review written and ready on the bookshow by Brian Lowen August 2015
This book
describes in detail the secret war missions between the Shetland Islands and
the coast of occupied Norway during the Second World War, which was affectionally known by the Norwegians as the Shetland bus as many
of them escaped their occupied country
by this method.
A small fleet of
Norwegian fishing trawlers was commissioned by Britain to take agents and
supplies over to Norway with the idea of building up supplies of guns and
explosives so that acts of sabotage could be carried out against the German
forces.
A base was set up
in Lunna on the east coast of Shetland where the fishing boats were overhauled
and repaired if necessary after missions, and they were also fitted with hidden
guns and other weapons in case they were attacked. The base was later moved
round to the west coast to Scalloway when the whole exercise got too big to
continue in the small remote port of Lunna.
who took in the
armaments and passed the agents along between farms so they could seek the
information needed by the British forces.
One of the
missions that actually failed was an attempt to destroy the German battleship
Tirpitz which was moored in a remote fiord near Trondheim, although it was
later put out of action by British bombers.
It was the Father
of the writer of the book who was in charge of the base at Lunna where the
British were in control but great diplomacy had to be used in order to let the
fiercely independent fishermen feel that they were really running the show.
During four years
of the war many missions were run across the North Sea with only a few
casualties and they became such a thorn in the side of the German forces that
several divisions of the army were stationed there to combat the threat, thus
taking vital forces away from the battlefronts elsewhere.
An interesting
book about a little known operation that was carried on during the war years.
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