1942 1943 1944 1945 Associated articles Operation Leader was an air attack conducted against German shipping in the vicinity of Bodø, Norway, on 4 October 1943, during World War II.

In addition to sinking ships, Operation Leader damaged the German war effort by considerably disrupting the convoy system in the region and reducing shipments of iron ore. During mid- to late-1943 the Home Fleet, the Royal Navy's main striking force stationed in the United Kingdom, was augmented by two forces of United States Navy warships to replace British ships dispatched to the Mediterranean and Pacific.

These reinforcements were considered necessary to ensure that the fleet remained able to counter the German battle group based in Norway, which was built around the battleships Tirpitz and Scharnhorst, and the heavy cruiser Lützow.

[6] Prior to Ranger's arrival the Home Fleet was assigned only a single aircraft carrier, the elderly HMS Furious, which was unavailable for operations at the time as she was undergoing a refit.

[3] Ranger had last seen combat against Vichy French forces while supporting the Operation Torch landings in Morocco during November 1942, and had later been used to ferry aircraft to North Africa and train aircrews off the United States east coast.

[7] On 8 September 1943 the main body of the Home Fleet, including the American task force, sortied in response to reports that Tirpitz, Scharnhorst and nine destroyers had put to sea.

[9] Following the midget submarine operation Fraser decided to dispatch the main body of the Home Fleet to conduct an air attack against ports and German shipping in northern Norway.

[Note 1] Fraser also initially planned to use the aircraft carrier HMS Formidable to attack shipping in the port of Brønnøysund,[12] to the south of Bodø, but this element of the operation was cancelled due to unfavourable weather.

[12] While several Luftwaffe (German Air Force) bases were located near Bodø, most of the aircraft previously stationed in northern Norway had been transferred elsewhere and those that remained posed little threat to the Allied fleet.

[5][19] The Allied ships were not detected by German forces during their voyage north, and arrived at the flying-off position for Ranger's air wing approximately 140 miles (230 km) off Bodø shortly before dawn on 4 October.

[19] Four Dauntlesses and a pair of Wildcats were detached from the force shortly after it passed Myken Lighthouse to search for German shipping near Åmøya island.

[25] Following the attack on Topeka the American aircraft continued north, and bombed and sank the 687 GRT Norwegian cargo liner Vaagan off Fagervika without loss of life.

The number of casualties on board this ship are unclear, with some sources stating that 200 of the troops died while others report that only one Norwegian sailor and a few German soldiers were killed.

Rear Admiral Hustvedt believed that the best result of the attack was that it demonstrated that American and British ships could work together with "effectiveness, mutual understanding and complete cooperation".

[13] Historian Robert C. Stern wrote in 2012 that it was difficult to determine how many ships were sunk during Operation Leader as some of the vessels which were run ashore were possibly refloated and repaired.

He assessed that five ships, with a total of approximately 19,000 gross register tonnage of carrying capacity: Cap Guir, La Plata, Rabat, Skramstad and Vaagan, were probably destroyed.

[24] According to Norwegian sources pre-dating Stern's assessment by decades, two ships, Rabat and Vaagan, were sunk,[21] and three, La Plata, Skramstad and Topeka, were damaged beyond repair.

[31][41][42] The German naval historian Jürgen Rohwer lists the ships destroyed by aircraft in Operation Leader as La Plata, Rabat, Skramstad, Topeka, and Vaagan.

[24] This is in line with a wartime assessment by the British Ministry of Economic Warfare, which estimated that the raid was the main factor responsible for a 58 percent decrease in the amount of iron ore shipped from the important northern Norwegian port of Narvik during October 1943.

Precautions against further raids were put in place, and the British carrier forces which repeatedly attacked Norway until the end of the war did not encounter any concentrations of shipping like that located by Ranger's airmen off Bodø.

[50] Operation Leader revealed a serious weakness in the composition of the German armed forces in occupied Norway, which were lacking sufficient numbers of combat aircraft to respond effectively to Allied attacks.

330 Squadron RAF Catalina on 6 June 1944, but the transmitter on the island continued sending reports to the United Kingdom for the duration of the war, manned by a local volunteer who had been trained by the agents.

[60] One of the two Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bombers shot down in the operation was located in 1990 and partially salvaged in 1993, with its engine put on display at the Norwegian Aviation Museum in Bodø.

[56] The remains of the Dauntless' two crew members, Lt(jg) Clyde A. Tucker, Jr., and his turret gunner, ARM2c Stephen D. Bakran, were recovered from the wreck and identified at the Nordland Central Hospital in Bodø.