The Daily Alaska Empire

Tale of Six Locomotives
(Cincinnati Enquirer)
Norwegian Patriots had the last laugh on the
Nazis in a grim comedy which was enacted near the
close of the war in Europe.
A shipload of six locomotives started out from
Germany for a Norwegian port. Just as it arrived
Norwegian Patriots blew up the massive crane needed
to unload the locomotives. The ship was diverted to
another port. The Norwegian underground flashed
word to Allied air headquarters and bombers wrecked
the cranes at the next harbor. And so it went, literally
for weeks, with the shipload of desperately needed
locomotives wandering from port to port in unsuccessful
search for unloading facilities.
Finally the Germans arranged to do the job with
a massive floating crane, the last one of adequate
size in Norway. The monster derrick was floated to
Moss and moved alongside the ship. Orders passed
from London to the Norwegian home front and one
night two men - automobile mechanics in ordinary
times - waded out from shore with a strange contrivance,
a six-foot torpedo packed with a plastic type
explosive and powered by storage battery and electric
motor. They swam with it long enough to make
certain it was on the right course, then departed while
it whirred beneath the elaborate defense precautions.
of the Nazis, struck one of the pontoons of the huge
crane and detonated. The massive derrick slowly
capsized - and with it the Germans' last chance to
unload the locomotives in Norway.
At last accounts the six locomotives aboard the
ship were riding serenely at anchor in Oslo Harbor.