HMT Arab evacuated the crew of St. Goran. From 28 April to 2 May, Arab endured 31 air attacks; her captain, Richard Been Stannard, Royal Naval Reserve, received the Victoria Cross for his actions during those five days. The Norwegian Army Air Service and Royal Norwegian Navy Air Service had no units in the vicinity. The only Allied air presence to counter the Luftwaffe was during the first British landings. A brief patrol was mounted well offshore by several obsolete biplane fighters, Gloster Gladiators, operating from the aircraft carrier . They claimed three German planes shot down. Some eighteen Gladiators were flown off the Glorious and briefly operated from the frozen Lake Lesjaskogsvatnet at Lesjaskog, but these were too far south to help Namsos. Evacuation General De Wiart received orders on 28 April to evacuate Namsos, and on 29 April, an evacuation convoy of destroyers, three British and one French, left Scapa Flow in Scotland under the command of Lord Louis Mountbatten. A larger naval force followed at a distance to protect them against attack by German battle cruisers. They were bombed on 1 May as they crossed the North Sea. That evening, they encountered thick fog 40 miles short of their rendezvous point at Kya Lighthouse, which was 40 miles by sea from Namsos. Plans to evacuate that night had to be cancelled. Meanwhile, German troops were closing in on the rearguard in the hills outside Namsos, and the convoy ships were vulnerable to air attack if the fog lifted in daylight. Rather than wait for the evening, Mountbatten took his ships in on 2 May, moving from fog bank to fog bank. This was a very dangerous enterprise on a rocky coast. Despite the fog, the ships were bombed. The ships' masts were sticking out above the fog, giving the German bombers an approximate target. When they reached Namsos, the fog lifted, revealing a burning town and swarms of German bombers. Since it would have been suicidal to enter in these conditions, the British ships ducked back into the fog and returned down the bay. The next day, 3 May, the last possible for evacuation, dawned as foggy as before. Admiral John H. D. Cunningham, in overall command of naval forces in the area, screened the evacuation convoy with two cruisers and four destroyers at Kya Light and sent the cruiser, , five destroyers and three transports in.