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Show Crosses 45 Times, Never Met U-Boat Norwegian Tanker Carried Gas to British. NEW YORK. Despite the efforts of Nazi submarine wolf packs and bombers, a fast Norwegian tanker has crossed the Atlantic 45 times without serious mishap since the war began in September, 1939, and has delivered 100 million gallons of precious pre-cious aviation gasoline to British ports without losing a drop. . Officials of the Norwegian Shipping Ship-ping and Trade Mission, 80 Broad street, described the vessel as "the tanker champion of World War II," in telling the story of the ship's achievement. The tanker is now In an east coast port undergoing a routine overhauling. The vessel has never been in a Norwegian port although its home port is Oslo, Norway. She was built in Hamburg, Germany, and delivered deliv-ered in June, 1939, a little more than two months before the war. Her 2,500-horsepower Diesel motors i which have carried her safely past lurking submarines, were manufactured manufac-tured by the same company in Augsburg, Augs-burg, Germany, which produces motors mo-tors for German U-boats. Capt. Reidar Henriksen, master of the vessel since the spring of 1941, said that no one on the ship ever saw a German submarine or bomber. bomb-er. On one voyage a ship 200 yards astern, was torpedoed and blew up, he said, but "we never saw the submarine, and I guess he never saw us." . - Jan Johannssen, the chief steward, stew-ard, 'who has been on all the ship's voyages since it was commissioned, has consistently refused to take a shore rest and returned to the ship after only four days of a vacation granted to him while the vessel was being overhauled, Captain Henriksen said". "He told me he found it too confusing con-fusing ashore," the captain said. |