War Sailer - Netflix Series

WAR SAILOR Trailer | TIFF 2022
TIFF Trailers

A couple friends in Bergen, Norway, get jobs on a cargo ship just in time for WW2 to break out, so their 18 month voyage turns into five years. One guy has a wife and three kids, the other is a bachelor. Basically, life during wartime. Isn't that a Talking Heads song? Anyway, it's a pretty good show.

P. S. The Germans built a submarine pen in Bergen which led to trouble that shows up in the show.

Submarine Pen in Bergen Today

From BattlefieldsWW2.com:

When the Germans conquered Norway in 1940, it gave them a golden opportunity to move their U-Boats closer to the front. Construction of a U-Boat bunker in Bergen started in 1941. The bunker had 3 dry boat pens, 3 wet ones, and one that was used for storage.

It was the Kriegsmarines’ 11th U-Boat Flotilla, transferred from Germany, who made its new headquarters in Bergen.

After the Allied landings in France in June 1944, there was a massive expansion of the U-boat base in Bergen. This led to a massive English air raid in October 1944, involving over 150 aircraft. The attack ended in a disaster when 193 Norwegians, among them 61 children at a nearby school, were killed. The bunker took several hits, but remained intact. Only two U-Boats were damaged.  Later the same month ended another attack without success when the 244 aircraft could not find the target due to heavy clouds. A few planes dropped their bombs, but did not hit the bunker.

The third and last air raid took place in January 1945, when 33 bombers loaded with "Tallboy" bombs attacked the base. The bunker took 3 direct hits. One of the bombs penetrated through the roof, damaged two U-Boats and killed 20 Germans.

As with the other German naval bases, the base in Bergen was named using the German phonetic alphabet. As it was located in Bergen, and ”Bruno” is phonetic for"B," it thus became Bruno.

The bunker is used today by the Norwegian Navy for the repair of submarines as well as storage.

From Wikipedia:

A large part of the work to build the bunker was carried out by around 2,000 prisoners of war from the Soviet Union and Poland. The bunker's roof consists of five-metre-thick reinforced concrete, where an entire year's Norwegian production of cement was used for the construction.

. . .

The future of the submarine bunker is uncertain, as the Norwegian Navy's new submarines are too large for the docks in Bruno and will receive new service facilities at Haakonsvern .

P. P. S. Bombing of the school reminds me of another such incident during WW2 in Copenhagen.

 

Bergen Norway

The Port of Bergen Norway

    Younger son just checked in via Skype from Bergen, Norway. The University of Bergen is six blocks from the port, where this picture was taken.
    Things are really expensive there. A six pack of beer is $30, a ordinary meal at a restaurant is $30. Still, it's cheaper than sending him a to private school or paying out-of-state tuition fees at some other state school. He's picked up a volunteer gig at a school cafe. He works three 4-hour shifts a month and that gets him a discount on food and beer. There's that word "beer" again. Are we seeing a common thread?
    He might be able to pick up a job at a grocery store, you don't need much Norwegian to say "good morning" and "your total is 999 Kroner", and everyone speaks English anyway. The job would pay minimum wage, but minimum wage is $20 an hour. It's good to have a large pool of oil in your backyard.
    The weather is pleasant right now, but he needs a heavier sleeping bag for camping out. That's probably gonna cost an arm and a leg.

Update December 2016 replaced missing picture with something similar, if memory serves.

Airline Tickets

My wife is usually the one who buys the airline tickets around here. Not too surprising since she does most of the traveling, but earlier this year she had to go someplace and it was left to me to arrange air transport for younger son's sojourn to Norway. Anne had started negotiations with a travel agent, but after I talked to this agent and reiterated that we needed a flight to Bergen, not Oslo, and she sent me a second itinerary that still went to Oslo, I said enough of this and pulled up Expedia on my computer, and that's when it got interesting.

John (aka younger son) wants to stop off in Washington DC to visit some friends. Since Washington is approximately between here and Bergen this seemed like a reasonable request. I mean, it may not be directly  on the great circle route from Portland to Bergen, but it's not like it's in the completely wrong direction, like Hawaii would be, either.

One thing I have learned about airlines in my many years is that one way tickets cost just as much as a round trip ticket, or at least they used to. Things change so much and so fast it's hard to tell whether the knowledge you have is "hard won wisdom" or obsolete as yesterday's news. Anyway, "round trip tickets" is  what I was thinking, so I figure I'll book him a round-trip ticket from PDX to Washington DC, and a second round trip from Washington to Bergen. Prices look reasonable: less than two grand all told. There is a bit of a layover in DC on the way back (like 18 hours), but hey, it works and it's cheap enough, and maybe his friends can entertain him during the eternal layover, so I buy the tickets.

Now we hear that Grandpa and Grandma are coming to visit. They are only going to be here for a few days. John's return flight will be happening at the same time, so his extended layover in DC is going to cut into the time he would get to spend with the grandparents. This isn't good, so I attempt to rectify the situation.

First off I call Expedia to try and get the last leg of his flight changed from DC to PDX. I call, they tell me to leave my number and they will call me back. 30 minutes later the return call comes in, but the battery in my cordless phone is dead so I miss the call, so I call again. More of the same, but I eventually get connected. I spend what seems like an eternity on the phone with the agent. Eventually she figures out how much it will cost to change the ticket. Are you ready for this? $4200. That's more than twice as much as the original ticket. Thank you, but no. John will just have to suffer through the layover in DC.

OK, that didn't work, but how about if I just buy him a one way ticket from Toronto to PDX? Just forget about flying to DC and all that. So I check Expedia and it looks like such a ticket will only cost $350. Shoot, that's almost affordable, and it would get him home 24 hours earlier. I discuss my findings with my wife and she agrees, so I proceed to buy the ticket. Except. I made a boo-boo. I asked for a flight date in November instead of December. When I put the correct date in the price jumps to $500. Grrrr. Do we still want to do this? Well, we don't see the grandparents very often, so yes, we'll bite the bullet and spend the extra $150.

I log on to Expedia, select the flight we want, double check the date and time, enter all my credit card info, check all the check boxes, go back and fix the places I missed, and press the go button. Bzzzzzt! Wrong! Error! Try again later. Bah. Go away, come back the next day, go through the whole rigamarole again and get the same result: no can do. Well, this isn't good.

Older son suggests Google Flights, which I have never heard of, but sure, why not? So I go through the same process with Google, same flights, same prices, an extra little hiccup because the price is in Canadian dollars because the flight originates in Canada and I am paying from America so we have to do this currency conversion thing. Go through all this and, Bzzzt! Wrong! Error! Same result as with Expedia. What's going on here?

This one stupid change to this ticket has consumed two hours of my time over a period of two days. I am now determined to get this ticket if it's the last thing I do. So I call United. I am on hold for a long time. I finally talk to an agent and I get put on hold again. It's a speaker phone so I don't have to hold it to my ear while I am waiting, but they are playing some really obnoxious ads at very high volume. I am on hold for so long the battery starts to run down, so I have to change phones. Twice. I am on hold so long I can look up the owners manual for the phone online, download it, and look up the section that tells you how to turn down the volume on the speaker phone. Amazingly I do not get cut off. Eventually the agent is able to things sorted out and I have purchased a ticket. I was on the phone for an hour.

Well, I think I bought a ticket. I was expecting an email with all the gory little details, but it hasn't shown up. I imagine this is going to require another phone call.

All this could have been avoided if I had just noticed the little checkbox on Expedia's page labeled MULTIPLE DESTINATIONS. Who'd of thunk it? Not me, evidently. Google Flights doesn't seem to support this feature either.

Update: I was able to get the flight information off of the United website using the confirmation number. Not only was I able to see it on the website, I actually got them to email a copy to me. Will wonders never cease?

Historic Vessel Vega

Historic Vessel Vega

About the vessel Vega

Historic Vessel Vega, built-in 1892 by Ola Nerhus at his boatyard in Olve, Norway. Nerhus designed Vega to carry heavy concentrated cargo for trade in the North Sea and Baltic Sea. More than 125 years later Vega is still working. Since 2004 she carries free school and health supplies to remote islands in eastern Indonesia and to East Timor.

Because Olve is in Norway, we have to see how far it is from Bergen, especially since we were just there. Olve (there's no I, so it's not Olive) is about 30 miles (as the crow flies) south-southeast of Bergen, about twice that by land, or 50 miles by water:

Bergen to Olve by Water

Quote of the Day

All electrons are not created equal. - William Pentland

Silly William, you can't tell one electron from another. Shoot you can't even isolate an electron to try and identify it, much less tell whether it is a superior electron or a racist electron. But that's okay. It's the thought that counts.

This is part of William's signature on an article in Forbes about the latest and greatest source of petrochemical energy: Natural Gas from mineral deposits on the sea floor. I originally heard about this in John Barne's novel Mother of Storms (p.23):

A line from the story in Forbes:

The research that extracted gas from hydrates in April relied on a technology developed by ConocoPhillips and the University of Norway, Bergen, which injects a mixture of carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitrogen into a hydrate formation to facilitate the flow of natural gas. 

This caught my eye because younger son is going to school in Bergen.

Bergen, Norway

Bergen, Norway

Looking west by southwest. Original image was 6,000 pixels across, I cut it down to 4,000 pixels.

Via younger son.

Donald the Flamboyant

Candice Bergen

 [Donald Trump spent] two years at the University of Pennsylvania. The actress Candice Bergen, a contemporary, said in a 1992 address at Penn: “He was pretty hard to miss — he wore a two-piece burgundy suit with matching burgundy patent leather boots and, a particularly nice touch, a matching burgundy limousine.” - The Telegraph

Via Bayou Renaissance Man

Train RIde

Moby - Everloving
The video is a ten minute excerpt from the seven hour recording of the entire train trip from Bergen to Oslo. We've been to Bergen before.

P. S. Google Map of waypoints.

Corpse Paint

File this under "things I did not really want to know". Younger son is headed to Bergen this fall. Bergen is in Norway, which is part of Scandinavia, which is home to a sub-genre of music know as "Black Metal". Some of the practitioners of this style of music paint their faces in a style know as "Corpse Paint". At least makeup washes off, not like tattoos, which seem to be becoming ever more popular, at least in this neck of the woods.

Gingerbread City

Gingerbread City, Bergen, Norway

There is also one in London, England and another in New York City.

High-Voltage, Direct Current (HVDC) Electric Power Transmission

Mercury Arc Valve

    Report from younger son that he has a job this weekend in Kristiansand, Norway, got me started on a Wiki wander. Kristiansand is at the Southern tip of Norway, closer to Denmark than Oslo or Bergen. So what kind of job has he got? Well, Wikipedia has this to say about the town:

Kristiansand has major shipbuilding and repair facilities that support Norway's North Sea oil industry. Near Kristiansand there is the static inverter plant of the HVDC Cross-Skagerak.

    The North Sea oil industry, eh? Well, that explains the job. But what's a static inverter plant and all the rest of it? An inverter converts DC electric power into AC. HVDC means High-Voltage, Direct Current. Cross-Skagerak is a high voltage electrical transmission line that connects Norway and Denmark.
    Being an American, I was brought up to believe that AC was the most efficient way to transmit electrical power over long distances, so I was a little non-plussed when I found out that there was a big HVDC line connecting Oregon to California. Now I find this in Wikipedia article #2:

The modern form of HVDC transmission uses technology developed extensively in the 1930s in Sweden (ASEA) and in Germany. Early commercial installations included one in the Soviet Union in 1951 between Moscow and Kashira, and a 100 kV, 20 MW system between Gotland and mainland Sweden in 1954. The longest HVDC link in the world is currently the Xiangjiaba–Shanghai 2,071 km (1,287 mi), ±800 kV, 6400 MW link connecting the Xiangjiaba Dam to Shanghai, in the People's Republic of China. In 2012, the longest HVDC link will be the Rio Madeira link in Brazil, which consists of two bipoles of ±600 kV, 3150 MW each, connecting Porto Velho in the state of Rondônia to the São Paulo area, where the length of the DC line is over 2,500 km (1,600 mi). (I've changed the links from useless to useful.) 

    The lines in China and Brazil were built by the Swedish company ABB. 

    I seem to be stumbling over a lot of Soviet and Chinese technology lately. Makes me wonder if America is really as great as we claim to be. I mean, why were we so intent on collecting all the Nazi rocket scientists after World War II? You'd think that if we were so great we could grow our own experts. We shouldn't need to import a bunch of Nazi's to do our thinking for us. I dunno, maybe it's expensive to grow experts. Maybe we saved a couple of bucks by stealing VonBraun and his gang. Still, something about that whole thing stinks. 

Education, Work and Elephants

I am really tired of hearing about problems in education. There seems to be no end of complaints. Teachers don't get paid enough, children don't learn enough, college is too expensive, college graduates cannot find jobs, etc., etc., etc.
    My opinion should be taken with a grain of salt as I seem to be somewhere out on the fringe. In some respects I consider myself fairly average, but in other ways maybe not so much.
    I am pretty sure the problems that are being attributed to schools are more likely problems with our society.
    As near as I can tell, kindergarten is the most important class. That's where kids learn to mind their manners. Well, some of them anyway. Elementary school is important for our society because that's where kids learn to read. After that, well, it's pretty much optional. Some people go on to high school and learn things and some go on to high school and do not. I think high school tries to prepare people to be survive in the real world and hopefully be good citizens, but that's a difficult task for teachers and students alike, and not all students are ready, willing and able to absorb these lessons.
    A liberal arts college education has been getting a lot bad press lately as it is no longer a guarantee of a"good" job. As near as I can tell, the main purpose of a liberal arts education is to maintain our civilization. There is a great deal more involved in a maintaining a civilized society than acquiring a surfeit of arcane scientific or engineering knowledge. People are the most complicated constructs on the planet and all of our scientific knowledge has barely scratched the surface. Culture and liberal arts is basically the study of the behavior of human beings and how they interact with each other, and this study can often provide illuminating insights into how people work. It is on a completely different level than math or science but it is no less valuable.
    Many, if not most, of the jobs in our society are not particularly interesting. Many are boring, menial and repetitive. For many people, if the pay and benefits are adequate, that is enough. Then there are jobs that keep you busy. I know many of the cashiers at the local grocery store like it better when they are busy. Standing around waiting for something to do can be boring, and boredom is the enemy of happiness and the father of mischief.
    Once upon a time I heard that when you ask Americans what they do, they tell you about their job, whereas if you ask a Brit they will tell you about their hobby. I think this is where a liberal arts degree can be a benefit. You may have a boring, tedious job, but an education would have exposed you to a larger world, so you might find something to occupy your mind, I mean besides, sex, drugs and rock & roll.
    My three kids have all graduated from the University of Oregon with liberal arts degrees. Being a gearhead of the first order I was a little surprised that none of them were interested in science or engineering. Perhaps it was my gruff behavior or ranting about employers that turned them off, or perhaps it was just their natural inclination. They have all found jobs, though none of them are what you could call "good" jobs. Dutiful daughter is working on web pages for an American company from her apartment in Buenos Aires. While the pay is not spectacular, it is is several times what she was offered by local businesses, if they even made her an offer.
    Younger son tells us that going rate for day laborers in Norway is $50 or $60 an hour, which would be enough to keep even me happy. Unfortunately, prices are correspondingly higher, roughly four times what they are here in the USA. A six pack of beer is $30, a perfectly ordinary house is a million dollars, so it's debatable whether you would actually come out ahead. He is going to try and so has bought a airline ticket back to Bergen. I am trying to convince older son to start an elephant ranch in Africa. So far the idea hasn't generated any interest.
    A while back some people decided that the trade in elephant ivory was threatening elephants with extinction, so they decided to put a ban on the ivory trade. This may have slowed down the poachers, but there seems to have been a resurgance: last year 25,000 elephants were slaughtered for their ivory. I am thinking we really need to rescind the ban on ivory trading and put a Texan in charge of the whole elephant / ivory business. Run it like a cattle ranch. Harvest (kill) a number of elephants each year, butcher them for the meat and ivory, sell it at auction on the open market. Run a real anti-poaching patrol. Someone who had a vested interest in maintaining the herd would want to make sure no one was rustling his "cattle". Of course there is old problem of "this is Africa", and so it might not work, and might make things worse, but I think it would be worth a shot.

Gnome of the Day

They just keep coming! This one showed up in an email from Bergen this morning. Or maybe it's a troll. How do you tell?

A Tale of Two Kristians

Younger son arrived home last night from Norway after 20 hours of air travel. In the course of his interrogation at the hands of his family I discovered I was mistaken about the location of his weekend employment last month. He kept saying he had gone North from Bergen for this job, when we all knew very well that Kristiansand was South. No, no, he tells us, not Kristiansand, Kristiansund, with a U. Who'd a thunk it?


View Norway in a larger map

Mike Vining

Mike Vining

Saw a video by a very annoying guy about Mike Vining, who was one of the first members of Delta Force. He was involved in a bunch of very sketchy stuff, like bomb disposal. He's still alive and just a year older than I am. Reading the Wikipedia story about him I come across this line:

"He has also written articles on naval postal history,"

Naval Postal History? What are you talking about? The Navy has a postal system? Well, I guess they would have to, wouldn't they? Letters to and from for sailors sailing around the world. This leads me to the Univeral Ship Cancellation Society which has a PDF about Naval Covers Fakes, Forgeries and Frauds. 

On page 59 of this PDF we find a story by Mike Vining:

1931 Wilkins-Ellsworth Trans-Arctic Expedition

Sir George Hubert Wilkins, MC, and Lincoln Ellsworth secured use from the U.S. Navy of the soon to be scrapped submarine USS S-30 for an expedition to sail under the ice cap to the North Pole. They got close to the North Pole, but no cigar. They managed to return to Norway and submarine was scuttled off of Bergen.

I tried to extract the story from the PDF, but it was going to take a bunch of mucking around to make it presentable, so you're just going to have to go read the original.

Christmas

Bergen, Norway

Folk Tale of the Day

According to local folklore, Muckle Flugga and nearby Out Stack were formed when two giants, Herma and Saxa, fell in love with the same mermaid. They fought over her by throwing large rocks at each other, one of which became Muckle Flugga. To get rid of them, the mermaid offered to marry whichever one would follow her to the North Pole. They both followed her and drowned, as neither could swim. - Wikipedia article on Muckle Flugga.

I just do not know what to say about this. Via Roberta X

Looking at Google's satellite image, since that's the kind of guy I am, I see a new block-edged pattern being used on the coastline.

Muckle Flugga is the small splotch in the topmost block, just off the Northern shore of Unst.

Also Muckle Flugga is about 200 miles due West of Bergen, Norway.

Alyosha

A graduation party is held under the statue of Aliosha. First-year students celebrate the end of the year. (Colin Delfosse)

I was impressed when I found out that the Russians built big statues out of concrete. This one is Alyosha. It is in Murmansk, a port in Northern Russia. It is about 400 miles Northwest of Arkhangelsk, another Northern Russian port city, and about a thousand miles Northeast of Bergen, Norway, my current point of reference for all things European.


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The statue does not show too well in this satellite view, but notice the length of its shadow.
Update March 2016. Replace missing picture, lost when Military Photos website died.