The story of the sailors who sailed the seas during World War II is a sad part of Norwegian history.
The sailors returned home with the most incredible stories of submarine attacks, burning ships and dead comrades. Few would listen.
NRK, together with the ARKIVET Peace and Human Rights Center, has mapped the journeys of war sailors on Norwegian ships inallied service, and can for the first time visually show how civilian sailors were forced into war to keep the fight going on the major battlefields around the globe.
Over the next five years, Norwegian ships will make over 90,000 voyages carrying war supplies on all the world’s oceans.
Number of Norwegian sailors by age at the outbreak of the war. The youngest was 13 years old, the oldest 78 years old. Most were under 30 years old.
The answer will be convoy.
Ships from allied countries begin to sail together in large grids with fixed distances between ships. There is strength in numbers – more can keep watch, warships can chase away the enemy with cannons and help during attacks.
A large convoy of over 40 ships sails together off Iceland in 1942.
Photo: US Department of Défense
When the convoy sailed on August 24, 1940, they didn’t know the answer. We do now. On average, a Norwegian ship is lost every four days throughout the war.
Ten percent of Norwegian sailors die during the war
Number of Norwegian sailors killed on Norwegian ships by age.
During the Battle of Britain, Norwegian tankers are said to have transported half of the fuel the British needed to resist.
In a motivational speech to Norwegian sailors, American Admiral Emory S. Land praises the Norwegian effort.
“You are worth much more than one million soldiers”
Admiral Emory S. Land, Washington DC, September 23, 1941
American poster honouring Norwegian war sailors.
American poster used for fundraising for Norwegian war sailors in the United States during World War II.
There have been several reports of a German fleet of pirate ships. They look like merchant ships, but behind covers and fake cargo lurk cannons and soldiers. Also linguistically, they sail under a false flag. The German Navy calls them Auxiliary Cruisers. They are deadly to Allied sailors. In practice, the crew are pirates in German naval uniforms, hijacking and sinking Allied ships.
The Norwegian ship MS Nordvard has just been hijacked by the auxiliary cruiser “Pinguin” on 16 September 1940. The crew was put in a prison camp and returned to Norway in 1941. Photo: Erling Skjold/Norwegian Shipwreck Archive
Over 38 Norwegian ships, including onewhaling fleet, is hijacked by the “auxiliary cruisers” and the crew captured.
Wooden crates of aircraft parts are loaded aboard an unknown Norwegian ship in New York. Photo: National Archives
On the morning of December 7, 1941, the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor – the American military base in Hawaii. 2,403 people are killed. The red line is crossed .
So far, the Americans have contributed weapons and equipment to the war against the Nazis, but now they declare war on Japan. Four days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hitler also declares war on the United States.
Secretly, German submarines have made their way all the way to the American coast.
Over the course of six months, around a hundred ships are sunk by submarines along the American coast. 40 Norwegian ships are lost. The German submarine captains call the period "The second happy time», officially it is known as Operation Timpani.
D-Day
On June 6, 1944, Allied troops storm the beaches of Normandy. Over the next few weeks, 160,000 soldiers will be landed to defeat German forces. The soldiers need supplies and ammunition. 1,700 Norwegian seafarers and 50 Norwegian ships contribute with freight by sea.
** BURNT EARTH** (Liberation of Finnmark)
SS Idefjord sail via Varangerfjorden and into Bøkfjorden:
Norwegian guard ships are located on both sides of Idefjord in Kirkenes.
Photo: Murmansk Historical Ethnographic Regional Museum / Rune Rauito
When Idefjord docked in Kirkenes on January 22, 1945, it was the first Norwegian merchant ship from the foreign fleet.
Trygve sees no city, he sees a pile of ruins. The occupiers have burned everything down and escaped from Soviet soldiers who are liberating Finnmark.
His hometown of Stallogargo, 250 kilometers west, has also been burned. The house where he grew up is gone.
On February 17, 1945, they set sail from Murmansk in convoy RA 64. The convoy consisted of 30 ships. Distributed among the ships were 500 homeless civilians from Sørøya in Finnmark. Mostly women and children.
German soldiers have burned down their homes and tried to force them off the island, but for three months, from November to February, the people of Sørøy have survived in caves and dugouts:
A little boy in a shanty town at Ytre Reppa on Sørøya. 13 people from the same family had lived in the shanty town for over 3 months after their homes were burned down by the Nazis. Photo: Ole Friele Backer / National Archives
Then the Barents Sea brings a hurricane. In waves of up to 14 meters it is difficult to keep the convoy together, and on deck it is 40 effective degrees below zero.
Trygve sees that the ship in the bow, the American ship Henry Bacon , is slowing down and slipping out of sight astern.
When it finally clears, volleys of gunfire whine from the air over the Henry Bacon.
The ship is torpedoed several times and sinks. Several of the lifeboats are shot to pieces, so there is far from room for everyone. Then the captain prioritizes according to the book: Women and children first in the boats.
Those from the crew who don’t get a place, or who give up their place, go down with the ship. Two hours later, the lifeboats are found. By then, 15 Americans have frozen to death. The rest survive.
When the convoy finally reaches Glasgow, a newborn baby is carried ashore. The boy is named after the ship that brought him to safety: Lebaron Russel Briggs .
When the convoy continues towards Murmansk, the Norwegian ships enter Kirkenes again. It is May 8, 1945 and the Nazis have finally capitulated.
The ship Kong Haakon VII docked in Kirkenes on May 8, 1945. Norwegian flags flutter in the wind. Photo: Mugaas / Finnmark County Library
Over 60,000 Norwegian and foreign seafarers on over 1,000 Norwegian ships have contributed.
19 percent of all the oil the Allies needed during the war was transported by Norwegian seafarers. 70 million tons of dry cargo were transported to Allied ports.
Information is always scarce in war. Few knew how the sailors of war felt on the oceans.
After the war, knowledge remained scarce. The war sailors did not have the courage to tell, and those who should have listened or asked did not do so until it was too late for many. Many people didn’t care either. Norway was occupied.
The war sailors had survived in freedom out there at sea – what was the problem?
Total fatalities3907 Norwegian sailors during the war. The majority in their early 30s or younger. Most as a result of wartime shipwrecks, but also as a result of illness, accidents and injuries they suffered during the war years.
Compressing the voyages of the war sailors down to 4,500 words in an article is unfortunately impossible. Fortunately, there are opportunities to track down forgotten stories.
NRK, together with the ARKIVET Peace and Human Rights Center, has registered over 90,000 voyages made by war sailors who served on Norwegian ships. If you want to explore for yourself, you can start by checking the fate of M/T Solheim or Martin Gundersen in the War Sailors Register.
