In April and early May, 1940 Namsos was the scene of heavy fighting in World War Two between Anglo-French naval and military forces and German military and air forces.
The Namsos Campaign
Norway was at peace in April 1940 when it was suddenly attacked by naval, air and military forces from Nazi Germany. There were several reasons for the attack. Among those 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, so these shipments were essential for the production of tanks, guns, ships, rail cars, trucks and other implements of war. The Baltic Sea was frozen in winter, so for several months each year the Swedes shipped iron ore by rail to the ice-free port of Narvik, in the far north of Norway. 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 underway, spearheaded by the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill. The Germans got to Norway first.
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. The Allies decided to attempt to retake Trondheim, link up with the Norwegians and block a German advance north. This would enable the Allies to interdict Germany's iron ore supplies several months each year. A bonus would be air and naval bases in northern Norway.
A direct approach to Trondheim was deemed too dangerous because of the German possession of the coastal artillery guns at the entrance to the Trondheimsfjord. So it was decided to land forces north and south of the fjord for a pincer attack on the city. The navy would then force the entrance with warships. 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 land troops and supplies for the recapture of Trondheim. In addition, Namsos was on a branch line connecting to the Nordland Railway. A dirt road led some 40 miles south to Trondheim.
Allies land
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 Britain. De Wiart was a 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.
British forces landed on April 16, coming in quickly under cover of darkness in the Polish transport M.V.Chrobry , escorted by the destroyer, HMS Afridi, Captain Philip Vian, commanding.
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 Britain without landing many of the French supplies, leaving the troops without straps for their skiis 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 casualitites) and was replaced by the Montcalm. In total some 6,000 Allied troops were put ashore.
Since transports unloading troops and supplies were vulnerable to air attack, every effort was made to complete this work at night and get away in the early hours of the morning, so as to be well out to sea by daybreak. As a result several ships got their troops ashore, but were unable to finish unloading equipment, and sailed with vital cargo aboard.
The move south
British forces quickly moved south along the snow covered roads. They were able to make some use of the narrow gauge railway. They lacked artillery, trucks, skis and air cover, and when they reached Trondheim Fjord were shelled by a German destroyer. They had no guns to answer it, were being ambushed by German ski troops, attacked from the air, and cut off by German forces landed behind them by sea. Carton De Wiart asked for permission to withdraw, and was told to hold his ground. He did so for several more days. When it became apparent that the attack on Trondheim was off, it was decided to evacuate the Allied force.
Air attacks
German bombers destroyed much of the wood-constructed town 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 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 Namsfjord , HMS Gaul , HMS St. Goran and HMS Aston Villa were sunk by aircraft, the latter managing to make it back to Namsos where she burned.
The 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 operated from the frozen Lake Lesjaskog, but these were too far south to help Namsos.
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 battlecruisers. They were bombed on May 1st as they crossed the North Sea. That evening they encountered thick fog 40 miles short of their rendevous 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 fogbank to fogbank. 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 Sir Andrew 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 ablase. 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 reconnisance 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 foreward 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, the wounded from the Bison and survivors of the HMS Rutlandshire.
British anti-aircraft fire destroyed a number of German aircraft. The convoy reached Scapa Flow on May 5th, Carton De Wiart's 60th birthday.
Comment
The Namsos campaign was not a success for the Allies, though the troops and naval forces and their commanders aquitted 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 Norwegian air fields before the British arrived.
Lack of air cover was a great disadvantage. Norway's few obsolete aircraft were all 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 Britain 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. Britain fell well behind Japan in this respect. The Gloster Gladiator 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, antiaircraft 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 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 Allied commanders here did well under trying circumstances. It really came down to air cover.
References
- "Happy Odyssey", Adrian Carton De Wiart, Jonathan Cape, London, 1950
- "The Right of the Line", John Terraine, Septre, Seven Oaks, Kent, 1988
- "HMS Kelly", Kenneth Poolman, New English Library, London, 1980
- "Norway, Vol. 2" Naval Intelligence Division,London,1943
- "Before the Storm, The Story of Bomber Command, 1939 to 1942", Robert Jackson, Cassell and Co., London, 2001
