colossus southwest of Narvik, with 6 destroyers detached to the Narvik fjord.

In view of the use of her planes to support the destroyer attack on Narvik, Colossus was not able to mount a full search with her r
emaining planes - she only had eight TBR aircraft, and in view of the invasion needed some of these for A/S patrols. She kept three of her nine fighters up in a CAP, as it was considered only a matter of time before the Luftwaffe intervened. Her search planes did not find any German ships in the vicinity (at this point, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were sailing west, away from the force, and the search planes were looking in the wrong place)

In order to strengthen his airpower, the main concern at the moment being to locate the German forces and protect the surface ships, Forbes ordered HMS Warspite and HMS Formidable, with a cruiser and a destroyer escort, to sail from Scapa to a position about 100m west of Trondheim; they could then either operate independently or reinforce the two forces as needed.

HMS Victorious was ordered to disembark the fighters for Malta, and to re-embark her air group. HMS Glorious, currently undergoing a minor refit, was ordered to be ready for sea in 72 hours; in addition, HMS Venerable, then escorting a convoy close to the UK, was ordered to Scapa, the intention being to reinforce the battlecruiser force to two light carriers, a single light carrier not considered sufficient when both air and submarine attack was probably, which would soon be the case close to Norway.

The cruiser forces currently available in the UK were to prepare to conduct operations under the air cover of the carriers. There was, unfortunately, still a severe shortage of destroyers, and consideration was given to how and when to use Force H as reinforcements.

Coastal command was also asked to help the fleet units search for the rather elusive heavy units in the North. Forbes was confident that they would be found soon enough; with Whitworth off Narvik, and a sizeable part of the Home Fleet off Bergen, at some point they had to come past one or the other of them to try and head back to Germany. While Churchill at the Admiralty was fuming at what he thought was the timidity of Whitworth in not attempting to close the Germans, Frazer had (with considerable patience) pointed out that he was doing what he and Forbes wanted; covering Narvik while waiting for the Germans to emerge from the cover of the weather. They couldn't get home without getting past the Home Fleet, which he thought unlikely as the weather was slowly improving and he had considerable air assets available to spot them, at which point he could engage and destroy them at favorable odds. Indeed, if he gone in search of them then they would not have encountered the Gruppe 1 destroyers, and they might not have known about Narvik.

While the German land forces had up until now been extremely successful in the seizing of key targets, and the naval forces (rather more by luck and bad weather than anything else) had delivered their cargoes, the British now had a clearer idea of where and where the German forces were.

The British had received information as to the action at Bergen from Norwegian radio reports, although they did not realize that the Konigsberg was seriously damaged. While Forbes only had one carrier with him, unlike the battlecruisers this was a full fleet carrier, with an air group of nearly 70 planes available. As the force reported at the port was two large ships plus some supporting vessels, the estimate was that they were two cruisers - it was not thought likely
one of the twins would go into Bergen so close to the Home Fleet units. Accordingly a full stroke of 18 Cormorants was prepared, with 6 Goshawks as escort. Forbes did consider releasing forces for a surface attack, but it was not known if the shore batteries were operational and in German hands. A backup strike with torpedoes was planned in case the dive bombing proved insufficient (or there were more German ships in the fjord than was thought); the Cormorant strike would hopefully provide that information.

The strike gave some concern to the operations officers; this was to be the first strike that was expected to encounter enemy fighters, and the first escorted strike in wartime. While it was hoped that the navigation of the fighter pilots, aided by radar and the homing beacons, would bring them all back safely, this was the first time it would be tried in combat, rather than in training. The FAA had made a decision years ago to follow the US practice of single-pilot fighters, and were fervently hoping all the worrying they had done since about not providing a navigator would be proved false. The remaining 12 fighters were reserved
for the defense of the fleet; three planes on CAP, three ready with six more planes available.

While the crews had been nervous about the presence of Luftwaffe fighters, in fact the port was undefended (the Luftwaffe was indeed in Norway in force, but busy in the southern part of the country against the Norwegian resistance). As a result they were able to conduct an undisturbed attack. The first target was the Konigsberg - the crews did not realize she was already heavily damaged, and she was the first target they saw. She was attacked by a total
of 12 Cormorants, who achieved two hits. In addition to the earlier damage she had suffered, two 1,000 bomb hits were more than enough to finish off the cruiser, and she sank on an even keel in the harbor.

The remaining six
planes targeted the cruiser Nurnberg. Only one bomb hit, although a second was close enough to cause underwater damage by shock and some flooding. The bomb hit the ship forward, destroying one of the turrets and causing considerable damage to the bridge and forward structure, killing many of the bridge crew. Unfortunately the damage was not great enough to leave the ship in danger of sinking, although it took the crew the rest of the day to handle and temporarily patch the underwater damage and flooding.

The reports of the strike, and the evaluation that a second cruiser was damaged, but not yet sunk, would normally have resulted in a second attack from Illustrious (she had a full TBR squadron available for a torpedo attack, and it was now known that as yet the port had no air defense. But this was cancelled as the fleet suffered the first Luftwaffe attack of the Norwegi
an campaign, a mixed force of Ju88 and He111 bombers attacking from the south. The CAP was directed onto them, but obviously more than three fighters were needed and the ready flight of three was sent off immediately. This was to show up a weakness in the RN's use of defending fighters; when they were needed to reinforce the CAP they were needed soon, if not immediately, and the current practice of rationing the available fighters was not working well enough. It had originally been designed to cope with reconnaissance flights or small groups of planes, and while the possibility of larger strikes from land bases had been considered, the doctrine hadn't been updated to cope properly with these.

The first three
fighters intercepted the bombers well away from the carrier and heavy ships, breaking up the attack of the Ju88's (due to their recently-discovered dive bombing ability, these were now considered priority targets over the Heinkels), shooting down one. A general melee ensued, but the complex situation was not well handled by the still-inexperienced controllers on the carrier, and although the attackers were forced away from the fleet, aided by the arrival of the next three fighters, no more bombers were shot down, although one was damaged (it later crash-landed in Norway). The bombers dropped their bombs vaguely in the area of a couple of the escorting destroyers, before making their escape (giving the bridge crew of HMS Gurkha both a scare and a soaking from a couple of near misses). The fighters were called back from pursuing the bombers as it was not known what other Luftwaffe forces were in the area.