Weather War

By Cdr. Carl O. Schuster, USN
Page 2

May saw the momentum shift against the Germans. First, the United States signed a security agreement with Greenland, pledging to protect the latter's coastal waters and territory from outside interference. Within weeks of that signing, the U.S. Coast Guard had captured two German weather parties en route to Greenland. Greenland also established its own army (26 men - the smallest to fight in WWII), and began patrols along its eastern coastline.

The U.S. then replaced Great Britain as the occupying power on Iceland, which declared its independence from Denmark. The British were thus freed to patrol the open ocean of the Greenland Sea, and they scored a major coup almost immediately, finally capturing the Mfinchen -complete with its enigma encoding machine with surface ship broadcast settings intact. That capture, along with that of U-110 only two days later, gave the Allies their first real successes in breaking the German naval codes. Then a second weather ship, the Laurenberg, along with its codes was also taken two weeks later. The Allies were thus able to read Germany's U-boat and surface ship codes well into February 1942.

The next major Allied military operation in the Weather War was code named "Operation Gauntlet." This was the seizure, evacuation and destruction of facilities on Spitzbergen Island. Led by Admiral Sir Phillip Vian, aboard the cruiser HMS Nigeria, the move was conducted by a five-ship British task group. Vian and his warships escorted the passenger liner Empress Canada to the island, where they were to embark and evacuate its entire population of 3,200 Norwegian and Soviet coal miners and officials.

Arriving on 25 August 1941, the group proceeded quickly with the mission, despite the Soviet Consul's reluctance to leave without specific orders from Moscow. The weather station was also taken without resistance (its Norwegian staff welcomed the Allies). Then, in a successful ploy to deter the Germans from flying over the island, they began transmitting fake weather reports indicating low cloud cover and fog hung over Spitzbergen.

The last civilians were evacuated by nightfall, and British demolition teams went to work. Over the next six days, they systematically destroyed all facilities that might be of use to the Germans. The coal mine entrances were blocked, coal stocks set ablaze, and as a final act, the weather, radio and power stations were demolished as the ships withdrew southward. As an added bonus, three German coal ships were captured as they approached the island that evening. The operation was concluded by 2 September, and the Soviet citizens were repatriated at Archangelsk three days later.

It took the Germans three more days to discover what had happened on Spitzbergen. They reacted by landing a ten-man Luftwaffe meteorological team on the island's northeastern face. Despite the bad weather and periodic Royal Navy patrols around the island, the Germans were able to expand the runway and fly in nearly four tons of supplies over the next month. By 11 November, they had two remote stations and a primary site operating. 

Page 1 || Page 2 || Page 3 || Page 4