3 July 1940 with a crew of 270. The ship stopped in Bergen on 9 July to refuel and resupply. Then she started again her route towards the Arctic Ocean. With the consent of the then supposedly neutral Soviet Union, Komet initially made her way along the Norwegian coast disguised as the Soviet icebreaker Semyon Dezhnev. While waiting in Teriberka Bay in July and August because of Soviet security concerns, she took the fake name the Donau. With assistance from the Soviet icebreaker Lenin, she passed through the several Arctic Ocean passages in August. She also later received help from the Joseph Stalin. In early September, the Komet crossed the Bering Strait into the Pacific Ocean. The passage was an amazing achievement and would have ended in disaster had it not been for the Soviets, whose help had come at a price: 950,000 Reichsmarks. For many of the German crew, this was their first experience in Arctic waters. Once in the Pacific, Eyssen sailed down to the Japanese island of Lamutrik and met the Orion and Kulmerland in mid-October. After a conference on strategy, the three captains decided to work together, concentrating on the New Zealand to Panama passage taken by most of the Allied merchant ships. They decided on Japanese disguises – Komet and Kulmerland had the names Manyo Maru and Tokio Maru painted on their hulls. Raiding in South Pacific waters In early November, Komet resupplied and refueled in Japan, disguised as the Japanese merchantman Manio Maru. She operated with the Orion, disguised as Mayebashi Maru and the supply ship Kulmerland, posing as the Tokio Maru. Together with the other two ships, on 25 November she sank the coaster Holmwood and two days later, when 300 miles east of New Zealand, the passenger liner Rangitane, raiding her precious food load. By that time, Komet had already been at sea for 140 days and Eyssen admitted in his war diary that he had become depressed and frustrated at not having encountered the enemy. During December, Komet and Orion casually met and sank in the waters surrounding Nauru Island five Allied merchant ships, with a combined tonnage of about 41,000 tons, that had been waiting off the island to load phosphate (of which Komet sank three). Between 6 and 7 December the Komet sank the merchant ships Triona, Vinni and Komata, taking more than 500 prisoners, who were landed a