Operation Northern Norway

The plan


Russia was scared of an attack aimed at the Kola Peninsular which had the only ice-free Soviet military harbours in the region. They served the Soviet (now Russian) Northern Fleet, with seven naval bases, several shipyards, 200 mostly nuclear armed and/or powered submarines, many air bases and several related factories producing military equipment. About 75% of the Soviet Navy’s nuclear force was based here.

The main sea route from the Kola Peninsula to the Atlantic Sea was along the Norwegian coast. It formed the access route to the coastal areas of the United States and the Western European countries, as well as a direct route to Iceland and Greenland. Both those islands had both tiny populations and a major NATO base on them, leading to them becoming prime targets of the USSR. The ultimate Soviet and now Russian goal was the probable "Soviet military interest zone" in the Norwegian Sea around Norway, Sptzbergen, S.E. Greenland, Iceland, the Shetlands and the Faero Islands. This area would be quickly filled up with Soviet ships and sub on various hostle duties.

Norway was prepared for all-out war in case of a Soviet invasion. Never again did they want an invasion like that of 9 April 1940, when the Germans surprised an unprepared Norwegian nation. This was one of the reasons they were one of NATO's founding nations.

The Norwegian government was planning to  give up on the the northern region of Finnmark in the event of an invasion by the Soviet Union in order to buy time to organise a decisive counterstrike.

One of the 1,000 Soviet air planes intercepted were by Norwegian fighters outside the coast of Norway every year in the 1960s to 1980s. In 1972 over 1,500 Soviet aircraft were intercepted and escorted out of NATO airspace by NATO's Nordic Air Policing Unit. Many flew over Bodø. Soviet Backfire bombers armed with a nuclear capable cruise missiles flew over the region in later years.

Bodø, Bardufoss, Andenes, Frøy, Tromsø, Lakselv and Kirkenes were all targets. The attack would involve a massive land, sea and air assault.

Finnmark had been was devastate by the retreating German in 1945 and rebuilding was not completed, so at a meeting in 1951 between army chiefs and the defence, the famed resistance World War 2 hero Jens Christian Hauge, proposed to devastate and abandon Finnmark in such an event in order to make the forward march of the Soviets more difficult.

The army’s troops would then be mobilise en mass in the neighbouring county of Troms, joined by allied soldiers trained to fight in Norwegian conditions, and attempt to hold off the Soviet invaders there as NATO came to there aid.

The plan was presumably current until the early 1960s when nuclear arms complicated the situation greatly, although it could still be of use in a non nuclear war or a limited targets nuclear war.

The forces


It would have involved an all out assault by the Soviet forces in the Kola Peninsular and Karelia. They would have town everything at it in order to see of any treats to there bases in the Kola Peninsular.

Whilst Norway did not want to initiat such a conflict it would have fallen back and abandoned Finnmark. Later they would have lauched an all out attack to liberate it with NATO help.

A secret underground base was biult in Lyngen during 1996.

Bunkers
Battle ready Norwegian forces were built up and kept prepared at bases in Bardufoss, Setermoen and Skjold, all part of the Troms region, along with a series of coastal defences, radio eaves dropping systems and radar arrays to monitor air and sea movements.

Stuff like military equipment, arms, supplies and fuel were spread all over the country, often hidden in civilian buildings such as cottages, garages, storage buildings and alike. The Frøy defence line was a strong infantry line built between 1950 and 1990.

A secret underground base was biult in Lyngen during 1996.

Also see

 * 1) http://coldwarsites.net/country/norway/
 * 2) http://coldwarsites.net/country/sweden/
 * 3) http://www.newsinenglish.no/2011/02/04/cold-war-defense-included-plans-to-sacrifice-finnmark/