The Sinking of the Heavy Cruiser Blücher: The Battle of Drøbak Sund, 1940 

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"Either I will be decorated or I will be court-martialed. Open fire!" - Birger Eriksen, Battle of Drøbak Sound.

Imagine being Admiral Kummets after being captured and told that he's been sunk by a 100 years old fortress and 40 years old torpedoes...

It is worth stressing just how new the Blücher was. She was completed building in September 1939, but underwent sea trials, training, and modifications for 6 months. Finally officially entered onto the register, and the Admiral coming onboard the brand-new ship on 5th April 1940. Thus she was sunk on her 5th day of service!

A prime example of old and obsolete weapons does not necessarily mean harmless weapons.

I approve of the format of these videos. It is essentially blow by blow recount of the battle but it always places the battle in a wider context of history so the stakes and consequences add tension to the narrative and add real historical education to the tactical recount. Very well thought out approach.

I wrote my masters degree with the Norwegian naval museum. If you want some extra eyewitness accounts from the Royal Norwegian Navy from their service, let me know. For example, to do with the sinking of the Scharnhorst.

This video gives the wrong impression. Only two 11" shells were fired, while the video keeps showing misses from those guns, which never happened. The crews did not reload after firing those two shells at almost point blank range.

One correction to this video. The German "cruiser" Lutzow was actually the renamed pocket battleship Deutschland. She had been renamed Lutzow for three reasons: 1) Hitler didn't want to give his enemies the propaganda victory of sinking the "Germany" during the war, 2) sow some confusion amongst the Allies when they were trying to identify which ship was where, and 3) The Admiral Hipper class cruiser to be named "Lutzow" had been sold to the Soviet Union in an unfinished state. This name was then available to be used for the renaming of Deutschland. Fun fact: the Norwegian shore battery that disabled Lutzow's forward turret fired one of the luckiest hits of the war. The round actually penetrated the turret through the aperture that allows the 11" gun to protrude out of the turret. In other words, the round skimmed past the barrel of the main gun, through the opening in the turret and exploded inside the turret. This destroyed the hydraulic mechanism that elevates the gun, causing all three guns to droop to the deck and effectively putting all three guns out of action (source: Drachinifel).

Sorry, no like this time: there were a few mistakes in your research: - oscarsborg fortress shoot only two times with its big guns. This shoots ignited the plane and fuel and destroyed the bridge. The coastal batteries did the rest. Blücher didn’t know about the torpedo battery on the northern island of oscarsborg. After the torpedo hits it swam around 1 km to the north and capsized and sunk finally in the morning. It’s still there in around 90 m depth

The Blücher actually managed to turn around before sinking. There are pictures of her sinking where you can see her stern towards Oslo. And if you look at the wreck now, you can see that the bow is pointed towards Oscarsborg. Just a little detail🙂

Amazing work as always!

These are my favorite videos of yours so far, and that's saying a lot!

The guns on the Oscarborg was not modern. It was an outdated guns from WW1. And each battery fired once.

Amazing work as always ❤❤❤❤❤

Nice coverage!

Thanks For this! Love your content Hearth please ❤❤❤❤❤

we Norwegians have everything to thank Captain Leif Olsen and the crew of the guard boat Pool III. Pool III was a small guard boat on neutrality watch that chose to do its duty. They managed to sound the alarm before they had to give up their superiority. The fact that Captain Olsen on Pool III managed to sound the alarm meant that Oskarsborg was told that foreign warships were on their way into Oslo Fjord and thus went on alert.

Very interesting and very good video, thank you very much.❤

4:38 Blucher should not have been the lead ship going into that enclosed space. Maybe light cruiser like Nuremberg and some destroyers. But not a heavy cruiser.

Definitely a story worth the time.. even if we already know about it. A 40 year old service officer, Colonel in his last 6 months of active duty with enough balls to give the order to fire live ammo to unknown battleships, without warning shots as he was ordered by high command.. damn. He really played his experienced cards of a lifetime in those minutes, even if defeat was unavoidable, he made possible for the defenders to take down a titan with old equipment. o7

Nicely done video

Great video.

Amazing work 👍🏻 by an excellent ( house of history) channel.. brave & professional attitude of that Norway 🇳🇴 naval commander 🙏 .

Oskarsborg's 11in guns only fired Blücher twice (one from cannon Moses and one from Aron) not as many as you showed...Køpas joined later, when Blücher was out of Oskarsborg's main battery arc of fire

Great video as always. But I wish u could also make history videos outside battles. Like the Dissolution of the union between Norway and Sweden. Although it is interesting history but no one has much covered. While there was talk of great powers intervening and burning of documents related to it. Would love to know the details if possible

It did not matter for Eriksen if the ships were German or British. They were an invading enemy force. What he meant by his comment "I will either be court marshalled or decorated" is that he knew full well that the Norwegian government was not neutral.

Tremendous high-quality and accurate rendition of this battle in the Norwegian movie *The King's Choice,* highly recommend for people who want to feel what it must have been like. It's available in English.

Goated work

Thanks

How about a video about Walther Wenck, who saved civilians during the Battle of Berlin?

Great smoke effects!

at 3:50...isn't there a land bridge on the map where it shows the Task Group sailing north?? Any ideas here??

I'd like to see a similar analysis of the raid on Pearl Harbor on Sunday, February 7, 1932 by Admiral Harry Yarnell using the carriers Lexington and Saratoga.

The naval battle of Narvik please

I'll subscribe.

First, great unbiased presentations of significant historical events. THANK YOU! Second, imo, it was bad intelligence by the Germans, - not the first or last time. A more prudent commander might have had his crew at full battle stations and ready for any response to being fired upon when attempting to make this run but hard to justify based on their strategy regarding the invasion of Norway territory. The "Channel Run" comes to mind where they coordinated the air and naval assets. However, that "museum" should have been priority #1, erroring on the side of caution, - no lower than 2. And the opposite should have been tracked and targeted in an alternate pattern (left-right) as well. Waited too long to respond to the initial shots. Regardless, 20/20 hindsight.

There was ample warning. My dad who was 9 years old won a bet on what day they would attack. Today I feel that we are in a similar situation, and that lots of people later on will say that it was a surprise.

Quite the victory especially with the Norwegians using outdated weapons and equipment. Apparently the torpedoes used to deliver the killing blow where Austro Hungarian and from the 1890s.

the Battle of Jutland I think it's called. The First World War with the great warships England and Germany happened from the kiss of Denmark called Jutland Could be exciting to hear such a story and a video like this one.

hi, and wow! This the most detailed report of this battle I have ever seen! I believe the commander who fired the torpedoes was shot by the Germans??

Not meaning to be picky but the map shows something like a causeway between Zealand and mainland Denmark. Was wondering how Admiral Kummetz' task force got past it...🙂

Truly bazbattle new channel 😂

Day 3 asking for a video about the Battle of Cárdenas during the Spanish-American War

Remember kids, old doesn't mean it won't hurt you

This looks like BazBattles Drobak Sound video as well.

Did not know that there were British subs in the area.

If you want a norweigan war movie i recomend kings choice

Make a video on USS DIABLO

Please list your sources.

Great animation and explanation. Like the videos here. Sadly a little mistake in the map Brest a town you see in occupied poland is in france. This story shows that the germans like Kummetz didn't expected that the forts fire at them or their informations were bad. Come on you need to fly above this forts and occupied them with paratroops before you sail strait in this street.

Reminds me of BazBattles

Where were the Vikings hiding at that time?

Captain Reg Saunders 3RAR.

Can you do the 1864 battle of Cherbourg and I am asking because the battle was a single ship action and the battle was fought between the US Navy and The confederate states navy and the opposing forces in the battle was the Uss Kearsarge with 163 sailors facing against the notorious CSS Alabama and 149 sailors and the battle was a U.S. victory with one sailor dying of wounds and 2 sailors wounded however the confederates lost the Alabama which was sunk and when it went down the Alabama took with it 19 sailors with 9 of them killed and 10 of them drowning however the confederates also lost 21 sailors wounded and 70 captured with between 38 and 41 being rescued by a British yacht and among those rescued was confederate rear admiral Raphael Semmes and the Alabama has an interesting link to the fictional ship Nautilus from the Jules Verne 1869 novel twenty thousand leagues under the sea and their are two links between the css Alabama and the Nautilus the first link is that the Alabama had covered 75,000 miles which equates to just over 21,700 leagues in two years and the second link is a very interesting one and the second link is that Raphael Semmes laments the loss of the British built css Alabama and it’s largely British crew as if it were the loss of his wife and children whereas captain Nemo of the Nautilus laments the actual loss of his wife and children who were killed by the British and the battle of Cherbourg is in my opinion a very overlooked, underrated and not well known battle as the public at that time wasn’t focused on events overseas but instead they were focused on the events that were taking place on the land at the time and in my opinion it’s an event that every civil war buff and members of the French and American navy’s should know about and the reason is because this ship was the only ship in the American civil war that I know of to hunt the waters of the Atlantic, Indian and southern Pacific Oceans.

Is this bazzbattles?! If not yall sound the exact same. Good video

What a waste of a good ship, but the King's Choice did an amazing job showing the sinking of it in that movie

bazbattles lmao

very good video the movie (The Kings Choice) did a good job on that one scene of this battle in this video you are talking about. also, the famous Quote Either I will be decorated, or I will be court-martialed. Open fire!" from the commander Birger Eriksen. also, that fort is still there now part of their historical landmarks in Norway

Brave Norwegians !

Yet another win for democracy.

[neigh]

The Norwegian flag is correct. Unfortunately, a mistake has been made with the German flag of 1940 .The flag of Nazi Germany did not look like that.

The fortress had outdated guns no? EDIT: Yeah you claim that later on in the video. At least outdated torpedo launchers I believe. U claim it to be modernized but I dont believe that was true

Oh, you should review anti-partisan warfare in Yugoslavia during WWII.

Reminder that England violated Norway's neutrality first by mining their waters.

So again the British lied. They wanted to invade Norway to 'help' Finland. They wanted to invade first.

For the next videos to come, I'd just slightly change the map description. 'Occupied Czechoslovakia' is wrong. The Czech part was occupied. Slovaks joined the Third Reich willingly and openly collaborated with them.

Warships are surprisingly fragile. It doesn't take a lot of hits to score a mission kill and set up wrong (as in having ammunition and bombs and fuel strewn about) they can be destroyed very easily. Of note the Blucher despite its 16,000 tons it wasn't that strong of a ship. A lot of the weight was for the powerplant which was horridly inefficient and oversized but despite being one of the heaviest cruisers ever made on par with the USS Salem class, the Hippers only had about 3-3.5" armor tops and in many places far less to the Salem's 8" or more in their belts, turrets and conning tower. This is because the American double reduction gear allowed for far smaller (and faster rotating) turbines that didn't occupy the same space. You can see this difference in LA: visit the Queen Mary and see how massive those engines are noting that it only has a single reduction gear the turbines of that ship are the size of a house! When you visit the nearby USS Iowa which has a lot more power, the turbines are a tiny fraction of the size and can fit in a living room.