of the pre-war Norwegian merchant fleet, the remaining 15% having been in Norway when the Germans invaded and been unable to escape. The Nortraship vessels were crewed by 27,000 sailors. In total 43 free Norwegian ships were sunk during the Norwegian Campaign, while another 29 were interned by the neutral Swedes. Nortraship gave the Norwegian government-in-exile economic independence and a basis for continued resistance from abroad. The Allies achieved a partial success at Narvik. The Germans had destroyed much of the port facilities there before their loss of the city on 28 May. Shipping from the port was stopped for a period of six months, although the Allies had believed it would be out of operation for a year. The German occupation of Norway was to prove a thorn in the side of the Allies during the next few years. Bombers based at Sola had a round trip of about 920 km to Rattray Head in north-east Scotland, instead of a round trip of about 1,400 km from the nearest airfield on German soil (the island of Sylt), while the east of Scotland and coastal shipping suffered from bombing raids, most from Norway, until 1943. After the fall of Norway, Scotland (especially the fleet bases at Scapa Flow and Rosyth) were seen as much more vulnerable to a diversionary assault by air- and sea-borne troops. German commerce raiders used Norway as a staging base to reach the North Atlantic. After Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, air bases in Norway were also used to interdict the Allied Arctic convoys there, inflicting painful losses to shipping. In fiction The 1942 film They Raid by Night is set in Norway just after the campaign. The 1942 film The Day Will Dawn is largely set in Norway just before and just after the invasion. The invasion and the following occupation are depicted in the John Steinbeck novel The Moon Is Down, although neither Germany nor Norway are referred to by name. Paul Milner, a major character in the television crime drama series Foyle's War that takes place in wartime Britain, served in the Norwegian Campaign and injured his leg there. The adventure novel Biggles Defies the Swastika by Captain W. E. Johns portrays the protagonist Squadron Leader Bigglesworth's (Biggles) adventures while trying to escape from Norway after getting stuck in the country during the German invasion. The novel contains several references to