9/4/1939 North Greenland Sea 14th day at sea
Schiff 35 detached the Ermland and Kybfels at naval square ÄH 9475 with instructions to proceed towards the whaling grounds 72 hours later. Today while forging ahead through heavy seas and sleet showers the radio room picked up signals from the fleet. They were progress reports, At 04:36 3 whalers arrived at the factory which is captained by a man named Rutherford 13 whales reported captured. 04:41 another radio message this one from L-9 under a man named Karlson reports that he is returning to the factory with 5 whales captured. According to radio direction they’re roughly to the NNW range 182 km the navigator L.z.S Schneider estimates that the fleet is in the vicinity of 82°N, 7°W. Schiff 35 will patrol a radius of 100 km from the coordinates given. The radio messages have given us some details on the fleet, whalers are designated with the letter L followed by a number so far whalers L-36, L-19, L-10, and L-9 have been identified. It’s possible that this is a United Whalers Ltd. fleet.
For the next 2 weeks we will continue to shadow the movements of the fleet.
