The Shetland Bus

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They parachuted from an RAF plane, skied snowy hills, crossed icy rivers, detonated explosives to erase the entire inventory, and journeyed 400 kilometers to Sweden — completely undetected.

Shetlopedia.com - The Shetland Bus - Detailed information about the Shetland Bus operation, including information on boats and people lostT he Shetland Bus operation may be considered successful in that it supplied Norwegian resistance movements with weapons and took many refugees from Norway to Shetland, and that it managed to bind just shy of 300,000 German troops in Norway. However, because of this operation, forty-four men lost their lives, and the Norwegian public may not have been too happy having a huge number of German men patrolling their country. It could have been due to this operation that D-Day was an Allied victory, and many other key areas throughout Western Europe could have been hugely affected by the influence of the Shetland Bus. This small operation, secret to almost everybody, could have played a major role in these battles, influencing the course of the entire war itself. This could be an exaggeration, but the implications of the operation may well have had an effect this big. Much of what we know today about the operation is thanks to the 1951 book, The Shetland Bus. Subtitled A classic story of secret wartime missions across the North Sea, the book chronicles the period through the perspective of junior naval officer David Howarth who helped set up the base. Collectively, the group of men who were the Shetland Bus originally had the name of the Norwegian Naval Independent Unit, but in October 1943, when it officially became part of the Royal Norwegian Navy, it was renamed the Royal Norwegian Naval Special Unit.

Shetland's bus services are specified and financed by ZetTrans and are operated by a number of different bus companies.The smaller, more agile 50- to 70-foot fishing boats provided a fitting disguise. David Howarth, another British SOE officer who joined Mitchell in June 1941 and authored the book “The Shetland Bus: A WWII Epic of Escape, Survival, and Adventure,” described their design. WWII seems to have been so overwhelmingly huge that I don't think I'll ever stop finding books that tell stories that surprise me. This one is the story of an undercover supply line between the Shetland islands and occupied Norway. Participants were Norwegian civilian fishermen and UK soldiers and sailors, including the author who was one of the commanders. Stories told include a mission to sink the German battleship Tirpitz, the journey of a single survivor of a mission as he treks over the frozen Scandinavian ice and snow towards neutral Sweden, and descriptions of missions to drop off agents, weapons, and rescue partisans and those in danger of capture by the German secret police. Irvine, James W. (1991). The Giving Years: Shetland and Shetlanders, 1939–1945 (Shetland Publishing) ISBN 978-0906736159

They had bunks for six or eight men in the forecastle, and two in the small cabin aft,” Howarth wrote. “The hold amidships could carry eight or ten tons of small arms and explosives, and the wheelhouse, which was built on top of the engine casing, usually had a small chart-room opening off it, and a galley behind.” To begin with, the Shetland Bus operation consisted of fourteen Norwegian fishing boats of differing sizes. But the vessel which undertook the first Shetland Bus journey was the Aksel, whose captain was August Nanny. His crew on that inaugural journey which left for Bergen from Hamnavoe, on the west side of Lunna Ness, on 30 August 1941, were Mindor Berge, Ivar Brekke, Andreas Gjertsen, and Bard Grotle. The true story of the Shetland bus, the clandestine traffic across the North Sea from German-occupied Norway to Shetland during the Second World War. A small group of Norwegian sailors loosely connected to the British Royal Navy take refugees from Norway to Shetland in small fishing boats, equipped only with small arms to protect themselves from German aircraft and patrol boats. The film is closely based on real events, and many of the members of the group, [2] including the leader, known as "Shetlands-Larsen", play themselves. The script was written by Øystein Brekke. Flemington housed a separate staging area for fugitives “wanted” by the Germans — refugees who had just arrived from one of the long and exhaustive expeditions across the North Sea and the crew who were desperate for a fresh meal and a shower. The operational base at Lunna on the east coast was later moved to Scalloway , where the boats were repaired , until the end of the war. Malakoff & Moore’s Slip, Scalloway, Shetland. Built in World War II to service MTBs that went between Shetland and Norway, this slip was one of the links in the Shetland Bus. Now it is used for servicing fishing boats and salmon farm vessels. Photo courtesy of John Dally / Malakoff & Moore’s Slip, Scalloway, Shetland / CC BY-SA 2.0.

The boats were crewed by young albeit expert sailors and fishermen with extensive local knowledge. Many brought their own vessels but some used boats that were “stolen”, with the owner's permission, of course. Buses provide a lifeline service to Shetland’s many rural communities and essential access to work, healthcare, retail and leisure. The bus network also provides tourists with the opportunity to explore the many attractions that Shetland’s unique environment has to offer. But all was not death and destruction for the Shetland Bus. Flemington House has a distinction that, if not unique, certainly ranks as a rarity in the history of special operations. One of the highlights of the book was a scheme to destroy the German battleship Tirpitz while it sat in a Norwegian fjord. The unit made extensive preparations and nearly succeeded. The plan was to use a vessel called a chariot, kind of like a two-man torpedo. The chariot would be launched at night from a fishing boat, guided by two men, and taken right to their target. Then they would unscrew the warhead, attach it to the Tirpitz with magnets, set a timer, and be on their way across the Norwegian frontier into neutral Sweden. They practiced, prepared, got through a German control point where their boat was searched, and nearly made it to the Tirpitz before the two chariots (being towed behind the ship so they wouldn’t be noticed during inspection) disappeared—somehow the lines broke.