warspite1
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Joined: 2/2/2008
From: England
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quote:
ORIGINAL: brian brian
It is a fascinating question. Before the Germans invaded Norway, the Norwegians would only lease a portion of their shipping to the British. At the time of the withdrawal from Narvik, they had just received use of all the rest of that shipping, courtesy of the German DOW on Norway, and the Battle of the Atlantic hadn't even started yet. So some of those concerns are hindsight type concerns; I'm not sure if the serious Convoy system had even gotten up and running in the first half of 1940.
My point was that if the Allies were willing to risk war with Norway over mining the Leads, why withdraw when they had beaten the Germans at Narvik? I think it was more due to the stunning collapse in France than the military demands of defending the place, which were not that great. If Hitler had somehow stalled on the Meuse the Allies would have held on to Narvik. The Royal Navy had no fear of the Kriegsmarine and a continued campaign off Norway could well have led to the destruction of even more of the KM. At best, the whole affair is an example of Allied strategic waffling and their woeful preparations for campaigning in the theater in general.
I feel sure the Royal Navy could have figured out how to offload supply cargo somewhere in the area, but that probably leads to a more cogent reason for the withdrawal:
The Germans didn't need the port (all ports are repairable) until the next winter. That is when the Allies would have had to hold the place, after a long Arctic summer of 1940 against a German war machine newly freed to do what it wished after the collapse of France. The investment across those six months wasn't worth it.
The first things withdrawn were all the fighter aircraft already deployed, though this wasn't even two dozen machines (then lost on the Glorious) ... probably due to the specter of Rotterdam. Half of those were bi-planes anyway and little of this would have made any difference to any other theater.
I just read up on it a little - the decision to withdraw was made a few days before Dunkirk, even. The British were panicking and in fact kept their decision secret from the French and the Norwegians for another week+. But the bottom line is to basically press the start button on a major strategic campaign and then to abandon the goal of the campaign to save a half a division of troops and less than a squadron of fighter aircraft is just not a sterling example of smart war-making.
warspite1
Guess we shall agree to disagree on this  My final points:
Make no mistake, the Battle of the Atlantic and the war against the u-boats began on day 1 - no hindsight required (albeit the main losses were in the southwestern approaches and North Sea too). The Germans pulled units back from the Atlantic for the Norwegian Campaign (only for their torpedoes to fail) but look at the tonnage sunk in 1939 with just a handful of boats.
To give the Allied Campaign credence by putting the word "Strategic" in there is to give it far more respect than it deserves. Smart war-making? No - smart war-making did not exist for the British and French from September 1939-June 1940.
As for the withdrawal.
The aircraft withdrawn at the end were Hurricane fighters - the first time a high performance aircraft had ever been landed on an aircraft carrier sans landing aids - a superb piece of flying totally wasted by the loss of HMS Glorious - and most of those pilots the following day  There were Gladiators in the north but keeping them operational simply increases your chances of losing precious pilots.
But if the British stay (and assuming there is a suitable airfield and somewhere the aircraft can be maintained - unlike the rather sad effort on Lake Leskajog??) those aircraft will be lost through ground attack, poor maintenance, air combat, AA etc. How many replacements are sent? How many are sucked in to this battle for no purpose?
How can the "demands of defending a place not be that great" when that place is 800 miles away, by sea, in the Arctic circle, with no guaranteed air cover, no port to unload at? What happens while the supply ships are waiting to be manually unloaded (assuming they get past the u-boat screen)? They would be pray to the Luftwaffe as they sat like sitting ducks. How do you get the fuel ashore for the aircraft? How do you get the aircraft ashore? Fly off from ferry carriers? Oh great more targets for the u-boats and the Luftwaffe.
As said any troops there were far more urgently required elsewhere, and the aircraft even more so, the ships yet more so still. Dowding (rightly) refused to send more planes to France (the first line of defence for the UK) but was expected to say yes to a place of no strategic importance whatsoever?
Any shipping that would have been lost in supplying the place would have been lost for absolutely nothing and could not be afforded given the state of play at the end of May 1940.
< Message edited by warspite1 -- 2/5/2015 11:05:10 PM >
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