into the Jøssingfjord. She was escorted by the Norwegian torpedo boat . She was joined later in the fjord by a second – – and the patrol boat Firern. As HMS Cossack entered the fjord at 22:20 local time, the Norwegian vessels did not intervene when the British boarded Altmark in the late hours of 16 February. The boarding action led to the freeing of 299 Allied prisoners of war held on the German ship. The boarding party killed seven Germans in the process. Following this, the Germans sent strong protests to Norway. The Norwegians sent protests to Britain. While Norwegian, Swedish and American experts in international law described the British action as a violation of Norwegian neutrality, the United Kingdom declared that the incident was at the most a technical violation that had been morally justified. The whole incident led to the Germans speeding up planning for invasion of Norway. On 21 February, General Nikolaus von Falkenhorst was placed in charge of its planning and in command of the land-based forces. The official approval for the invasion and occupation of Denmark and Norway was signed by Hitler on 1 March. Initial plans Allied plans With the end of the Winter War, the Allies determined that any occupation of Norway or Sweden would likely do more harm than good, possibly driving the neutral countries into an alliance with Germany. However, the new French prime minister, Paul Reynaud, took a more aggressive stance than his predecessor and wanted some form of action taken against Germany. Churchill was a strong agitator for action in Scandinavia because he wanted to cut Germany off from Sweden and push the Scandinavian countries to side with the United Kingdom. This initially involved a 1939 plan to penetrate the Baltic with a naval force. This was soon changed to a plan involving the mining of Norwegian waters to stop iron ore shipments from Narvik and provoke Germany into attacking Norway, where it could be defeated by the Royal Navy. It was agreed to utilize Churchill's naval mining plan, Operation Wilfred, designed to remove the sanctuary of the Leads and force transport ships into international waters, where the Royal Navy could engage and destroy them. Accompanying this would be Plan R 4, an operation where, upon almost certain German counteraction to Operation Wilfred, the Allies would then proceed to occupy Narvik, Trondheim, Bergen, and Stavanger. The planners hoped