The German attack on Norway and sinking of the KMS Blucher
I had been hearing stories about the Norwegian resistance long as I can remember. One of the stories was about the “sea cadets” on an island in Oslofjord who loaded up an old cannon named Moses and sang a big German ship full of troops, with one shot no less. In the story the Germans were all lined up on deck at parade rest, in their dress uniforms. Bands playing, flags flying. In the story it was a troopship and the troops were expecting an enthusiastic welcome.
I spent a month in Norway, all of June, visiting family and seeing the places we all came from. After my wife and son went back to the US I stayed on, traveling by bicycle and camping. I got to see the Vermork power plant at Rjukan, the Resistance Museum in Oslo, a couple of the places where there were fights, Haukelifjel, one of the roadless areas above treeline where resistance units found safety between operations, part of the area called Hardangervidda.
Oscarsborg in Oslofjord was the island in the story. It is about 35 K south of Oslo, in the middle of a narrows in the fjord. It is a good square KM of solid, 600-million-year-old rock, two islands joined by a short bridge. There were two channel approaches past it, but the government filled up one channel in the 19th century leaving just one channel for large craft. The island has had guns for a long time and was fortified heavily in 1845 with 30 heavy guns, smoothbores in the 100-pound class.
The island got a single Krupp breechloader, the 1878 30.5 cm (12 inch) L/22 model, in 1882, which was emplaced in front of the old fort. Depending on the charge, this gun could send a thousand-pound shell off at 2,000 fps using the best black powder of the day. Standard loading was a 725-pound shell at a little over 1,700 fps.1
The armament was stiffened in 1893 by the addition of three of the new Krupp 1892-model 28 cm guns, MRK L/35 models. These used a nitro-based powder and sent their shells off considerably faster than the older guns. A trained crew could load these guns in two minutes for a follow-up shot. Like the older guns, though, elevation and traverse were adjusted by hand cranking. These were the guns known as Moses, Aaron and Joshua.
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Around this time batteries were also set up on the shore across from Oscarsborg, including the Kopas battery at Drobak with its three six-inch Armstrong guns.
This is a view of the business end of Oscarsborg, taken from the site of the Kopas battery onshore.
oscarsborg_from_drobak.jpg
In 1902 a battery of shore-based torpedoes was added to the upchannel island. This installation was in a cave blasted into living rock and the fish were launched though tunnels three meters below the water. The torpedoes in the launch cradles were Whitehead Mark Vs manufactured in Austria-Hungary prior to the Great War. These were a 45 cm torpedo with a top speed of 40 kt and a 100 KG load of HE. The Oscarsborg launcher had 3 fish in cradles ready to launch, plus six more racked up for immediate use.
torpedo_base_4.jpg torpedo_base_8.jpg
At the time all this stuff was built, Norway was in a “personal union” with Sweden, having been awarded to that country as fallout from the Napoleonic Wars. Previously it had been the poorest region in Denmark, now it was the poorest part of Sweden. After Norway broke away in 1905, the country was too broke to have much in the way of military ambition and pursued a policy of neutrality. There was no money to modernize the Oscarsborg defences, so it retained its state-of-the-art 19th century systems. You could call it a steampunk installation. Oscarsborg, meanwhile became a training center for coast artillery officers, and was taken off the list of active shore defense installations.
Fast forward to early 1940, the period known as the “Phoney War.” Britain and Germany both had plans to invade Norway, but hadn’t taken any overt action. Oscarsborg got a fresh class of 450 cadets around the first of April and classes had just begun. The CO was 64-year-old Birger Eriksen, and there were a few experienced officer-instructors and NCOs; the commandant of the torpedo battery was on sick leave, so the former commandant, Andreass Anderssen, had been recalled from retirement and was nominally in charge of the fish.
The situation was pretty confusing those first days of April. A British task group led by the battlecruiser HMS Renown had begun laying mines inside Norwegian territorial waters. Both the Germans and the British had put in motion their plans to invade and occupy Norway, neutrality be damned. At 23:00 on 8 April a fleet of warships forced Oslofjord’s outer defenses, ignoring warning shots and live rounds. A Norwegian patrol boat was sunk, but not before its captain had radioed naval HQ in Oslo and sent up flares signaling hostile vessels. The mystery fleet disappeared into the dark and fog.
HQ must have radioed Eriksen in time for him to make preparations. In any case the three big Krupp guns were loaded with HE rounds and aimed to strike a vessel in the channel. They were manned by artillery instructors, some cooks, and the cadets. A boat was sent to get Anderssen out of bed and bring him to the island. Time wore on but no orders came from HQ or the government.
It must have been good visibility, because the searchlights were able to illuminate the unknown attackers. At 04:21 Eriksen gave the order to fire. The order was apparently questioned because he then said “Either I will be decorated or I will be court martialled, Fire!" The gunners got off two rounds, one each from Moses and Aaron. Both rounds hit the lead vessel, the Blucher, and both did major damage. The first round hit the ship above the main deck, penetrated and blew up in a compartment full of fuel and explosives, - not the magazines for the big guns - setting them off, blowing out a bunch of bulkheads and setting the ship afire. The second round hit high, at the fire command station on 02 or 03 deck and knocked out one of the range finders and the electrics for aiming the Blucher’s main battery guns. As Blucher continued toward Oslo, batteries at Drobak opened up, including the 6” guns at Kopas. One of those shells knocked out Blucher’s steering while another destroyed her firefighting mains. Blucher now had to use engines and shaft controls to steer. She was unable to return effective fire except from her AA guns, which forced the abandonment of the two 57 mm guns at Husvik. Meanwhile Kopas Battery turned its attention to Lutzow, scoring hits that disabled that ship’s main batteries.
As Blucher passed the batteries the guns fell silent and supposedly the sound of Germans singing “Deutschland uber Alles” could be heard. Again, supposedly that was the first hint they had that they had been firing at Germans. In any case Blucher steamed on into the kill zone for the torpedoes. Anderssen fired his first fish which hit forward without doing much damage. He adjusted his aim and put the second fish into the machinery spaces amidships, It looked good so he held onto his last fish and reloaded the two cradles, waiting for the next target, which would have been the heavy cruiser Lutzow.
This site includes a very accurate film clip of the sinking of the Blucher, plus a couple B&W photos of her last few minutes above water.
https://forum.worldofwarships.com/to...-bl%C3%BCcher/
Lutzow, Emden and the rest of the invasion fleet held back to see what would happen. What happened is Blucher’s magazines caught fire and blew, the ship turned turtle and sank taking at least hyalf of the crew and the troops – SS and Gestapo she was carrying, plus administrative people - with her. Some drowned, some died in the burning oil that surrounded the ship. A few made it to shore and were taken prisoner. The commander of the Lutzow and the rest of the COs agreed to retreat. The planned 6 AM landing and lightning coup against the King and the government failed to materialize. The royal family, the elected officials, and the gold reserves all got away, eventually to England, where they maintained a presence as the legitimate government of Norway.
Quisling and the Nazis of the Nasjonal Samling had probably painted a rosy picture of Norwegians longing to be liberated by their aryan brothers. If the Germans believed that, they were seriously misled. In any case, after April 9, things were never the same between the Nazis and the Norwegians. To say the least.
The Luftwaffe began bombing Oscarsborg and the Drobak forts later on April 9, damaging the buildings but inflicting no casualties. Eriksen surrendered Oscarsborg the next day. I guess he figured he had done as much damage as he could.
So the stories I had been told were not entirely correct. The action took place between 04: and 05:00, in the dark. The troops were not lined up in dress uniforms, no flags or brass band either. The entire action took place well away from Oslo, so there wasn’t much of an audience. The old guns did a lot of damage, but it was the fish that sank the Blucher.
There were no troopships. The Germans put their invasion troops into the fast cruisers – these were 30+ knot ships with fast escort vessels. They were planning a surprise and hoped for a shock attack that would preempt any possible resistance.
In the official version of events, no one knew who the attackers were – they could have been British. A task group led by the battlecruiser HMS Renown was operating in Norwegian waters and the British had a plan for a preemptive occupation of strategic sites in Norway, with or without Norwegian permission. The Renown had heavier guns, thicker armor and a hollow “bulge” on her hull below waterline to absorb torpedo blasts. Her crew was seasoned and probably far-better trained. Chances are she would have escaped major damage from the same hits that sank Blucher. In any case, British and French troops landed in Norway joining with Norwegian armed forces to fight around Narvik and in central Norway. The Germans had established control of the airspace in the first days of the invasion; within two months the allies evacuated and Norwegian armed forces surrendered, defected to Sweden or disbanded. The resistance continued. It was five long years.
jn
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Originally Posted by blackhawknj
