Operation Wilfred

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 (Operation Weserübung), which began the Norwegian Campaign.

With the outbreak of war on 3 September 1939, Britain and France initiated a naval blockade to weaken Germany by depriving her of the vital imports she needed to sustain her war effort. One of the most crucial imports was iron ore, needed to manufacture the steel which was used to build the ships, tanks and aircraft for the German armed forces. The primary source of this commodity was via neutral Sweden, deliveries of which Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty was intent on preventing to restrict Germany′s ability to fight. To do this, he developed a plan to mine the Norwegian Corridor, the sheltered sea lanes along Norway′s craggy western coast which the German ships used to transport the ore within neutral waters back to their home ports. By doing this, Churchill hoped to force the ore ships out into the open sea where the blockading ships of Contraband Control could sink or capture them.

Britain and France were anxious to prevent a Nazi takeover of Scandinavia that would greatly reduce the effectiveness of the blockade and secure indefinite supplies of the iron ore. Such a move would also provide the Germans with many more sea ports and bases from which they could fly bombing and reconnaissance missions over Britain. To prevent this from happening, the Allies considered their own occupation of the two neutral countries, but the plan eventually came to nothing.

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