NORTHERN THEATRE: Finale

The end came with a surprise and a smash. To the hard-fighting Nazi forces commanded by his good friend Lieut. General Eduard ("Bull") Dietl, Adolf Hitler had promised aid. With the "Bul" and his men holed up in a railway tunnel just six miles from the Swedish border and facing gradual annihilation by British planes and artillery, the promised help arrived suddenly and unexpectedly in the form of a major naval force including the 26,000-ton battleships Gneisenau (reported sunk in Oslo Fjord) and Scharnhorst (damaged in an exchange of shots with the Renown).

Caught off guard and inadequately protected, the British aircraft carrier Glorious (22,500-ton sister ship of the Courageous, crew of 1,216) used as a base for air operations against Narvik, was an easy prey to the 11-inch guns of the Nazi warships, as were also the 19,840-ton transport null the 5,666-ton tanker Oilpioneer, and the destroyers Acasta and Ardent. The Allied Expeditionary Force began to evacuate.

Day later gaunt King Haakon ordered the capitulation of what was left to him of Norway. With Crown Prince Olav and his Government he abandoned a fugitive existence in the fir and birch woods of Lapland for questionable security in England, there to "carry on the war" against Hitler in an as yet unannounced manner. "The necessity of war forced the Allies to gather all their forces on other fronts, where all soldiers and all materials are necessary," explained Foreign Minister Halvdan Koht in a broadcast from far northern Tromso.

Thus Britain acquired one more fugitive monarch, lost the only ground she had gained from the Nazis. From Narvik, once a prized ore port, nobody gained anything.

A smashed and wreck-choked harbor, Narvik was no longer a prize of war.