Norway's stated reason for declining Gorgon was practical: the available dry dock was listed at about 16.7 meters wide, roughly six meters too narrow for the bulged ship. That infrastructure problem sat alongside the interwar belief that the recent conflict had ended the need for another major war. By 1940 most important Norwegian points had some degree of defence, but Narvik remained a debated exception. Officials had considered protecting either the fjord or the harbour without turning those discussions into built positions. The port's importance to both British and German plans made that omission strategically serious. A retained Nidaros would therefore most plausibly have joined Eidsvold and Norge at Narvik, substituting a mobile armoured battery for fortifications that never appeared.
Notable Point · 39:55-42:29
Dry-dock limits and the unfilled Narvik defence gap
Norway lacked a dock wide enough for Gorgon's bulged beam and did not convert repeated concern over Narvik into fixed defences.