Operation Claymore

Operation Claymore
Part of the North West Europe Campaign
Commandos watching fish oil tanks burning.
Date 4 March 1941 (1941-03-04) Location Lofoten Islands, Norway 68°09′09″N 14°12′00″E / 68.15250°N 14.20000°E / 68.15250; 14.20000 Result British victory
Belligerents
United Kingdom  Norway	Germany Quisling regime
Commanders and leaders
Louis K. Hamilton Clifford Caslon Joseph C. Haydon Martin Linge Lord Lovat	Unknown
Strength
500 British 52 Norwegians 7 ships	1 armed trawler
Casualties and losses
1 wounded	228 captured 10 ships sunk

Operation Claymore was a British/Norwegian commando raid on the Lofoten Islands of northern Norway during the Second World War. The Lofoten Islands were an important centre for the production of fish oil and glycerine, used in the German war economy. The landings were carried out on 4 March 1941, by 500 men of No. 3 Commando, No. 4 Commando, and a Royal Engineers section, and 52 men from Norwegian Independent Company 1. Supported by the 6th Destroyer Flotilla and two troop transports of the Royal Navy, the force landed almost unopposed. The original plan was to avoid contact with German forces and inflict the maximum of damage to German-controlled industry. They achieved their objective of destroying fish oil factories and some 3,600 t (3,500 long tons) of oil and glycerine. The force returned with some 228 German prisoners, 314 Norwegian recruits, and a number of Quisling regime collaborators.

Through naval gunfire and demolition parties, 18,000 tons of shipping were sunk. Perhaps the most significant outcome of the raid was the capture of a set of rotor wheels for an Enigma machine and its code books from the German armed trawler Krebs. German naval codes could thereafter be deciphered at Bletchley Park, providing the intelligence needed to allow Allied convoys to avoid U-boat concentrations.^[1] In the aftermath, the evaluation of the operation differed, with the British, especially Winston Churchill and the Special Operations Executive, deeming it a success. In the eyes of the British, the main value of such actions was to tie up large German forces in occupation duties in Norway. Martin Linge and the other Norwegians involved were more doubtful of the value of such raids on the Norwegian coast, but were not told of the value of the seized cryptographic information. Ongoing analysis of period documents suggests that commando raids of this type were a 'cover' for so-called "pinch raids" designed to capture German cryptographic equipment without the enemy realizing that was the true purpose of the raids.