BMMHS Zoom talk Booked for March 2027

With the last few months of the ‘Phony War’ slipping away, at the end of 1939, Britain, France on the one hand and Germany on the other both became interested in Norway which had been clinging to its neutral status. Both sides prepared an invasion – Germany to ensure iron-ore traffic from Sweden, provide U-Boat bases for the sea war against Britain, and to clear the flanks prior to the planned Blitzkrieg invasion of France. The Allies, for their part, wanted to prevent a German occupation Norway. The German invasion took place first, by a hairsbreadth! Unusually for Germany it was a seaborne invasion, and her various invasion ship groups all managed to avoid the Royal Navy’s blockade. One group of destroyers reached Narvik, landed troops which captured the town, but were then surprised by a small group of British destroyers which attacked Narvik sinking some German ships. The British destroyers were then intercepted by other German destroyers on their withdrawal from Narvik and some of the force were sunk. Before the surviving German destroyers could escape back to Germany, the battleship HMS Warspite plus destroyers sailed up the fjords and systematically annihilated the German destroyers which gallantly fought to the end. In just a few days Germany had lost half her destroyer force.