Arctic Airmen

In 1942 a Catalina crew of 219 Squadron, based in the Shetlands, was selected to carry out a series of top secret operations, including a flight to the North Pole. They were made at the same time as a Norwegian expedition to Spitzbergen to keep the Germans out of the area. The flights were over 24 hours long and reached the limits of human endurance in the extreme cold. Later, the Squadron provided cover for the Russian convoys. Ernest Schofield was the navigator on the crew and retained the logs. These were extraordinary missions and on 21 September one ended with a Ju88 attack and tragedy: "The pilot's cockpit was dulled with smoke. Tim was falling from his seat... We gave him a shot of morphia, for what help it might have been..."

Résumé
In 1942 a Catalina crew of 210 Squadron, based at Sullom Voe in the Shetlands, was selected to carry out a series of highly secret operations, including a flight to the North Pole. The sorties were associated with a Norwegian expedition from Britain to Spitsbergen, to deny the use of the territory to the enemy. The flights made by the crew were frequently over twenty-four hours in length and reached the limits of human endurance, in conditions of extreme cold. Later, the squadron was detached to North Russia, to provide cover for the convoys taking vital supplies to the Allies on the Eastern Front. The navigator of the crew, Ernest Schofield, retained logs of most of these sorties. Together with other survivors of the crew, accounts from German sources and research carried out by Roy Conyers Nesbit, he recreated these little-known events, in detailed and accurate narrative that ends in tragedy.