A passage connecting Narvik with the Dardanelles and Zeebrugge introduces Admiral of the Fleet Roger Keyes as a forceful advocate of another direct attack. Keyes pressed to lead a Trondheim operation even though Lord Cork had already been appointed to command the Narvik expedition and any new role would have intersected with Admiral Charles Forbes’s Home Fleet. His proposal would have placed another senior commander inside an expedition already divided between local and Home Fleet responsibilities. The competing claims reveal how personal influence could blur an expedition’s command structure before a force even reached the objective.
Notable Point · 7:38-9:14
Senior-command friction over the Narvik expedition
The Narvik account follows Roger Keyes’s lobbying for a Trondheim operation and the resulting tension with Lord Cork’s expeditionary command and Charles Forbes’s Home Fleet responsibilities.