Air Defence in Northern Europe
Air Defence in Northern EuropeAIR POWER BEFORE WORLD WAR II
Norway
Military aviation in Norway began in the spring of 1912, when the Stortinget donated funds for Norwegians to participate in flying training in France. The first group included three Army officers and one from the Navy. A group of Norwegians who lived in France donated them a two-seater Farman reconnaissance plane. After two month's training, the of ficers gained their pilot's licences and returned to Norway. The aircraft, called 'Ganger Rolf", was flown to Hedmarken and the flight served as a reconnaissance mission in connection with an autumn military exercise. The army built its first air station at Kjeller, where two more Farman donations were located.12
In April 1912 five Navy officers bought a German singleseater Taube aeroplane. At first it took off from a field, but later it was installed on pontoons and moved to Horten. This sea plane, given the name "Start", was transferred to the state inventory, and marked the beginning of naval aviation.l2
Aviation attracted increasing interest once the First World War had broken out. The Army and Navy both established their own aircraft factories, and both branches also had their own flying schools.
Both factories manufactured several original Norwegian models of aircraft during the 1920s and 1930s, and many foreign types were also built under licence.12
The Army Flying Corps and the Navy Flying Corps lived more or less separate lives in the years between the wars, for it was believed at that time that the Navy and Army had quite different needs. Navy pilots shared responsibility for the defence of the coast, while the Army Flying Corps mainly operated observation planes and a dispatch service for Army units in the interior.13
The question of whether there should be one or two flying corps had been discussed during World War I and was brought up repeatedly over the years leading up to World War II without any final decision being made. In the mid1930s the Army had a total of 72 front line aircraft, including Gloster Gladiator fighters, and the Navy had 64 pontoon planes. When World War II broke out in 1939, the Norwegian Armed Forces had already ordered new, modern fighters, but they had not yet been delivered. The Navy had received six Heinkel 115 torpedo bombers,13 and the Army had an organized air defence consisting of over twenty antiaircraft artillery batteries.18 The post-World War I trend of international pacifism, which left Europe very vulnerable and became one of the major causes of the Second World War by giving Hitler his initial easy victories, had also had some effect in Norway, in addition to which the separation and subordinate positions of the two flying corps did not provide the best possible basis for considering seriously the special characteristics of air warfare. Thus the air defence system was not tuned to maximum readiness when the Germans mounted their surprise attack on 9th April 1940.
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Revised: tammikuu 02, 2006.
