Operation Wilfred

• 1. Introduction

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  Operation Wilfred was the name Winston Churchill gave to a plan so minor and seemingly innocuous that he described it himself as "minor and innocent." The idea was simple: lay mines in the channels between Norway's coast and its offshore islands to stop Swedish iron ore from reaching Germany by sea. But nothing about what followed was simple.

  In April 1940, German iron-ore imports from Sweden had reached roughly 20 million long tons as recently as 1938. The Allied naval blockade had denied Germany about 9 million long tons of that supply since 1939, but the sea route through Norwegian waters remained open. Churchill, serving as First Lord of the Admiralty, had wanted to close it for months. What he did not anticipate was that by the time British ships arrived to lay the mines, the Germans would already be on the move.

  The questions that Operation Wilfred raises are not simply about mines and shipping lanes. They open onto a deeper story: how far two Allied governments went to justify an operation that was, by their own private admission, less about saving Finland than about strangling Germany's war economy. And how that plan collided, on the 8th of April 1940, with a German invasion already underway.

• 2. Iron Ore and the Pretext

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  Orme Sargent, the deputy permanent under-secretary at the British Foreign Office, was unusually candid about what the Allies were really after. He wrote that the desire to assist Finland was "only a pretext" to justify occupying northern Sweden, and that the original object of a Scandinavian expedition was to prevent Germany from obtaining the Gällivare iron ore, believing that by doing so the Allies could bring Germany "to her knees within a few months."

  The logic behind this was grounded in geography. In summer, ore traveled by ship from Luleå on the Gulf of Bothnia. When winter ice closed that route, trains carried the ore west to Narvik, on Norway's Atlantic coast, where German freighters picked it up and sailed home through neutral Norwegian waters. Those waters, known as the Inner Leads or Indreled, formed a protected corridor that British warships could not legally enter.

  The French view was equally unsentimental. Admiral Gabriel Auphan, the Deputy Chief of the Maritime Staff, later wrote that no one really expected to stop the Soviet army or save Finland. The plan was to use that pretext to lay hands on Swedish iron ore and deny it to Germany. French Prime Minister Edouard Daladier wanted swift action and suggested the Norwegians could simply be ignored during a swift occupation of their main ports.

  Both governments knew the Norwegians and Swedes would object. In January 1940, the Norwegians had already been warned. On the 3rd of March, the Swedish prime minister rejected the Allied request to transit troops through Swedish territory to Finland. The Norwegian prime minister followed suit the very next day.

• 3. Plans Built on Sand

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  Major-General Pierse Macksey, commander of the 49th (West Riding) Infantry Division, was named land commander for Plan R3, the Allied scheme to land at Narvik and secure the iron ore fields in Lapland. Admiral Edward Evans was designated naval commander. The British commanders were briefed on the 12th of March that they were to land, assist Finland, and deny Russia and Germany the Swedish ore fields for as long as they could.

  The scale of what was being contemplated was considerable. Up to 100,000 British and 50,000 French troops, with generous air and naval support, were considered for the broader Scandinavian effort. The main effort would focus on Norway, with 10,000 to 15,000 troops advancing into Finland. Three separate sub-operations were drafted: Operation Avonmouth, which called for three battalions of Chasseurs Alpins and a British infantry brigade to land at Narvik; Operation Stratford, in which five battalions of British infantry would garrison Stavanger, Bergen and Trondheim; and Operation Plymouth, where three divisions stood ready to cross to Trondheim if Sweden requested help.

  The plan was built on a narrow window. The latest date the Gulf of Bothnia could be expected to remain frozen was the 3rd of April. After that, the summer sea route from Luleå would reopen and the strategic logic of seizing Narvik would weaken considerably.

  Embarkation for Plan R3 actually began on the 13th of March, only to be cancelled that same day. The reason: Finland had capitulated to the Soviet Union. The pretext dissolved overnight, and most of the troops were sent to France. The Chasseurs Alpins returned to their base. Churchill and General Sir Edmund Ironside, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, tried to get permission to land at Narvik regardless, but were rebuffed.

• 4. The Altmark Incident and Churchill's Push

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  Churchill's appetite for action in Norwegian waters had been sharpened weeks before the mines were ever laid. The Altmark incident, which unfolded on the 16th and the 17th of February 1940, saw British ships enter Norwegian territorial waters to rescue merchant sailors being held aboard the German vessel Altmark. Those sailors had been taken prisoner after their ships were sunk by a German heavy cruiser and were being transported to Germany.

  The episode confirmed for Churchill that Norwegian neutrality was not an impenetrable barrier and that limited operations inside the Leads were possible without triggering a full confrontation with the Royal Norwegian Navy, known in Norwegian as Sjøforsvaret. On the 20th of February, just days after the rescue, Churchill ordered the Admiralty to urgently prepare a minelaying plan, specifying that it should be "minor and innocent" and might be called Wilfred.

  The War Cabinet and the Ministry of Economic Warfare were more cautious. They worried about the effect such operations might have on British imports from Norway and Sweden. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, on the 29th of February, decided to wait and see.

  By late March, after Daladier's resignation and the appointment of Paul Reynaud as French prime minister, the political calculus shifted. At the Supreme War Council, Chamberlain presented Operation Royal Marine, a proposal to float mines down the Rhine to disrupt river traffic in Germany. The French agreed to it, but only if it was linked to mining operations in the Norwegian Leads. The two plans became entangled, and a date was set: mines would be laid in the Leads in early April, and warnings would be sent to Oslo and Stockholm first.

• 5. Racing the Germans

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  On the 3rd of April 1940, British intelligence began receiving reports of an unusual accumulation of ships and troops at the Baltic German ports of Rostock, Stettin and Swinemunde. The assumption was that these were forces being prepared to counter an Allied move against Scandinavia. Germany had some awareness of Allied plans through its own intelligence. What the British did not yet grasp was that Germany was not reacting to their plans. Germany was executing its own.

  That same day, the British took the decision to proceed with the mining of the iron ore route separately from Operation Royal Marine, fixing the date of the 8th of April for the Admiralty to carry it out. Operation Wilfred now had three components. Force WV, consisting of four destroyer minelayers and four escorting destroyers, was to lay mines at the mouth of Vestfjord, at coordinates centered near 67 degrees 24 minutes north. Force WS, with an auxiliary minelayer and four destroyers carrying 280 mines, was to lay a field off Stadtlandet at roughly 62 degrees north. Force WB, with just two destroyers, was to simulate a minefield off the Bud headland south of Kristiansund using oil drums.

  On the 5th of April, a large force of warships set out from Scapa Flow, the main British naval base, for the Norwegian coast. Two days later, German ships were sighted in the Heligoland Bight on passage to Norway, and the mine laying by Force WS was cancelled. On the 7th of April, HMS Glowworm, under Lieutenant-Commander Gerard Roope, had become detached from the main force while searching for a man lost overboard. She encountered the German heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper, attacked with torpedoes, absorbed severe damage in return, and then rammed the cruiser before sinking with the loss of 111 men. Roope received a posthumous Victoria Cross.

• 6. The 8th of April

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  At 05:15 on the morning of the 8th of April, the Allies broadcast a statement to the world justifying their action and defining the mined areas. The British government had already informed the Norwegian authorities of its intention to mine their territorial waters. The Norwegian government issued a strong protest and demanded the mines be removed immediately.

  Force WV laid its minefield at the mouth of Vestfjord as planned. Force WB sailed to the Bud headland and used oil drums to simulate mine laying, then patrolled the area to warn shipping away. The real mines at Vestfjord were in place. But events were already outpacing the operation.

  Later that day, a German ore carrier sailing from Stettin in northern Germany was sunk in the Skagerrak by a Polish submarine. The ship was carrying troops, horses and tanks for the German invasion of Norway. Around half of the roughly 300 men aboard were drowned. Survivors, picked up by Norwegian fishing boats, told their rescuers they were heading to Bergen to defend it from the British.

  The German fleet was already advancing up the Norwegian coast. The following morning, the 9th of April, Germany launched Operation Weserübung, the simultaneous invasion of Norway and Denmark. German forces landed at Stavanger, Oslo, Trondheim, Bergen and Narvik. The Norwegians were taken completely by surprise. The plan that had consumed months of Allied deliberation had been overtaken in a single night.

• 7. What Came After

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  British and French troops landed at Narvik on the 14th of April to assist the Norwegians, pushing the Germans out of the town and coming close to forcing a German surrender. Despite additional Allied landings between the 18th and the 23rd of April, Norway surrendered on the 9th of June 1940.

  The southern elements of the Wilfred operation, Force WS and Force WB, rejoined the Home Fleet and took part in Operation Rupert, the British campaign against the German invasion. Force WV in the north confronted the German landings directly. The 2nd Destroyer Flotilla, which had laid mines in Vestfjord, fought in the First Naval Battle of Narvik on the 10th of April. HMS Icarus captured the German vessel Alster on the 11th of April and took part in the Second Naval Battle of Narvik on the 13th of April 1940.

  Operation Wilfred failed in its central purpose. Iron ore shipments to Germany were not cut off. The mining of the Leads did not prevent the invasion; it may have coincided with it, but the German timetable was entirely independent. What the operation did produce, as a lasting consequence, was a different kind of access: for the rest of the war, British ships and aircraft could enter Norwegian waters and attack German ships without the legal constraints of Norwegian neutrality. The country was no longer a protected corridor. It had become a theater of war.