Operation Haudegen
The islands are mountainous, the peaks permanently snow-covered, some glaciated; there are occasional river terraces at the bottom of steep valleys and some coastal plain.
The settlements attracted colonists of different nationalities and the treaty of 1920 neutralised the islands and recognised the mineral and fishing rights of the participating countries.
Drift mines were linked to the shore by overhead cable tracks or rails and coal dumped in winter was collected after the summer thaw.
Coal mines on the islands were owned and operated by Norway at Longyearbyen and by the Soviet Union at Barentsburg; both governments agreed to their destruction and the evacuation of their nationals.
[2] Operation Fritham (30 April – 14 May 1942) was an Allied attempt to secure the coal mines on Spitzbergen, the main island of the Svalbard Archipelago.
The survivors of Fritham Force had salvaged what equipment they could and set up camp in Barentsburg, which had been deserted since Operation Gauntlet and sent out reconnaissance parties.
The airstrip was blocked and on 23 July, a Ju 88, carrying an experienced crew and two senior officials, was shot down while flying low over the landing ground; the German plan to send another weather party had been thwarted.
From 9 to 13 September, relays of destroyers were detached from PQ 18 to refuel before the convoy passed Bear Island and into the range of the Luftwaffe bombers and torpedo-bombers based in north Norway.
[7] Dr Erich Etienne, a former Polar explorer, commanded an operation to install a manned station at Advent Bay (Adventfjorden); its subsoil of alluvial gravel was acceptable for a landing ground.
The site received the code-name Bansö (from Banak and Spitzbergen Öya) and ferry flights of men, equipment and supplies began on 25 September.
[8] The British followed events at Bletchley Park through Ultra decrypts, which was made easier by German willingness to make routine use of radio communication.
[9][a] On 2 May 1942, the apparatus for an automatic weather station, a thermometer, barometer, transmitter and batteries arrived at Banak, in a box named a Kröte (toad) by the aircrew.
In the midnight sun (20 April – 22 August) as mid-summer approached, the ice further west near the Allied positions cleared faster than at the German (eastern) end of the fiord.
[12] The Germans reported the Catalina attack on the Ju 88 on 27 June, which had left it a write-off and claimed to have damaged the British aircraft with return fire.
[13] Nussbaum, another Kriegsmarine meteorological party, commanded by Dr Franz Nusser, departed Norway in U-377 to return to Svalbard and re-occupy the Knospe base at Signehamna that had spent the winter of 1941–1942 gathering weather data.
