Greenland Patrol

[3] The cryolite mine at Ivittuut was a strategically important source of flux for electrolysis of aluminum ores by the Hall–Héroult process for aircraft production.

[4] United States Coast Guard personnel had acquired extensive experience in the waters around Greenland as part of their International Ice Patrol duties since 1915.

The United States then agreed to sell armaments to Greenland; and fourteen Coast Guardsmen were discharged to act as civilian armed guards protecting the cryolite mine with a 3-inch (7.6 cm) gun offloaded from the USCGC Campbell.

As the survey results became available, construction began on a radio and aerological station on Akia Island and airfields at Narsarsuaq and at Kipisako near Ivittuut.

[6] On 12 September 1941 Northland intercepted the Norwegian sealer Buskø, which was supporting a German radio station transmitting weather information to Germany.

Northland put a prize crew aboard Buskø, captured the radio station with some code information, and interned the personnel at Boston.

Coast Guard work parties built range lights, shore markers and LORAN radio beacons to aid navigation.

Northland landed 41 men with thirty tons of equipment to establish a high-frequency direction finding station on Jan Mayen in November 1942.

[2] The Greenland Patrol was augmented in the summer of 1942 by ten fishing trawlers purchased in Boston, repainted in blue and white Thayer system camouflage, and given Inuit names.

Despite rescue efforts by the cutters, 675 men died of hypothermia or drowning in the worst United States troopship sinking of the war.

[13] In November 1943, USCG Commodore Earl G. Rose, a decorated veteran of World War I escort duty, succeeded Edward Smith as commander of the Greenland Patrol.

Northland intercepted Kehdingen and captured her German weather party, while escaping an attack by the escorting U-703 when the U-boat's torpedoes detonated on floating ice.