Arctic Adventure Part 8 - Blucher blunder, Estonia surprise

Leaving Oslo, Norway by ship you have to take a serpentine route.  This is Oslofjord. 

During the war, you also had to dodge these nasty buggers:

This didn't just wash up on shore - it is on display outside the Kon Tiki museum

If you've ever wondered how these things work - they're ridiculously simple (and effective).

The protuberance is called a "Hertz Horn".  Invented in 1870 they are still in use today.  The horn is nothing more than a lead pipe containing a glass vial filled with sulfuric acid. When some poor bastard ship bangs into the mine - the lead pipe bends, the vial breaks and the acid drains down into a dry lead acid battery. The battery comes to life (albeit briefly) and triggers the detonator.

There's an old naval expression that says EVERY ship is a mine detector - some only do it once.

Wandering down Oslofjord you will come to some narrows. If you're in charge of navigation - stay in the east channel around the island. When southbound, take the island to starboard.  This is really really important.

These narrows were not always as calm as they appear today. Here's the first clue.

Oil, slowly bubbling to the surface.

Look for Drobak on the map below.

From a military standpoint, Drobak is the perfect place to site a fort. All the way back in 1644 the Norwegians figured that out and built Fort Oscarrborg on the island in the middle. In a clever move they filled in the west side of the waterway with rocks that ended 3 feet below the surface. This wouldn't hamper small fishing boats and would force larger ships (at least the ones that knew about the hidden obstruction) to take the channel to the east.

This is Fort Oscarrborg today:

Note the display of old muzzle loader cannons 

Observation tower

By the end of the 19th century every one knew that stone fortresses were now obsolete.  The Norwegians decided to upgrade the defenses anyway and proceeded to install 3 German 6 inch guns.

Note that the gun is completely dependent on manpower alone.  It is a breech loader, but everything has to be done by hand. For example - look at the back end of the gun for the big hand wheel to train the gun. The guy cranking left or right to aim the gun can't see what he's aiming at.

6" guns aren't all that big, but consider that by the time a ship came into range - it was a point blank shot. Then, in a very clever move, they installed 3 torpedo tubes on the back side of the island (and kept their mouths shut). Those torpedo tubes were one of the few things that WW II German intelligence knew nothing about. Ironically they were armed with German torpedoes the Norwegians had bought in 1900.

Sure enough, on April 9th, 1940, a German Kriegsmarine flotilla, lead by the heavy cruiser Blucher,

German heavy cruiser Blucher.  Went into service April 5, 1940.  8  8" guns, 3 aircraft. The ship was built to be used for years.  It only lasted 3 days. 
By Bundesarchiv, DVM 10 Bild-23-63-09 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5372015

sailed up the fjord in a two prong pincer movement to capture Oslo (the other prong came over land to attack Oslo from the east).  They knew, of course, all about the 3  6" guns they'd be facing (hell, the Germans had sold them the guns). The Germans were expecting a ferocious firefight.  This was their first surprise - they didn't get one. The Norwegians got off a few shots, but nothing like what the Germans were expecting. For those old guns to be effective it takes a large group of highly trained, well rehearsed gun crews in peak physical condition to bring the guns to life. The Norwegians had siphoned off most of the soldiers of the fort for duty elsewhere. This is where the story takes an unexpected twist. All the old, retired guys in Droback put down their beers and said "Bullshit, we're not gonna let the damn krauts just sail up the fjord.  Let's do something".  So they did.  They drove over to the high school and rounded up all the boys that hadn't been drafted.  Anyone who has ever been around fired up old guys and teenage boys will recognize that this could be a very dangerous mix.  And indeed it was. Never screw with an old guy. We know all the tricks and we have less to lose.

The geezer garrison got off a few shots with the 6" guns but failed to score any crippling blows. The Norwegians really weren't expecting to stop them so easily. After all, they were facing a massive array of naval guns.

Then the German ships rounded the corner and fell into a trap they weren't expecting. The Norwegians nailed them with not one, but two of the, by then, 40 year old torpedoes. 

blucher on fire  By Riksarkivet (National Archives of Norway) from Oslo, Norway - Senkingen av Blücher, No restrictions, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44299028 

The German torpedoes did an excellent job of setting the German warship on fire. Eventually the fires spread to the powder magazine and the Blucher (a brand spanking new ship) blew up and sank (with the loss of 1,000 men).

blucher sinking  By Unknown/Riksarkivet (National Archives of Norway) - https://www.flickr.com/photos/national_archives_of_norway/5654571951/in/set-72157626581002586, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39226825  

So did this heroic action stop the invasion of Oslo?  Of course not. But it did delay the Germans by a full day - which was just enough time for the Norwegian government and royal family to escape to London and set up shop. As you would expect, the Germans were mad as hell.  The very next day the Luftwaffe flew over and bombed the hell out of the fort (killing and injuring no one). 

So how did a 40 year old torpedo managed to sink a modern steel ship?

Quite easily as it turns out.  They may have been 40 years old, but they were well maintained and it was a terrifically well designed torpedo. These torpedoes were so good that they didn't get taken out of service until 1993!

After the Blucher sank, it sat undisturbed on the bottom of the narrows (210 feet down) until 1991 when the oil leaks reached 11 gallons per day and the Norwegians decided it was becoming a threat to the environment. They sent down salvage divers and drilled holes in all the fuel tanks they could reach (133 tanks) and pumped out 1,000 tons of remaining fuel (which they promptly filtered and sold). Unfortunately, the Blucher had 180 fuel tanks and so it continues to slowly leak oil today.

We were on the way to Alesund, Norway when I spotted a bird I haven't seen in a while.

The bird with the bright red bill is an Oystercatcher.  They're not rare, I just haven't seen one in years.  While they aren't a large bird, apparently they pack quite a bit of attitude.  This one ran off the 3 gulls you see.

Alesund is a sea port that is known for it's Art Nouveau architecture. Simply put - the town is drop dead gorgeous.

If you're wondering how I got the aerial photos above, I walked up the "Fjellstua Viewpoint" winding staircase to the visitor center at the top of the hill:

486 steps, but with a Norwegian sense of whimsy they only put numbers on random steps (63, 187, etc.)

One of the cool things about the staircase (besides all the wheezing tourists around you and the fabulous view) is the railing.  It's fashioned out of wrought iron bars.

Alesund isn't a big place (45,000 lucky inhabitants) but it has a sad history.  In 1904 they had Mrs. O'Leary's cow on display at an exhibition.  The next thing you know - the entire town burned to the ground. Only one poor guy died, but 10,000 were left homeless (OK, I made up the part about the cow, but as we all know - cows are extremely dangerous and if they didn't taste so good should be eradicated from earth).

Norwegians aren't stupid, so when they rebuilt the town they used bricks instead of wood.

Estonia was quite a pleasant surprise.  Tallinn, where a third of all Estonians live, decided to bag the traditional city fountain and instead sponsor a balloon.

Tallinn was founded in 1248, but since this is Europe, actually dates back 5,000 years (Oh Lord, not again...that sound you just heard was me bonking myself in the head).  Estonia is one of those incredibly neat places where what you see is more or less the exact opposite of what they're really all about.  Here's what you see

This is called the Open Air Museum. It's a replica of an 18th century village. At first glance it seems quite primitive. The closer you look, however, the more clever you discover it really is. Take the roof:

Thick enough to keep the interior dry

             Also thick enough to provide excellent insulation.

This is  the kiln room (used for drying grain) - no point in letting all that heat go to waste (animals loved it here in the winter).  If you don't thoroughly dry grain it will be rendered inedible by fungus.

Where there's grain - there's rodents.  See picture below for explanation of this large hole.

This stone grain grinder is more sophisticated than it first appears.  Just pour the grain in the hole in the center, grab the stick and give it a spin - the flour comes out the sides.

Native American equivalent tool (rather primitive by comparison).

Hard to tell what this is. Hint - not used for cosmic research or torturing prisoners from Russia. 

This is our cute bike tour guide perched on it - it's the village swing set.

Our bike tour guide - flawless unaccented English, college educated, co-owner of business.

Biking over to Tallinn's old town you will find one of Europe's best preserved medieval cities.  In fact, it's now a UNESCO  world heritage site.

That being said, it's a little on the creepy side.

So, after visiting a buncha old stuff, it came as a surprise to find out what Estonia is all about today. Here's a hint:

As it turns out, Estonia is considered the "silicon valley" of Europe. Tallinn is the birthplace of Skype.  

In 2011 Micro Soft paid $8.5 B to acquire Skype.  It has been estimated that there are at least 1,000,000,000 world-wide users of Skype (myself included). Skype started in Tallinn and currently almost half of the division still live here. Tallinn has more start ups per person than all of Europe. There's so much software talent in Tallinn that it was chosen to be home to NATO Cyber Defense Center of Excellence. Not bad for a city of less than 1/2 million inhabitants!

Next up - Mother Russia.

Arctic Adventure Part 7 - Stockholm/Oslo wood and wicker boats

Without a doubt, Stockholm is one of the most beautiful cities in the world.  It's tucked in among a bunch of islands (the Stockholm Archipelago - go figure).

Which means that if you're arriving by ship it's quite a treat just getting there.

Nice place for those discriminating buyers with very deep pockets

Most of the houses you see winding your way around the islands are summer homes.  Red is the dominant house color. There's a reason for that.  I thought it was so they could find the place in wintertime if they had to. Nope. It's money.  Back in the day, red paint was the cheapest to make.

Like I mentioned, Stockholm is gorgeous. Possibly because Sweden was "neutral" during the war.  That meant that Stockholm didn't get reduced to rubble (courtesy of the German marauders, or the Allies evicting them) .

It rained on me so I had to steal this picture from the webBy en:User:Condor Patagónico - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Stockholm_Port.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3431778

The architecture is stunning.

Stockholm actually occupies 14 islands of the archipelago. Like everything else in Europe, Stockholm has been around a long time (yawn) and dates back to 6,000 BC (stone age).
One of the things it's known for are some outstanding universities.  Here we see some typical college students hard at work at an outdoor physics class:

I took this picture from the ship as we sailed by

The object of this "study group" was to knock over the beer can between the opposing lines.  Whenever it happened there was great cheering and the hard working student was awarded an "A" for his team (meaning the losing line had to chug a beer). Some college traditions are the same the world over....

Loved this fountain

It's called
"God father on the arch of heaven"

I would have named it
 "Naked surfer bangs head and sees stars"

As I mentioned, Stockholm covers a collection of islands.  This bascule bridge was cool - swinging steel meets solid rock.

Apparently the light signals are for guys only

See what I mean?

Stockholm has been voted one of the cleanest, best smelling cities in Europe. That's because it has virtually no heavy industry, and no nearby power plants.  The city is home to a huge service industry. 85% of the inhabitants work in the service industry. Service requires connectivity - Stockholm has one of the largest fiber-optic networks in the world (around 1,000,000 miles worth).  

This is also the home of the Nobel Prize. The big banquet is held here, at the City Hall:

Anybody see Bob Dylan yet?
By Arild Vågen - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16524364

Enough of the serious crap.  What about goofy stuff?

Apparently  they're prejudiced against the color blue
(I know, it means no parking)

No parking if you're colorblind?

Seriously. Do you really need a sign for something this obvious?

This isn't an optical illusion.  The smokestack really is bent.

In case you're wondering, Stockholm syndrome is named after the Norrmalmstorg robbery of Kreditbanken at Norrmalmstorg in Stockholm, Sweden. "During the crime, several bank employees were held hostage in a bank vault from August 23 to 28, 1973, while their captors negotiated with police. During this standoff, the victims became emotionally attached to their captors, rejected assistance from government officials at one point, and even defended their captors after they were freed from their six-day ordeal."

Numbskulls.
Leaving Stockholm, dodging the cool ferries

and avoiding the rocks

 the next port was Oslo, Norway. 

 Once again, arriving by ship the vista is stunning.

Oslo isn't real big (less than 2M people) and after you try eating in a restaurant you will understand why.  Holy crap is that place expensive!  Oslo is rated the second most expensive city in the world (after Tokyo). You need to take out a loan if you want more than one cup of coffee. As it happens, Norwegians have money. Lots of money. Back in the 60's the Norwegians went to sea looking for oil. They found the motherload. Their north sea oil fields are huge. Unlike, say Venezuela, the Norwegians have managed their oil wealth well. It's rumored each Norwegian is backed by $1,000,000 in the treasury. They haven't, however, sat back thinking the oil will last forever. Norway has invested heavily in wind power.

These aren't giant beer cans (dammit).  They're ocean platforms for wind turbines.

More screwy statues

This child slide struck me as extraordinarily safe.

What fun is a slide that if you ride your bike down you don't risk any broken bones? Jeez, it's like a swing you can't jump out of at apogee.

Cool, interactive art work

Wonder if they spew snow in the winter?

I was thrilled to visit Oslo as it's home to the Kon Tiki museum.

Took a ferry to get here.  Guess which one of the buildings houses the Kon Tiki and Ra.  Yeah I got it wrong too.

At first glance I thought it was a museum of oil filters (look at the name on the middle building above).

Walked into the wrong museum, but wasn't disappointed. The Fram Museum houses a ship that was used in expeditions of the Arctic and Antarctic regions by the Norwegian explorers Fridtjof Nansen, Otto Sverdrup, Oscar Wisting, and Roald Amundsen between 1893 and 1912. 

Frito-chip Nansen
By Book's author is Anne E. Keeling, photographer is unknown - Project Gutenberg eText 13103 From The Project Gutenberg eBook, Great Britain and Her Queen, by Anne E. Keeling, 2nd edition published by T. Wolmer, London 1897. Link to this image is here, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=849750

They got the idea to explore the arctic ice cap by analyzing driftwood found on one side of the cap that was from ships that had been wrecked on the other side. The idea was postulated that a current flowed under the ice cap (it does) and they could use this current to reach the north pole (you can't). 

Hoped for route
By Dtbohrer - Heavily modified version of File:Artide.svg. The line of the expected drift is drawn from Nansen's description contained in Nansen, Fridtjof: Farthest North Vol I pp. 21-24, Constable & Co., London 1897., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8048069

The trick was to build a ship strong enough and designed in such a way that instead of freezing into the ice (which will crunch you like an aluminium beer can at a frat party) would "float" up on the ice.

At sea

On ice
(note the windmill - used to generate electricity, not grind flour)

The Fram is very shallow draft and has almost no keel. 
If you're wondering about the weird colors - the museum (for some inexplicable reason) uses colored lights. I did my best to filter them out but I couldn't correct everything.

It's built from multiple layers of different types of wood and is the strongest wooden ship I've ever seen.

The propeller is 2-bladed and can be retracted into the hull for safe keeping

Spare propellers in case you get hosed and lose the first one

The idea actually worked.  Sort of.  Well, the ship didn't get crushed, but they didn't float up to the north pole. They spent 3 years stuck in the ice.  Fortunately, they planned for this in advance.  They were well armed and were able to supplement stores with whale blubber (yuk), polar bear meat, walrus meat (probably fishy tasting), and tacos. 

They also had entertainment.

As expected, the ship got stuck on the ice.

"look at the grouse" (famous 3 Stooges line)

Not to be deterred from reaching the north pole, a small group of idiots set out by dog sled to accomplish the goal. This didn't turn out well and they wound up being rescued by a British expedition trying to do the same thing.  They didn't return to Norway until 3 years later.  Ironically they returned home just days before the ship (having thawed out) also returned (THAT had to have been a party to remember).

Navigating way way up north in the old days wasn't easy.

They would have killed for this type of modern instrumentation (incidentally, this is a shot of the TV screen nav readout of the furthest north we were able to go before hitting pack ice - more about this later)

 When you get up way far north a compass does not work.  It just spins around erratically (much like my first instrument training flights). Instead they built very clever magnetic measuring doohickeys.

Coincidentally, later in the trip we anchored next to the modern Fram up in Spitsbergen.

Like it's namesake, the modern Fram is an arctic exploration ship.

Next door to the Fram is a "boat" I read about when I was 10 and never dreamed I'd see in person.

Kon Tiki - I'm guessing this picture was taken at the end of the voyage (note the land in the background and the depth of their tans)

The real McCoy has been lovingly preserved all these years (the voyage was in 1947 from South America to the Polynesian Islands). Kon Tiki is named after the Inca sun god. The expedition was the brain child of this guy:

Thor Heyerdahl 
By uncredited - nasa.gov, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1334029

 "Heyerdahl believed that people from South America could have settled Polynesia in pre-Columbian times. His aim in mounting the Kon-Tiki expedition was to show, by using only the materials and technologies available to those people at the time, that there were no technical reasons to prevent them from having done so."

It 'em 101 days and they covered 4,300 miles from Peru to Tuamotu Island.

I thought the addition of the tern shadow was a nice touch.

It was hard to photograph because of the low lighting.  It costs 10 euros to get in - you'd think they could afford to pay for better lighting.

The raft was constructed of balsa logs lashed together with hemp rope. Soon after they put to sea, the balsa logs began to take on water (waterlogged). If they'd used steel cables to hold it together - the swelling of the logs would probably have broken apart the raft. It scared the hell out of them until they realized that the water only soaked into the balsa logs to a depth of 3 inches.

The US Army was interested in the trip (why?) and donated a bunch of food.

All 6 of them made it safely.  The only casualty was the ship's parrot. Apparently Lorita fell overboard and drowned. "Sparky", the ship's radioman (Knut Haugland), was an interesting person (WW 2 Norwegian commando) and the only one to star in a movie other than "Kon Tiki". He was decorated by the British for his role in the "Norwegian Heavy Water Sabotage" that stalled the German atomic bomb project. "Operation Gunnerside was later evaluated by SOE as the most successful act of sabotage in all of World War II"

Thor had so much fun on the Kon Tiki that he decided in 1969 and 1970 to see if you could sail from Morocco to Barbados.  These were the Ra expeditions (I and II).

 The Ra expeditions damn near killed them. The raft this time was made from Egyptian papyrus reeds.  

Same stupid lame lighting again

In the first voyage they made it 4,000 miles before the raft broke apart. They had neglected to add one critical component in the raft's construction.

You can see the critical piece here (this is the Ra II) - it's the line that holds up the stern.

In the Ra I expedition they built the stern the same way they built the bow.

You don't need the line in the bow - waves keep pushing the bow up.

For Ra II they changed boat builders.  This time the raft was built using papyrus from Lake Titicaca in Bolivia. Ra II successfully made it across the Atlantic using the Canary Current.

I thought this was the end of Thor and his voyages.  Not so. In 1978 he built another reed raft - the Tigris. This time he sailed from Iraq intending to go to Pakistan. Sailing through the middle east wasn't the best route he could have picked. The raft lasted 5 months and was still seaworthy when Thor got pissed that none of the surrounding governments would allow him to land.  He set the boat on fire (which explains quite well why the museum doesn't display it today).

"Today we burn our proud ship ... to protest against inhuman elements in the world of 1978 ... Now we are forced to stop at the entrance to the Red Sea. Surrounded by military airplanes and warships from the world's most civilized and developed nations, we have been denied permission by friendly governments, for reasons of security, to land anywhere, but in the tiny, and still neutral, Republic of Djibouti. Elsewhere around us, brothers and neighbors are engaged in homicide with means made available to them by those who lead humanity on our joint road into the third millennium."

Ah Thor.  Ya gotta love the guy.

• Although much of his work remains unaccepted within the scientific community, Heyerdahl increased public interest in ancient history and anthropology. He also showed that long-distance ocean voyages were possible with ancient designs. As such, he was a major practitioner of experimental archaeology.

Leaving Oslo things get real interesting - if you know where to look, but this blog entry has gone on long enough.