page_title: Operation Wilfred
section_title: Operation
hierarchical_section_title: Operation Wilfred / Operation
context_page_description: Operation Wilfred was a British naval operation during the Second World War that involved the mining of the channel between Norway and her offshore islands to prevent the transport of Swedish iron ore through neutral Norwegian waters to be used to sustain the German war effort. The Allies assumed that Wilfred would provoke a German response in Norway and prepared a separate operation known as Plan R 4 to occupy Narvik and other important locations.
  On 8 April 1940, the operation was partly carried out, but was overtaken by events as a result of the following day′s German invasion of Norway and Denmark, which began the Norwegian Campaign.
context_section_description: On 3 April, four cruisers (HMS Berwick, York, Devonshire, and Glasgow) sailed to Rosyth to embark units of the Royal Lincolnshire Regiment, troops that would be transported to Norway as part of the Plan R4 if deemed necessary. Additional troops embarked onto transport ships in the Clyde with further troops, held in readiness until indications of German intentions justified sending them to Norway.
  On 5 April a large force of warships, escorted by the battlecruiser HMS Renown and the cruiser HMS Birmingham and comprising elements of both Operation Wilfred and Plan R4 set out from the main British naval base at Scapa Flow and sailed towards the Norwegian coast.
  The plan was to lay two minefields. The first was to be just below the Lofoten Islands in the mouth of the Vestfjorden, the channel leading directly to the port of Narvik to which the iron ore was shipped (Operation WV). The second was to be approximately three fourths of the way down the western Norwegian coast, immediately adjacent to the peninsula of Stadtlandet, on a line of latitude roughly midway between the Faroes and Iceland (Operation WS). As a diversion, laying of a third minefield would be simulated just off the Bud headland, south of Kristiansund (Operation WB). On 7 April, the force split, one to carry on to Narvik, the others to carry out the operations to the south.
  The British ships were given orders in case of Norwegian involvement: If the Norwegians swept the minefields, the British would lay new ones close by. If the Norwegians challenged the British ships, the latter were to inform them that they were there to protect merchant vessels. The British would then withdraw, leaving the Norwegians to guard the area. The ships allocated to the individual operations were as follows:
  Force WV (Mouth of Vestfjord)
  Renown – Renown-class battlecruiser
  Glowworm – "G"-class destroyer
  Greyhound – "G"-class destroyer
  Impulsive – minelaying destroyer
  Esk – minelaying destroyer
  Icarus – minelaying destroyer
  Ivanhoe – minelaying destroyer
  Hardy – escort destroyer
  Havock – escort destroyer
  Hotspur – escort destroyer
  Hunter – escort destroyer
  Force WB – (Bud headland)
  Birmingham – Town"-class light cruiser
  Hyperion – "H"-class minelaying destroyer. Initially part of Renown escort screen
  Hero – "H"-class minelaying destroyer. Initially part of Renown escort screen
  Force WS (Off Stadtlandet)
  Teviot Bank – 5,087 ton auxiliary minelayer
  Inglefield – "I"-class minelaying destroyer leader
  Imogen – "I"-class minelaying destroyer
  Ilex – "I"-class minelaying destroyer
  Isis – "I"-class minelaying destroyer
  In the event, only one minefield was actually laid. As the WS force sailed to its destination on 7 April, German ships were sighted in the Heligoland Bight on passage to Norway, and the mine-laying off Stadtlandet was cancelled. Early the next day, 8 April, the designated day for the mining to be carried out, Britain informed the Norwegian authorities of its intention to lay the mines inside their territorial waters. Soon afterward, Force WB simulated minelaying off the Bud headland by using oil drums and patrolled the area to "warn" shipping of the danger. Force WV duly carried out its task and laid the minefield in the mouth of Vestfjord. At 05:15 that morning, the Allies broadcast a statement to the world that justified their action and defined the minefield areas. The Norwegian government issued a strong protest and demanded their immediate removal, but the German fleet was already advancing up their coasts. Then, events moved so quickly that the issue of the minefields became largely irrelevant.
  Later that day, an iron ore ship (the Rio de Janeiro, travelling from Stettin, in northern Germany) was sunk in the Skagerrak by the Polish submarine Orzeł. The ship was carrying troops, horses and tanks for the German invasion of Norway, part of Operation Weserübung. Around half of the 300 men on board were drowned, with the survivors telling the crews of the Norwegian fishing boats that picked them up that they were on their way to Bergen to defend it from the British. A few hou
caption: Vestfjorden, with Lofoten to the west and the mainland to the east