Insomniac Trondheim

Spring's coming to the Arctic may this year bring the biggest naval battle of the war. For centuries royal Trondheim, proud that it owned Norway's No. 1 cathedral, lived slumbrously and peacefully in its white wooden houses. Today its ancient slumber is gone: a Nazi nightmare has taken over.

The narrow mouth of Trondheim fjord bristles with German guns. The old ship-building wharf, extended for warships, has been blasted by British bombers. Half a mile outside Trondheim, transatlantic U-boats crouch in shelters dug out of hill sides which are as prone to slide as the hills of Panama. A few miles farther on is Asen fjord, where the really big ships hide: the mighty Tirpitz, the pocket battleship Admiral Scheer, and the damaged heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper. According to Stockholm reports, the Germans are preparing a full-fledged naval base there, building a drydock big enough to take in 40,000-ton battleships.

Whether this report is true or not, Trondheim was by last week the chief Allied headache on the Arctic supply route to Russia, where, lately, headaches have grown more splitting. Lengthening daylight gives Nazi aircraft more time for reconnaissance. The southward drift of polar ice pinches the convoy channel dangerously narrow. Last week Germany claimed that the Luftwaffe had sunk a U.S. cruiser of the 9,100-ton Pensacola class and a U.S. destroyer, somewhere between Norway's North Cape and Spitsbergen, had scored hits on two more U.S. destroyers. Another Nazi news-bomb announced the sinking of a 2,000-ton merchant vessel and an icebreaker in a Spitsbergen fjord.

Churchill said fortnight ago that every convoy carrying U.S.-British supplies to Russia had got through. It may be that German Grand Admiral Erich Raeder will take over where U-boats and the Luftwaffe have not brilliantly succeeded, will order the Tirpitz and other warships out from Trondheim to pulverize convoys. If he does, say the British, the fight will be terrific.

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