by William Hakvaag at Lofoten War Memorial Museum
Of the 15 million tons of ore that Germany needs pr. year for its weapons forges, 11 million tons come from Sweden. Most of it via Narvik. Hitler knows that if this lifeline is broken, Germany is finished. The fighters have been escorted all the way to Vestfjorden by the battleships “Scharnhorst” and “Gneisenau”, which break off.
Inside Narvik, the armored ship “Eidsvold” is torpedoed, and with a huge explosion the ship ceases to exist. Large pieces of the ship are blown ashore. Only seven survive. The armored ship “Norge” fights approx. 20 minutes before it has to give up. 101 are killed. Narvik, Hitler’s shipping port for ore, is occupied!
But the English are not far behind. On the night of 10. On the night of April 10, 5 destroyers, led by “Hardy” with Warburton-Lee as Comander, enter the Ofotfjord in terrible weather. They are on the verge of running aground, but manage to make it to Narvik, where they take the Germans by surprise, thinking it is an air raid.
The English repeatedly attack with torpedoes and cannons, the stern of the German destroyer “Wilhelm Heidkamp” is blown up and the German commander of the destroyer Kapitan zur Zee “Bonte” loses his life.
Several other destroyers and merchant ships are damaged or sunk. Warburton-Lee attacks again and again, but then things go wrong. “Hardy” is hit by a 12 cm shell right in the bridge and all the officers, except one, are killed or wounded, Warburton-Lee has one arm cut off, Hardy is put ashore and the wounded make their way up to a small house on a slope above the wreck.
Here, the Norwegian family is woken up by bloody sailors who stagger in and then faint on the floor. Everything from curtains to underwear is used as bandages. Warburton-Lee dies on the beach.
Further out in the fjord, the destroyer “Hunter” is hit by German gunfire 7 times and in desperation to get away, it collides with “Hotspur”. “Hunter” is fatally damaged and sinks. During the further retreat, they encounter the German ammunition ship “Rauenfelds” which is neutralized in a violent explosion. Large parts of the ship end up high up in the mountains.
But the German Navy has not yet been completely put out of action. The English are patrolling the Vestfjord. Further out, the battleship Renown is hunting Scharhorst and Gneisenau. The British cruiser “Penelope” with 600 men is unlucky and runs aground outside Bodø and has to make its way to Skjelfjorden together with “Hotspur”.
The 6 km long and 2 km wide fjord, which is sheltered by high mountains, will be set up as a temporary naval base. For approx. a month. Skjelfjorden acts as Norway’s Scapa Flow. For the 200 people living in the area, life will be turned upside down.
The English are determined
The English have decided to make a clean sweep of Narvik, and on 13 April the huge battleship “Warspite” enters the Ofotfjord. April 13, the huge battleship “Warspite” with its giant guns enters the Ofotfjord together with a number of destroyers. The Germans, who are low on bunkers and ammunition, fight as long as they can before four of them dart into the Rombaksfjord to get away from the Warspite’s giant shells.
The English destroyer “Eskimo” leads and follows. A Norwegian watching the drama sees the Eskimo disappear behind the headland into Rombakken, and then hears the roar of a violent explosion. A short while later, the “Eskimo” emerges from astern, while the entire bow is blown away.
On board, English marches are played loudly to soften the blow to the survivors. And so it goes on and on while the music rattles the rock walls on the way to the hiding place in Skjelfjorden. All 10 German fighters had now been sunk or landed, as well as Germany’s most modern and largest submarine.
In Skjelfjorden, fish buyer Hartvig Sverdrup, who is a central figure in this small community, has made his way to the cruiser “Penelope”, which is slowly sinking. He wants to talk to the captain to agree on the best way to get help, but the captain refuses to come out of his cabin.
On his own, he then requests the salvage vessel “Sterkodder”, which has 4 divers and is located in Harstad, for the fastest possible assistance.
“Sterkodder” bunkers 11 tons of coal and heads for Skjelfjorden. At the same time, the port authority in Kabelvåg is looking for volunteers who can weld and who are helpful.
Even though the mission is secret, many people volunteer, and shortly afterwards 16 people are pounding towards an unknown location in the dark on the fishing boat “Sappmar”.
Before arriving at Skjelfjorden, they had to pass submarine nets and destroyers patrolling the inlet. When they entered the fjord itself, they could hardly believe their eyes.
More than 30 ships had sought shelter from German attacks. English and Polish warships, captured German merchant ships, supply ships and salvage boats. Several of the ships were badly damaged.
One destroyer, the “Eskimo”, had its entire bow cut off, while another, the “Cossack”, had a huge hole under the bridge, so big that a bus could drive through it.
The largest ship, the cruiser “Penelope”, looked like it was about to sink.
Hartvig Sverdrup had not wasted any time either. Food has to be provided for several thousand men, which is difficult under such conditions. But he gets help from Leif Johansen in Stamsund and A,M,Pettersen in Leknes.
After a short time, he can deliver 15,000 eggs and over 3 tons of meat. He organizes a huge skate that is responsible for the water supply to the ships. Not least the “Penelope”, which has had all its fresh water destroyed. But there’s a shortage of barrels, so several barrels of sugar-salted roe are emptied and used in the water flow. The fjord is bustling with thousands of guests and sailors.
Sverdrup has been given a signal gas with a flag on land so that he can send messages to “Penelope” and at the same time keep abreast of developments.
In this throng of ships, many make their way to land. The sailors have no idea where they are, only the officers do, and many believe they have ended up in Greenland. It’s also poignant to see that several of the English guests have received bomb shocks. For the life of them, they don’t want to return to the ship.
Crying and screaming, they are forcibly brought back on board. But the Norwegian helpers have little time to witness this, as they are put straight to work.
Stercodder
The salvage boat “Sterkodder” has berthed next to the “Penelope”, and the divers discover that the entire queue has cracked. Sverdrup is told to get all the sheep tallow he can. This will be used as a sealant.
Since Sverdrup can’t say what he’s going to use so many hundreds of kilos of tallow for, a friend who sends him the tallow from Bodø starts to wonder if he’s had a bad time. The divers start at 04.00 at night and start diving. They don’t finish until 6 pm. 18.00, interrupted only by short breaks.
An enormous strain for a helmeted diver loaded with lead weights. On board “Sterkodder”, wooden plugs are forged according to the divers’ instructions and hammered into the holes. At the same time, others are kneading the sheep’s seaweed to make it soft, which the divers push in to seal around the plugs. Slowly they manage to stabilize the cruiser. The captain is still a caveman in the cabin, and all communication between him and Sverdrup must take place through an intermediary.
In the end, Paymaster Sharp paid little attention to the captain and made decisions on his own.
The worst job was on board the “Eskimo”. Kåre and Rolf Lorentsen participated in the work of burning holes in the foredeck, so that they could get down to the remains of the 28 people who had died. None of them had had any opportunity to escape as they had been below deck. When the hole was large enough, the stench from the dead flowed up towards them.
Only volunteers could be used here. Before anyone is allowed to enter the ship, they have to drink a large mug of rum to dampen the eeriness of the corpse collection that takes place in a soup of oil and seawater. Englishmen sew their dead comrades into canvas sacks in a barracks at “Eskimo”. The sailor’s wet grave awaits further out in the fjord.
Up on deck, a giant of a sailor staggers around crying, staring down into the barge where his dead comrades are being prepared for their final rest. He has been poured a drink to calm him down.
Another, Olav Rothli from Kabelvåg, is put on board the “Cossack” where they begin to repair the worst of the damage. The aim is to get the ships so seaworthy that they can make their own way to England. The mood on board was surprisingly good, despite the losses the English had suffered. The reason was probably that the Germans had fared even worse…
Those who were injured were sent to Gravdal Hospital, where all the doctors in Lofoten had gathered to help. To this day, the hospital still has the coats of arms from the British warships that they received as a thank you hanging in the hospital.
Slowly, this volunteer force manages to seal the ships with huge amounts of wooden plugs and sheep’s wool. Cement is also used in some places. The English begin to take a brighter view of the situation and every day the Norwegians receive 20 very exclusive cigarettes, packed especially for the English royal family. They were given by the King after the successful attack on “Altmark” where 300 English prisoners were set free.
The Germans, unable to understand where the British naval force had gone, found the answer with an observation plane some time in May. The English managed to shoot down the plane, but too late. Messages had been sent and the rest was not long in coming. The harbor was full of anchored ships when the German bombers attacked on May 10. May.
Pga. the vicious air defense that both “Penelope” and the destroyers played up with, the Luftwaffe had to keep a high altitude.
However, the accuracy was “fabulous” according to someone who witnessed the whole thing. Only 3 bombs ended up in the rock wall. The others hit eerily close to their targets. On board the Penelope, 5 men were killed and 7 wounded.
“Sterkodder”, who tried to back away from “Penelope” was thrown “here and there” in the violent explosions.
Sverdrup himself had been on board the Penelope when the attack came and dived aboard the skiff Fix, which was running for its life to get away from the cruiser. But apart from some huge cascades of seawater and a splinter in the mast, everything went well. It was particularly tragic for Sverdrup that his contact on board the Penelope, Paymaster Sharp, was killed at his desk by a splinter.
On the same day, the English begin to dismantle the naval base. “Penelope” leaves late in the evening with the help of the tugboat “Bandit” and one of its own propellers. The tow took 6 days.
She was later so badly punctured during the defense of Malta that she went by the name “Pepperbørsa”. Here, too, the ship was sealed with wooden plugs, making it look like a hedgehog, before it went to the USA to be rebuilt. “Penelope” ended its days on February 18, 1944 outside Italy. “Eskimo” made its way to England, where it was surprisingly quickly repaired so that it could participate in the Lofoten Raid on March 4, 1941.
This article was created by William Hakvaag at Lofoten War Memorial Museum
