Battle of Gratangen

Part of the Norwegian Campaign of World War II

Date	23–25 April 1940
Location	Gratangen, Norway
Result	German victory

Belligerents

Norway

Nazi Germany

Commanders and leaders

Overall:
Kristian Løken
I/IR12 (1st battalion of Infantry Regiment 12):
Nils Christoffer Bøckman

Strength

I/IR12

165 soldiers

Casualties and losses

34 killed
64 wounded
130 captured

6 killed
16 wounded
3 missing

The Battle of Gratangen occurred during the first Norwegian counter-attack in the Narvik Campaign. The Norwegian 6th Division gathered forces to push the Germans out of the Gratangen area and back towards Narvik. The first attack failed disastrously when the Germans counter-attacked unprepared Norwegian forces, a battalion and blunting the first Norwegian advance.

Gratangen was the site of some of the first battles between the German 3rd Mountain Division under Eduard Dietl and the Norwegian 6th Division under General Carl Gustav Fleischer after the German invasion of Norway on 9 April 1940.

After initial German success in surprising and routing a battalion from Trøndelag, the tide turned and the German were pushed southwards in the direction of Narvik.

Transported by ten destroyers from the Kriegsmarine, the German Task Force under command of General der Infanterie Eduard Dietl had occupied Narvik and the important military depots at Elvegårdsmoen in the early hours of 9 April 1940. Sinking the outdated Norwegian coastal defence ships HNoMS Norge and HNoMS Eidsvold with great loss of life and bluffing the Norwegian land forces into surrender.

The Allies counter-attacked by sea and, in the two naval battles of Narvik, the Royal Navy sank all ten German destroyers. The approximately 2,900 shipwrecked German sailors were kitted out with captured Norwegian equipment from Elvegårdsmoen and employed as ground troops in support of Dietl's Gebirgsjäger.

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Wikipedia