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At Narvik, after the battleship Warspite and attendant destroyers blasted the remaining Nazi warships to the bottom and silenced all German firing from the shore last fortnight, the British marines and sailors present did not at once follow-up their advantage. The German forces ashore, numbering some 2,500, returned to the town, retained their hold on the iron-ore railroad as far as the Swedish border. Reinforced with mountain artillery flown in, they even began spreading up & down the coast. Northward they encountered British land forces 15 miles away, at Gratangen. These troops were from the main Allied landing point at Harstad, on an island at the head of Vest Fjord. Meantime, this week British warships returned to Narvik and, after due warning, started blasting the Germans out of it once more.
At Bodö & Mo, towns below Narvik in Norway's long, slender, north-central neck, Allied landings were made to command the road (but no rail) connections into Sweden and the northern terminus of the one road into Norway's waist.
Namsos. The Germans' stronghold at Trondheim (Norway's capital when Olaf Tryggvasson was King, circa 996), commands mid-Norway's big railhead for transit across to Sweden and down to Oslo. Just east of it, at Varnes, lies mid-Norway's only big land air base. As the German invaders hustled to consolidate their position around Trondheim and establish a defense line across to the Swedish border, the Allies landed at Namsos, 100 miles north. The Namsos contingent soon made contact with Norwegian troops massing above Steinkjer, near Trondheim Fjord's head. These wiped out a "suicide" force of Germans landed by plane on the nearby ice.
Molde & Åndalsnes. One hundred twenty-five miles southwest, other landings put the Allies in position to send a force north to attack Trondheim from the opposite side. But here there were also bigger stakes to play for. Presumably from these landings came the force that was reported to have cut its way across country to Hamar, there rallied the retiring Norse 65 miles outside Oslo.
Laerdal. Boldest Allied penetration was at Laerdal at the head of deep Sogne Fjord, 90 miles northeast of German-held Bergen and 140 miles northwest of Oslo. This was the landing closest to Germany, also closest (130 miles) to Stavanger, Norway's biggest air base, now German.
Overhead the northern war also accelerated. For six hours Nazis rained death on Namsos, which went up in flames. The stations at Åndalsnes and Dombäs (between Åndalsnes and Oslo) were fired, too. British air fleets retaliated with more raids on Stavanger, Kristiansand, and a new troop-ferry air terminal at Aalborg in Denmark. Apparently the northern war's turning point still hinged on dominance of the air.