What if: Operation Paul – the Fleet Air Arm attack on Luleå (Sweden) in 1940

I know about Pike, so there is no need for the information C+P. My point that Pike was based on the obsolete thinking of the USSR and power balance, hence the juxtaposition between 1919 and 1939.

So i just found out that the Royal Navy’s plan for an attack on Luleå in 1940.

The British Naval Staff History Naval Operations of the Campaign in Norway (1946) set out the aims of the campaign in April to June 1940 as:

• stopping the export of Swedish iron ore from Narvik to Germany
• denying use of the Norwegian coast to the German navy

Yet it makes no mention of Operation Paul, the Royal Navy’s plan to attack the port of Luleå in neutral Sweden.

The British official history The Campaign in Norway (1952), in discussing the strategic context of the campaign, highlights three concerns:

• the perceived dependence of the German war machine on Swedish iron ore;
• British uncertainty whether Russia or Germany (who in 1940 were allies) would drive on from their respective advances in Norway and Finland to Luleå;
• and doubts about the efficacy of Swedish neutrality makes no mention of Operation Paul.

The Campaign in Norway does not mention Operation Paul by name but refers in passing to a plan by Churchill to “bottle up Luleå”.

Captain S. W. Roskill’s official history, War At Sea (1960), is silent.

The subject is dealt with in passing in Peter C. Smith’s book on the Royal Navy’s first fighter-divebomber, the Sea Skua.

The only lengthy treatment of Operation Paul is contained within Thomas MunchPetersen’s The Strategy of the Phoney War (1981), which is regrettably not well-known in
Britain or Sweden.

Would Operation Paul have succeeded?

As they were to show a few weeks later, the British were certainly ruthless enough to carry out Operation Paul. Then, on 3 July 1940, the Royal Navy bombarded the French fleet, at its berths in Mers-el-Kebir, North Africa, to stop it from falling into German hands. Over 1 200 Frenchmen died and a battleship was sunk: France and Britain were not at war and until a week or so before had been allies against the Germans. The bombardment of Mers-el-Kebir poisoned Anglo-French naval relations for half a century and more. Operation Paul was certainly practicable as the Doolittle raid was to show on 18 April 1942 when US Army bombers were launched from the USS Hornet to attack the Japanese mainland and, with insufficient fuel to return to Hornet, flew on to land in China. Operation Paul would also have been effective, as the British were to show during Operation Judgement, when Swordfish torpedo-bombers attacked the Italian fleet at its anchorage in Taranto on the night 11/12 November 1940. At full scale, Operation Paul would have used three carriers and almost four times more aircraft (78) than were used during the Battle of Taranto (21) against a heavily defended Italian harbour, and at reduced scale would have used only a few less aircraft (18 or 15) against an unalerted and poorly defended Swedish port.

The attack on Taranto is widely held to mark the rise of power of naval aviation over the big guns of battleships. According to Admiral Cunningham, “Taranto should be remembered forever as having shown once and for all that in the Fleet Air Arm the Navy has its most devastating weapon.”48 Taranto is also supposed to have inspired the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. Operation Paul had many of the characteristics of Taranto, Pearl Harbour and the Doolittle Raid. Had the attack on Luleå taken place, there is little doubt that it would have succeeded, at whatever cost to the British, and it would deserve entry into the pantheon of naval warfare. However, for all that Anglo-Swedish naval relations are warm today, perhaps, like Anglo-French relations after Mers-el-Kebir, the Luleå raid would have had a lasting effect upon Anglo-Swedish relations. And in 1940 it might have brought Sweden into the war against the Allies

Short Version: Operation Paul – the Fleet Air Arm attack on Luleå in 1940

Long Version: Operation Paul – the Fleet Air Arm attack on Luleå in 1940

1. Dudley Pound knew as much about naval air power as Gertrude Stein. This was evident in his incompetent deployment of aircraft carriers during the opening phases of the Battle of the Atlantic and of the general operations carried out by the Fleet Air Arm during Operaztion Weserebung, particularly during the first and second battles of Narvik and with the loss of HMS Glorious.



2, The only FAA weapon platform, that was aircraft carrier borne, which was capable of torpedo attack and or minelaying at the time was the Fairey Swordfish.



Now what could that plane actually do?


a. Its range, burdened, was about 840 kilometers or 450 nautical miles.

b. Its service ceiling with a torpedo was about 2,500 meters or 8,200 feet.

c. The distance between launch points off the Norwegian coast and Lulea was about 300 to 350 nautical miles.

d. The attack radius of a Swordfish with bombs or torpedoes is optimally 100 nautical miles, based on a 5.5 hour cruise endurance of 100 knots. It takes time to climb, form up and head out as a strike package. When Lumley Lyster launched off Taranto, he was about 100 nautical miles from the seaport.   

d. The route through the Scandinavian mountain range is wind current treacherous and requires an absolute safe altitude to clear the peaks of 2,500 meters or about 8,000 feet. 

3. Based on operating weapon platform characteristics and what was the physical requirements to reach the target, not even a KATE could pull Operation Paul off, and that was the longest ranged torpedo bomber launched from an aircraft carrier in existence at the time.

See map.

(...)

The launch points would be about 100 km southwest of Bode, Norway. Expect a dogleg navigation check point along Jokkmokk and then an attack vector following the valley down from Boden to Lulea. It is suicide as an air op.

  

 

1. The operational plan have been issued by the Joint Planning Sub Committee 5JPSC), not Dudley Pound.

2.
a. c. & d. The Swordfish to be used in Operation Paul have been modified with extra tanks and tested from Orkney to Stavanger for a similar operation (500 km on Google Map). Only two planes failed to return.

Due to lubricant limitation, it has been decided that the operation will be launched at a maximum distance of 250 miles, 460 km (I assume nautical miles as it was FAA bombers).

The entrance of Vestfjord (in the middle) is 440 km from Luleå. So within range.

b. & d. (second) On a direct flight from Bodo to Luleå, you have no peak higher than 1,400 m and you can follow the valleys at a maximum altitude of 800 m. So far below service ceiling fully loaded.

3. No need to a Kate...

And one way operation ending in Finland have been envisaged.
   

1. Respectfully those staffers worked for the DCNS at the time, a protege of Dudley Pound, one Tom Phillips of Force Z fame who was even more aircraft carrier incompetent than the CNS if possible. They all worked for Pound and for Churchill.

2. I read the Westfjord to Lulea as ~ 400 nautical miles or 740 km, not 440 km from the launch points as indicated off Lefoten. That is a bathtub constricted seaway. One does not put aircraft carriers in a kill box.

3. One has maybe three valleys or passes that low? One still has wind currents and weather, and I suspect that both require as much altitude as possible.

4. Finland was hostile territory.


5. Orkney Islands to Stavanger is about 295 nm or 540 km.

6. Fuel tanks to reach that far add approximately 200 gallons or 1300 pounds to the fuel load of a big underpowered plane like the Swordfish. One will not be carrying a torpedo at all.

7. The Kate was a much better more survivable bird than a Swordfish. For that matter, so was a Devastator. and that bird was a flying deathtrap. I would not attempt Op-Paul with even an Albacore and that bird was a much better aircraft than a Swordfish or a Kate or the Devastator.