The morning's battle had been costly, especially for the Germans. Anton Schmitt and Wilhelm Heidkamp were sunk with 131 men, including Kommodore Bonte. Diether von Roeder and Bernd von Arnim were immobilized and unseaworthy. Hans Lüdemann and Georg Thiele were severely damaged. The remaining destroyers, Hermann Künne, Wolfgang Zenker, Erich Giese and Erich Koellner, were undamaged but had expended half their ammunition.
With the arrival of the British battleship Warspite, the Second Battle of Narvik would begin around noon on the 13th, preceded on the 12th by an air strike from the carrier Furious. At 4:15 p.m., nine open-cockpit, cloth-covered Swordfish torpedo biplanes from Lt. Cmdr. PG. Sydney Turner's 818 Squadron were launched. A U-boat in Vestfjord sighted the approaching planes and warned the ships and ground troops at Narvik. When the Swordfish reached the target, they proved no match for antiaircraft batteries aboard the destroyers, as well as several established ashore with guns salvaged from Heidkamp and Diether von Roeder. Two Swordfish were shot down, and the remainder returned to Furious without striking any of the warships.
The Germans knew a major seaborne attack was imminent and set out to ambush the fleet with U-boats and the able destroyers remaining to them. Aboard Warspite, Captain VA.C. Crutchley and his fleet commander, Vice Adm. Jock Whitworth, were also aware that the Germans would be waiting and, before moving into the fjord on the 13th, launched one of their Swordfish to spot for the fleet. Then the order was passed, and the force moved ahead behind destroyer screens.
As Warspite moved up the fjord, she was sighted by the U-46. Luckily for Whitworth, the sub hit a submerged rock during her attack run and was forced to retreat. Farther up the fjord, the airborne spotter, Lt. Cmdr. W L.M. Brown, found several destroyers and informed the battleship of their positions before reconnoitering the harbor. On his return, Brown sighted a second submarine, U-64, near Herjangsfjord, north of Narvik, and attacked, sinking the submarine -- the first U-boat to be sunk from the air.
Fifteen minutes after U-46's aborted attack on Warspite, the British fleet passed the wreck of the Rauenfels and, at 12:51 p.m., found Hans Lüdemann and Wolfgang Zenker zigzagging the width of the fjord.
The two ships were taken under fire by the lead destroyers and by Warspite from a range of 10 miles. After launching several torpedo salvos that missed their marks, the two German destroyers escaped unharmed to Narvik. A few minutes later, the Swordfish aircraft reported Erich Koellner lying beneath cliffs in a cove just south of the flotilla. She was immediately attacked and sunk by Bedouin, Eskimo and Punjabi, helped by two 15-inch shells from Warspite.
Now, with Narvik harbor in sight, the battle began in earnest -- destroyers exchanging torpedoes and gunfire while Warspite fired salvo after salvo. Yet, despite all the activity, the only ship to take a direct hit was the German destroyer Erich Giese, stranded halfway between Narvik harbor and the narrow Rombaksfjord, about three miles to the north.
By 2 p.m., the Germans were nearly out of ammunition. Faced with the futility of continued combat in the main fjord, four of their destroyers dropped smoke pots and ran for Rombaksfjord. The British destroyer Eskimo, aided by another Swordfish spotter, led a five-ship charge behind them. Meanwhile, in Herjangsfjord -- across the main fjord from Narvik -- the Hermann Künne was intentionally driven aground to save her crew. Her scuttling charges had just gone off when she, too, was struck by a torpedo.
In Rombaksfjord, Georg Thiele blocked a narrow passage while Bernd von Arnim, Hans Lüdemann and Wolfgang Zenker landed their crews and scuttled at the fjord's end. Eskimo, warned of Thiele's position by the spotter plane, cautiously emerged through the narrows and, in the ensuing exchange of torpedo and gunfire, disabled the German just as Hero and Forester joined in the action.
The Second Battle of Narvik ended with minor damage to two British destroyers but with half of Germany's destroyer fleet littering the fjords. Thus, the Royal Navy controlled the fjords, but German troops still held Narvik. Dietl ordered Narvik evacuated at 3 p.m., because of the imminent threat of an Allied landing, but reoccupied the city at 7 p.m., when Warspite unexpectedly left the harbor. Every time the battleship appeared in the harbor, Dietl began to withdraw his forces again.
While the warships dueled in the fjords around Narvik, Allied troops under Maj. Gen. Piers Mackesy were already on their way to relieve Norway. The 24th Guards Brigade, composed of the 1st Scots Guard, 1st Irish Guard and 2nd South Wales Borderers, as well as the 146th Brigade, two battalions of French Chasseurs Alpins, a French Foreign Legion brigade from Algiers and a demi-brigade of Polish infantry, had sailed from Greenock, Scotland, on April 12.
he first Allied troops went ashore on the 14th at Harstad, about 60 miles northwest of Narvik. On the 15th, more Allied forces landed 160 miles southwest of Narvik at MO, followed on the 16th and 18th with landings at Namos and Andalsnes, farther down the coast near Trondheim. On the 26th and 27th, a battalion of Welsh Borderers and three battalions of French Chasseurs Alpins reinforced in the area near Harstad.
For weeks, Allied forces concentrated around Narvik while German aircraft harassed them almost daily from bases far to the south at Aalborg in Denmark and the newly captured airfield at Sola on the southwestern tip of Norway
It was not until May 27, six weeks after the first of 24,500 Allied troops arrived in the vicinity of Narvik, that Lord Cork ordered the final assault on Narvik. Supported by land-based fighters and naval gunfire from the cruiser Southampton, British, Polish and French soldiers then swept into Narvik from the north and south and across the fjord in landing craft. Despite a counterattack by Luftwaffe Stukas, by 11 a.m., the 2,000 German defenders had been rolled back. At 5 p.m., the Allied advance stopped to allow a Norwegian battalion the honor of re-entering Narvik first. The battle officially ended at 8 o'clock.
The victory would be short-lived, however, since elsewhere the war had engulfed Europe and plans were already under way for the evacuation of Allied forces from Norway. After the May 10 German invasion of France and the low Countries, with lead elements of a German Armored Corps contacting British forces near Dunkirk, on May 22 the Defense Council was meeting with Winston Churchill to determine the disposition of the forces in Norway. On the 24th, Lord Cork was ordered to evacuate Narvik and bring his troops back for the defense of England.
While most of the world watched with fascination as the Allies evacuated more than 38,000 troops from Dunkirk in only eight days, in Norway the German 21st Army Group advanced from Oslo toward Trondheim and Narvik. To save 6,000 Allied troops in Trondheim and Namsos from envelopment, the British High Command ordered them evacuated on the nights of May 30 and June 1 -- the first phase of the general withdrawal from Norway. However, intense dive-bomb attacks drove the supporting aircraft carriers Ark Royal and Glorious away from the harbor, and the evacuation was delayed for 24 hours.
Meanwhile, 24,500 Allied troops remained in Harstad and Narvik. Fifteen troop ships, escorts, and the carriers Ark Royal and Glorious rendezvoused 180 miles off the coast and prepared to go to Narvik two at a time to pick up the men. Fifteen thousand troops departed in a six-ship convoy on June 7, and the remaining 10,000 boarded seven transports on the morning of the 8th. The last forces to leave were a rear guard of Chasseurs Alpins, British engineers and control personnel and the various Allied commanders. Later on the 8th, Dietl recaptured a deserted Narvik.
The carriers were provided to assist the 46 and 263 squadrons at Bardufoss establish air supremacy during the evacuation. However, as the evacuation progressed, ground-based pilots saw the carriers as alternatives to destroying their aircraft and suggested that they be allowed to land aboard the ships. The major obstacle that faced them was that none of the pilots had ever made a carrier landing and their planes were not designed to do so. On the night of June 7, the two squadrons left Bardufoss and, guided by a carrier-based Fairey Swordfish from the Glorious, flew out to meet the carrier. Remarkably, all 10 Gladiators and eight Hurricanes landed without serious incident and were lashed to the deck for the trip home.
Although the German surface navy had been inactive since losing one-half its destroyer fleet at Narvik, the interlude had been well-spent repairing damaged ships and planning Operation Juno to intercept the British Home Fleet. On June 6, the Naval Staff ordered Juno executed and, at 0800, Gneisenau, Scharnhorst, Hipper, Lützow, Admiral Scheer and three destroyers left Kiel for the North Sea.
Aboard Glorious, a converted World War I battlecruiser (and sister ship to Courageous, which was sunk off Ireland by U-29 during the opening days of the war), the skipper received orders to proceed immediately for England. His flight deck was crowded with the additional land-based planes which made flight operations impossible, and so, with an escort of two destroyers and a tanker, Captain WT Makeig Jones set course for Scapa Flow.
On the afternoon of June 8, Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Lützow and Scheer found Glorious and her escorts. The two British destroyers valiantly made smoke and charged the superior German force while the carrier tried in vain to escape. In a battle that took only minutes to play out, Glorious and her escorts went down, taking with them all but 43 of the 1,515 men aboard, including all the pilots from Bardufoss.
During the brief exchange, however, the destroyer Acasta hit Scharnhorst with a torpedo that blew a hole in her side 60 feet long and caused the battleship to retire to Trondheim for repairs. Ten days later, while clearing a path for the crippled Scharnhorst, Gneisenau was torpedoed by the British submarine Clyde. The engagement cost the battleship a goodly portion of her bow and forced her out of action for the next three months.
This was the final significant action for the control of Narvik and Norway. Hitler eventually stationed 3,000 men in Norway to guard against another Allied invasion that never came.
Britain lost one aircraft carrier, two cruisers, nine destroyers, six submarines, 17 auxiliary ships and 112 aircraft, counting those aboard Glorious. Another five cruisers and eight destroyers were seriously damaged. French and Polish forces lost one destroyer and submarine each, and the French cruiser Emile Bertin was badly damaged. Norway lost two capital ships and practically all of its smaller vessels and submarines.
German losses, while about equal in number to those of the British, totaled nearly one-third of the entire German surface fleet and were never fully replaced. During the campaign, one heavy cruiser, two light cruisers, 10 destroyers, 8 submarines, 24 auxiliaries, and 127 aircraft were lost. In addition, both of her battlecruisers, a pocket battleship, and two heavy cruisers were damaged.
The German success in ensuring Hitler a supply of iron ore, as well as maintaining valuable air, sea and land bases along the strategic Scandinavian coastline, came at a high cost crippling Germany's fleet. After Narvik, Germany could no longer challenge England's control of the seas. To memorialize the campaign's high cost, Germany gave the name Narvikclass to the ships that replaced those lost in Norway. The German military also instituted a series of campaign badges, the first being the Narvikschild that was awarded to the 8,577 men who participated in the Norway campaign between April 9 and June 9, 1940.
Narvik was the first time Germany defied the overwhelming supremacy of the British fleet. By using surprise, concentrated airpower at crucial moments, and aided by a large modicum of luck in the forms of terrible weather and Allied procrastination, the German Naval Staff achieved notable success that violated most contemporary strategy but achieved its objective.
Perhaps the most important "first" of the Narvik campaign, however, was the reliance by both sides on combined operations -- that is, coordinating air and land forces to achieve maximum military force at an objective. This lesson, first practiced in, around, and over Norway's fjords, has become the keystone of all modern warfare.
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