A lot smaller too, with far less crew. Norway's coastal battleships achieved precisely nothing in 1940.
(Norge & Eidsvold) Land their guns - keeping the larger guns and torpedo tubes to create new coastal forts and keeping the 3" guns for mounting on STUFT vessels turning them into gun boats / patrol boats - and use the Hulks as depot ships / classrooms etc
But far more importantly is to have a robust and unambiguous ROE for the crews manning the ships and the forts.
The Germans got off lightly on the 9th April 1940 - had more or all of the Norwegian defenses opened fire first and asked questions later then much of the first wave of ships that forced their way into various ports would have gone the way of Blucher and with the ability to rapidly deploy multiple mine fields - Norway could have defended its 'Neutrality'.
ricsson made the decision to fire on the Blucher when the time and position was right. He did not dither about the decision
Eidsvold and Norge could have damaged German destroyers, but not sure what difference it would have made as they were both sunk by the RN shortly after. . German Navy couldn't have done much worse off Norway but not sure if the Norwegians could have done much that the RN didnt do
One needs a POD to make the Norwegian government willing to spend funds on defence, with a view that in order to remain neutral they need to enforce that neutrality themselves.
As long as the only credible threat to Norwegian neutrality is their traditional protector, Britain, there is little perceived need to uphold a navy or anything military-related.
Buy 5 RN 1st generation Dreadnoughts for scrap prices to replace the older coast defence ships. Remove the wing turrets for coastal forts. Add a battery of 6” and 4” guns in the old wing turret place. Fit mine rails on aft deck. Keep the 5th ship for spares. Each ship is superior to anything the Swedish or Germans can muster.
Really bad idea. Yeah, they look impressive. Until they roll over and explode after being torpedoed by German U-Boats. There are a lot better options for Norway than a handful of horrifically obsolete first generation DreadnaughtsBattleships with big guns give the locals more confidence than some MTB. In holding ports, batteries defending minefields will be more reliable than MTB. Submarines add that level of doubt for an attacker but are expensive. MTB are what you can acquire in a war warning period rather than a long term capability. Battleships need not be fully manned and as a training tool and port guard ship can provide a depth of reservists to build on.
Would a cheaper option for a ship of force like 12,000ish ton balanced CA be feasible/a good idea?Really bad idea. Yeah, they look impressive. Until they roll over and explode after being torpedoed by German U-Boats. There are a lot better options for Norway than a handful of horrifically obsolete first generation Dreadnaughts
Would a cheaper option for a ship of force like 12,000ish ton balanced CA be feasible/a good idea?
Probably not. Norway doesn't have the resources to go toe-to-toe with either Germany or the UK. They need to go asemetric. Things like MTBs and subsWould a cheaper option for a ship of force like 12,000ish ton balanced CA be feasible/a good idea?
Probably not. Norway doesn't have the resources to go toe-to-toe with either Germany or the UK. They need to go asemetric. Things like MTBs and subs
What U boats? At the start of the inter war period Germany was banned from having submarines.Really bad idea. Yeah, they look impressive. Until they roll over and explode after being torpedoed by German U-Boats.
Yup. The most effective use of big guns by the Norwegians in April 1940 was the 11" guns of the Oscarborg fortress, along with the land-based torpedo battery. And also to your point, Col. Ericsson made the decision to fire on the Blucher when the time and position was right. He did not dither about the decision
I read that for some reason the Norwegians actually reactivated the 1890's vintage Whitehead torpedo battery after the war ended. They ended up modernizing the battery at least once (not sure to what degree they improved them) most recently in the 1980s. The battery was only actually disarmed and abandoned in 1993 after the cold war had ended. I mean it's kind of miraculous the Norweigans managed to accomplish as much as they did with the torpedo battery in 1940. I'm really not sure what exactly Whitehead torpedo's from the McKinley administration would accomplish in the 1980s.
Torpedo battery[edit]
Having been constructed in 1898–1901,[4] and put into service on 15 July 1901,[5] the underground torpedo facility remained one of the few Norwegian defence installations unknown to German military intelligence at the point of the 9 April 1940 invasion. The battery was one of two in Norway and differed from the other torpedo battery, at Kvarven Fort, in that it was designed to launch its torpedoes from under the water level,[6] instead of by torpedo tube from above ground as was the case with the battery at Kvarven outside Bergen.[4]
At Oscarsborg the torpedo battery is a concrete construction inside a cave mined into the rock of the North Kaholmen island. Two torpedoes are loaded side by side, in two open steel frames. Then one of the two frames is lowered like an elevator down into the water to the tunnels below. After one shot, it took some time to swap frames and be ready for the next. When fired, the torpedo's own compressed air engine was started and it propelled itself.[4] The battery has three torpedo tunnels which could fire six torpedoes without reloading and a total of nine torpedoes was stored and ready for use.[6] Each weapon carried a 100 kg TNT warhead[7] and targets were spotted from three observation bunkers just above the battery.[4]
The torpedoes were delivered in 1900 from the Whitehead torpedo factory in Fiume, then part of Austria-Hungary.[8] A back-up observation bunker is situated just outside the entrance to the battery.