Isn´t it strange that the Germans, who were reacting to the allied occupation managed to operate planes by the hundreds in Norway?
As I mentioned when I comented about the 263 squadron in Norway, it was sent only with Gladiators initially and its planes wiped out, then sent back with more Gladiators but at least backed by another squadron with Hurricanes and was doing fairly well ehen it was evacuated. Had plenty of Hurricanes been sent initially, things would have been harder for the Germans.
The Allied navy was pretty useless during the French campaign (until it was lost and they had to evacuate) and withdrawing from Norway allowed Germany to send hundreds of planes from Norway to France.
If German planes did not chase away the British navy, then what did? certainly not the crippled German navy.
The Norwegians had to fight for months without the British navy after the British and French troops left.
In my opinion, if Germany has 800 planes and Britain has 100 and mostly obsolete in Norway, the LW chased the RN.
Had Churchill planned the campaign a little better, he would have forced Hitler to fight there instead of in France, where the terrain was much more favorable for tanks and supplies were much easier for Germany. The UK should have finished off the German navy in weeks and controled the supplies, so that German planes and troops would have run out of supplies.
The idea that the allied troops performed well in Norway and were about to kick out the Germans is quite far from the truth. France simply served as an excuse to pull out of the Fiasco. Planes ruled in WW II and the LW ruled Norway.
Well, I suppose you have never been to those particular parts of Norway.
Take a map, meassure the distance between Copenhagen in Denmark and Oslo in Norway, then you meassure the distance between Oslo and Trondheim (both in Norway) and finally you meaasure the distance between Trondheim and Narvik (also in Norway) then you have the distance the Luftwaffe had to "jump" in order to get their planes into action on the Narvik front.
Then you can meassure the distance between Scotland and Narvik (in Norway) and try to figure out what planes the RAF had able to negotiate that distance.
The few British planes engaged on the Narvik front was brought there by carriers, and as such the Hurricane was moderately fit for the task, while the Gladiators was a tad better suited.
Then you can add the fact that they had to operate from Bardufoss airbase, wich was more or less a dirt-strip where the undercarriage of the planes, especially the Hurricanes had a tendency to bog in.
In the beginning of the conflict it was still possible to land and take off on frozen lakes, but the logistics to these improvised airfields was a nightmare due to the snowy conditions.
Everything had to be either carried by horse drawn sleds, or carried on the back of some unfortunate soldiers tasked with being mules.
The attempts of making improvised airfields on other locations litterally bogged down as the ground was thawing.
Bardufoss airfield was essentially the only available airfield, and even if they could have managed to bring more planes in on carriers, it simply wasn't room for more at Bardufoss.
While it is true that Norwegian forces fought in the mountains around Narvik, and also captured the city, for nearly two months, it's not entirely corrct that they did so on their own.
Both the Polish and the French troops made quite an effort in the snowy terrain, while the British troops were mostly left to areas near the coast due to the lack of real winter equipment.
The allied forces were evacuated between 4. and 8. of june, and on the 8. of june the Norwegian commanders had to surrender to the Germans since a prolonged fight would have proven futile.
While the importance of the allied forces may appear insignificant to you, we still choose to honour the foreign troops who came all the way and and fought on, gave their life on, and was buried in, Norwegian soil.
Just as we keep an special place in our hearts for the Polish destroyer ORP Grom and her crew, all resting beneath the surface in the Rombak Fjord outside Narvik.