page_title: Operation Gearbox II
section_title: September 1942 – 7 June 1943
hierarchical_section_title: Operation Gearbox II / Operation Gearbox II / September 1942 – 7 June 1943
caption_attribution_description: English: Spitsbergen, Norway’s largest island, is pictured in this image, acquired on 6 September 2011 by Envisat’s Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR). Bordered by the Arctic Ocean to its north and the Greenland Sea to its west, Spitsbergen is the largest and only permanently populated island of the Svalbard archipelago.
context_page_description: Operation Gearbox II was a Norwegian and British operation during the Second World War on the Arctic island of Spitzbergen in the Svalbard Archipelago. Operation Fritham, the first attempt to establish a base had been defeated when the two ships carrying the force were sunk by Luftwaffe bombers on 14 May.
  In Operation Gearbox, 57 Norwegian reinforcements with 116 long tons of supplies had arrived by cruiser on 2 July. The reinforcements consolidated the defences of the former settlement at Barentsburg and made preparations for Gearbox II, another reinforcement of the Norwegians and part of the plan for Convoy PQ 18, to prevent a repeat of Convoy PQ 17 in which 24 of the 35 freighters in the convoy had been sunk.
  Force P comprising the fleet oilers RFA Blue Ranger and RFA Oligarch and four destroyer escorts, sailed from Scapa Flow on 3 September and anchored in Lowe Sound several days later. From 9 to 13 September, relays of destroyers were detached from PQ 18 to refuel before the convoy passed Bear Island, into range of the Luftwaffe bombers and torpedo-bombers based in north Norway.
context_section_description: Cumberland. Eclipse and four more destroyers arrived on 17 September, with 130 long tons (130 t) of supplies and a party of Norwegian troops (Lieutenant-Colonel Albert Tornerud, also the successor of Ullring as Military Governor). The heavier items were moved ashore on a raft made from 50 imp gal (227 l) oil drums. Ullring went on board Cumberland to report on the last six weeks of operations. Sheffield arrived on 18 September with another 110 long tons (110 t) of stores. When Ullring reported to Captain A. W. Clarke on Sheffield, Clarke donated two depth charges to Gearbox and included in his report that Ullring had "...attacked a U-boat from a rowing boat armed with a tin opener". The ships repeated the practice of keeping their engines running and the crews closed up for anti-aircraft action; the cruisers managed to unload and depart in six hours. Glen began to prepare the local aspects of Gearbox II and Ullring relinquished command to Tornerud; Whatman remained the British Liaison Officer and stayed over the winter of 1942–1943, before being relieved.
  The short range of some of the escorting destroyers involved in PQ 18, led to the dispatch of the Spitzbergen Fuelling Force (Force P), the fleet oilers Blue Ranger and Oligarch and four destroyer escorts. The ships sailed with PQ 18 on 3 September and turned north for Spitzbergen on 9 September to form a temporary advanced refuelling base in the 52 mi (84 km)-long Van Mijenfjorden (Lowe Sound). The fiord is separated from Bellsund by the islands of Akseløya and Mariaholmen. Sveagruva, on the north bank was still garrisoned by a party of the original Fritham Force, which had been rearmed during a visit from Ullring and Gearbox II in July. On 11 September, the cruiser HMS Scylla led five destroyers of the 3rd Destroyer Flotilla from PQ 18 arriving at Bellsund on the evening of 12 September; the ships sailed past the destroyer HMS Windsor acting as guard ship, to rendezvous with the two oilers and their four destroyer escorts in Axelfiord, to fuel before the most dangerous part of the convoy route, east of Bear Island. The flotilla departed at 4:00 a.m. on 13 September, reaching the convoy at 2:30 p.m. The oilers and escorts left for home on 21 September.
  Healy and P-Peter took part in Orator and left Grasnaya on 25 September for Svalbard, to pick up Glen and return to Scotland. Bad weather forced a return to Murmansk and at 1:29 p.m., about 70 nmi (81 mi; 130 km) out from the coast, a Ju 88 attacked the Catalina, passed towards the front of the Catalina and was hit. Return fire from the Ju 88 entered the cockpit of the Catalina and killed Healy. After the war, the surviving crew members found that a Ju 88 of 1 Staffel, Fernaufklärungsgeschwader 22 (Long-Range Reconnaissance Group 22) from Banak in north Norway, had crashed off Tamsöy Island that day, attributed to an engagement with a "Russian flying boat". On 19 October, HMS Argonaut and two destroyers delivered supplies to Svalbard and a Norwegian vessel made the voyage in November. On 7 June 1943, the cruisers Cumberland, Bermuda and two destroyers sailed from Iceland covered by the Home Fleet, landing reinforcements and supplies for Gearbox II on 10 July.
caption: Radar photograph; bottom right shows Akseløya and Mariaholmen islands in Bellsund and Van Mijenfjorden beyond (Envisat, 2011)
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