By agreement with Denmark, Norway maintained several hunting, weather, and radio stations along the East Greenland coast, Myggbukta and Torgilsbu being the most important.
[4] In 1941, seven Norwegians remained on the coast, and Arctic-expansion proponents in Norway eager to reverse the 1933 Permanent Court of International Justice award of the area to Denmark seized on the hunters’ plight as an opportunity to outfit a new expedition.
In April 1941 the Roosevelt Administration signed an agreement with the Danish minister in Washington, Henrik Kauffmann, who refused to take orders from (now German occupied) Copenhagen.
On 12 September, alerted by a Danish observer on Ella Island weather station, found and seized the Buskø and her crew of 26 men and one woman (wife and medic).
[7] An account of the episode appeared in the U.S. Coast Guard in WWII (pp 98–100): “Twelve men, led by Lt. Leroy McCluskey, were assigned to attack and capture the station.
They turned out to be confidential instructions – Hitler’s plans for radio stations in the far north – and of considerable value to the Coast Guard.”[8] Much of this is contradicted in FBI-papers and Norwegian sources,[1] but the account illustrates how Americans perceived and reacted to the incident.
On 12 October, the New York Times held that a Nazi spy ship with a “Gestapo agent” had been caught in the Western Hemisphere, and reported rumors about extensive German activities in the island.
[1] The episode came on the heels of an engagement involving the destroyer USS Greer (DD-145), revealed by President Roosevelt to the nation on the same day Buskø was seized, and thus played a role in the formation of American opinion in the last months of neutrality.