Niels Larsen Bruun (10 July 1893 – 11 July 1970) was a Norwegian officer who served in the Royal Norwegian Navy for more than four decades. Bruun took part in neutrality protection duties during the First World War, seeing service on several naval vessels and assuming his first command. He continued his service in the inter-war years, teaching at naval schools in addition to shipboard service.
At the outbreak of the Second World War Bruun again served on neutrality protection duties, commanding the destroyer . During the first day of the German invasion of Norway, Æger intercepted a German supply ship, which Bruun ordered sunk before he knew for certain if Norway was under attack by the Germans or the Allies. Bruun's own ship was sunk by German bombers the same day, with the surviving crew members dispersing two days later with instructions from Bruun to try to continue to fight.
Bruun escaped German-occupied Norway in 1941, travelling east through Sweden, the Soviet Union, India, and the United States to join the exiled Norwegian forces in the United Kingdom. Remaining in the United Kingdom for the duration of the war, Bruun led units training personnel and officers for the exiled Royal Norwegian Navy.
Returning to Norway at the end of the Second World War, Bruun worked in the administration of the post-war Royal Norwegian Navy. He concluded his career as a rear admiral (acting) in command of the northernmost Norwegian naval command. During the eight years he held his last command, he played an important role in the establishment of the naval component of the Norwegian Home Guard.
Early and personal life Bruun was born in Frederikshald, Norway, on 10 July 1893. He was the son of the merchant Ludvig Otto Bruun and Magdalene Elise Larsen.
On 17 April 1920 Bruun married Haugesund-born Ingrid Sakkestad, three years his junior, in Haugesund. The couple had a daughter.
Career In 1912, Bruun joined the Royal Norwegian Naval Academy as a cadet no. 651. Becoming an officer in the Royal Norwegian Navy on 1 October 1915, Bruun saw service on neutrality protection patrols during the First World War, serving as a second lieutenant on the gunboat from 9 October 1915 to 29 April 1916. After the end of the conflict, during which Norway remained neutral, he participated in minesweeping operations from 1918 to 1920.
In November 1917, Bruun graduated from the Royal Norwegian Naval Academy and was promoted from second lieutenant to first lieutenant. From 1917 to 1920 he was in command of a torpedo boat. In the years that followed, he continued his military education with courses in torpedo warfare, naval gunnery and radio training.
In the interwar period he served on Norwegian fishery protection vessels, torpedo boats, minelayers and coastal defence ships. He also served with the navigation department, the 1st Naval District Command and various training units. Amongst the ships on which Bruun served was the gunboat , where he served as a first lieutenant from 19 May 1931 to 1 October 1931. At the time, Sleipner was being used as a tender for the Royal Norwegian Navy Air Service. In late 1931, Bruun served on the fishery protection vessel during a cruise to Finnmark in the far north of Norway. On 1 July 1931 he was temporarily promoted to the rank of acting captain, a promotion which was made permanent in December 1933. In mid-1932 Bruun held command of the torpedo boat , and by 1933, he was the second-in-command at the Royal Norwegian Navy's torpedo school. He also worked part-time as a teacher at the Royal Norwegian Navy's mine warfare school.
Second World War
At the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, Norway declared itself neutral. To defend Norwegian territory from neutrality violations by the warring parties, the Royal Norwegian Navy mobilized. Bruun was put in command of the , one of the four modern destroyers then in Norwegian service. He was also the commander of the 1st Destroyer Division, consisting of the destroyers Æger, , and . Initially Æger and the other ships of the 1st Destroyer Division were part of the 1st Naval District and were based in Kristiansand, in the south of Norway.
The outbreak of the Finno-Soviet Winter War in late 1939 caused Bruun and the 1st Destroyer Division to be despatched to Northern Norway to protect Norwegian neutrality. With the end of the Winter War in March 1940, the warships then in Northern Norway were redeployed separately along the coast to carry out neutrality patrols. By April 1940, Bruun's destroyer Æger was deployed to the 2nd Naval District, based at Tananger and patrolling the coast between the port city of Stavanger and Haugesund. In addition to Æger, the area between Stavanger and Haugesund was guarded by the old destroyer , the torpedo boat Stegg, the patrol boat and Motorboat no. 7. Aircraft from the Royal Norwegian Navy Air Service and the Norwegian Army Air Service assisted in patrolling the coastline.
German invasion In the early hours of 8 April, Bruun was ordered to patrol with Æger off Jæren and look for suspicious activity, after the British claimed to have laid a naval minefield in the area. By 09:00 he returned to Tananger and reported to his superiors that nothing out of the ordinary had been observed. Thereafter Bruun brought Æger to Stavanger to restock provisions and carry out maintenance on the destroyer's weapons. The destroyer had only two torpedoes on board. At 22:00 Bruun was ordered by naval command to increase his ship's readiness and prepare for potential war. After hearing on the NRK radio news of the sinking of the German ship off the Norwegian port of Lillesand, and reports of German warship movements in the Kattegat south of Norway, Bruun was increasingly concerned about the situation.
On 9 April 1940, Germany carried out a surprise invasion of Norway, attacking strategic ports along the Norwegian coast. Six naval task forces carried out landings at points from Oslo in the south-east to Narvik in the north of Norway. In addition to the naval landing forces, airborne troops were despatched against the strategically important airports at Sola near Stavanger and Fornebu near Oslo.
As part of their invasion plan, the Germans sent several supply ships to Norway separately from the invasion force itself. One of the supply ships, which were camouflaged as civilian merchant ships, was the German freighter . Loaded with supplies for German airborne troops set to seize Sola Airport on 9 April 1940, Roda had set sail from Hamburg on 7 April and arrived at Stavanger in time for the invasion. Roda had anchored off Hundvåg to await the arrival of German invasion forces. The most important of the cargo on board Roda were heavy anti-aircraft guns and four 21 cm coastal artillery pieces meant to secure the Stavanger area once the Germans had seized it.
Shortly after midnight on 9 April Bruun was alerted by the local police and customs officials of the presence of Roda. The officials were suspicious of the ship, as the crew claimed she was loaded with 7,000 tonnes of coke despite the ship appearing to be a passenger/cargo vessel and was riding high in the water for such a heavy cargo. The ship's hatches were blocked by being covered with coke, preventing inspection. The suspicion was further heightened by reports coming in of neutrality violations taking place in Eastern Norway. By 01:05 customs officers boarded Æger and conferred with Bruun about the situation. After meeting with the police, Bruun ordered an inspection of Roda. Before despatching a seven-strong boarding crew led by his second-in-command to Roda, Bruun was approached by the German consulate in Stavanger, whose representatives requested to be let on board the German ship, requests which Bruun rejected. Before boarding Roda, Bruun spoke with his commanding officer, Admiral Carsten Tank-Nielsen on the telephone. Tank-Nielsen supported Bruun's decision to inspect the German ship. Tank-Nielsen also told Bruun to act on his own judgement in case the military situation escalated in Norway. The military commander in Stavanger, Colonel Gunnar Spørck, had also requested that Roda be inspected, as he feared the ship carried German troops, but his message never reached Bruun.
While the boarding crew were away, Bruun received a message from the 2nd Naval District by radio, informing him that the forts in the Oslofjord were in action against unidentified warships. Requests on the part of Bruun regarding the nationality of the intruding foreign ships were never answered. When the boarding crew returned from Roda, they reported that they had been prevented from properly inspecting the ship's cargo. The German captain had opposed the boarding crew in their attempt to access the ship's cargo holds. At 04:15 Bruun received a new report from the 2nd Naval District, informing him that unidentified foreign warships were forcing their way towards the city of Bergen. A follow-up radio message relaying the identity of the intruding warships as German, did not reach Bruun. Relying on the reports he had received, and what he had heard on the radio news, Bruun reasoned that he could not be certain if the intruders were German or British. While awaiting clarification of the situation, he decided to seize Roda as a prize and move his own and the German ship to further to the south. An eight-man prize crew was despatched to Roda with instructions to replace the German flag with the Norwegian naval ensign, disable the ship's radio transmitter, and order the German captain to move to Riskafjord. After the German captain had refused to follow the instructions of the prize crew, Bruun threatened him with opening fire, but the crew on Roda kept delaying while awaiting the coming German invasion.
By 06:00 Bruun concluded that it was taking too long for Roda to start her engines, and decided to sink the German ship. Although still not certain about which warring party was attacking Norway, and out of contact with his superiors and other military units, Bruun wanted to end the situation and free up his ship for other tasks. After Bruun had recalled his prize crew and ordered the German crew to abandon ship in their lifeboats, he ordered his gunners to sink the German vessel. Æger first fired 25 "cold" 10 cm rounds (non-explosive shells intended for use as warning shots rather than warfare) into Rodas starboard side, then a further 25 cold rounds into the German ship's port side. Before Rodas captain abandoned ship, he radioed a message describing the situation. Picked up by another German ship in the area, , the message had been relayed to the invasion headquarters in Hamburg, Germany. The crew of Æger was stunned by Bruun's order to open fire, which he had to repeat three times before they carried it out. By 08:00 Roda was sinking slowly, finally disappearing beneath the surface by the afternoon of 9 April and settling at a depth of .