During World War II, Operation Gauntlet was a Combined Operations raid by Canadian troops, with British Army logistics support and Free Norwegian Forces servicemen on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, 600 miles south of the North Pole, from 25 August to 3 September 1941.
The objective was to destroy the rich coal mines there together with associated equipment and stores, which it was correctly assumed the Germans intended to make use of. These mines on Norwegian territory were owned and operated by Norway (at Longyearbyen) and by the Soviet Union (at Barentsburg) and both governments agreed to their destruction and the evacuation of their nationals.
Read more about Operation Gauntlet: Background, Preliminary Visit, Allied Forces, The Operation, German Convoy
Famous quotes containing the word operation:
“It requires a surgical operation to get a joke well into a Scotch understanding. The only idea of wit, or rather that inferior variety of the electric talent which prevails occasionally in the North, and which, under the name of “Wut,” is so infinitely distressing to people of good taste, is laughing immoderately at stated intervals.”
—Sydney Smith (1771–1845)