The battleships Tirpitz (in its only offensive action) and Scharnhorst, plus nine destroyers, sailed to the archipelago, bombarded Allied-occupied settlements in Isfjorden and covered a landing party.

The islands are mountainous, with permanently snow-covered peaks, some glaciated; there are occasional river terraces at the bottom of steep valleys and some coastal plains.

Drift mines were linked to the shore by overhead cable tracks or rails and coal dumped over the winter was collected by ship after the summer thaw.

In August 1941, British, Canadian and Free Norwegian Forces landed on Spitzbergen during Operation Gauntlet to destroy the coal industry, associated equipment and stores.

[2] Germany set up manned meteorological stations in the Arctic to improve weather forecasts, vital for the warfare against Allied convoys from the UK to the USSR.

The subsoil of alluvial gravel was acceptable for an airstrip and the south-eastern orientation of the high ground did not impede wireless communication with Banak in Norway; the settlement of Longyearbyen was close by.

The site received the code-name Bansö (from Banak and Spitzbergen Öya) and ferry flights of men, equipment and supplies began on 25 September.

[5] An automatic weather station (Kröte) with a thermometer, barometer, transmitter and batteries arrived at Banak, to be flown to Bansö and the Moll party to be brought back.

[8] Tirpitz led Scharnhorst, with Karl Galster, Theodore Riedel and Hans Lody providing an anti-submarine screen ahead, Erich Steinbrinck, Z27 and Z30 to starboard and Z29, Z31 and Z33 to port, as the ships sailed past Stjernsundet.

At 7:00 a.m., the infantry commander, Colonel Wendte, reported that the demolitions would be complete by 8:00 a.m. After a methodical bombardment, the German ships re-embarked the landing party, their prisoners by 11:00 a.m. and put to sea, Tirpitz firing another eight shells at ammunition and fuel dumps outside Barentsburg.

[16] Samuel Eliot Morison, the official historian of the US Navy, described Zitronella as a political move on the part of the Kriegsmarine, to show Hitler that the German surface fleet had some value.

[19] Captain Morten Bredsdorff and thirty prisoners were sent to Oflag XXI-C in Schildberg (now Ostrzeszów) in the Reichsgau Wartheland in the former state of Poland, joining 1,089 Norwegian officers interned there.

[20] A German Leading Seaman from a destroyer was court-martialled and sentenced to death for cowardice (he had hidden on his ship rather than accompanying troops to the shore) and was executed on the quarterdeck of Scharnhorst.

[23] The Catalina flew to Sørkapp, then navigated up the west coast to Isfjorden and searched for signs of life around Kapp Linné, Barenstburg, Green Harbour, Grumant and Longyearbyen, taking photographs and finding only destroyed buildings and smoke from the fires started by the Germans.

The Catalina landed as planned and the crew were told the flight was in support of Operation Source, an X-Craft (midget submarine) attack against the ships; their reconnaissance photos were to be flown to Britain for briefing material.