Posted on 03/02/2021 6:58:49 PM PST by BeauBo
After handing them their suicide capsules, Norwegian Royal Army Colonel Leif Tronstad informed his soldiers, “I cannot tell you why this mission is so important, but if you succeed, it will live in Norway’s memory for a hundred years.”
These commandos did know, however, that an earlier attempt at the same mission by British soldiers had been a complete failure. Two gliders transporting the men had both crashed while en route to their target. The survivors were quickly captured by German soldiers, tortured, and executed. If similarly captured, these Norwegians could expect the same fate as their British counterparts, hence the suicide pills.
Feb. 28 marks the anniversary of Operation Gunnerside, and though it hasn’t yet been 100 years, the memory of this successful Norwegian mission remains strong both within Norway and beyond. Memorialized in movies, books and TV mini-series, the winter sabotage of the Vemork chemical plant in Telemark County of Nazi-occupied Norway was one of the most dramatic and important military missions of World War II. It put the German nuclear scientists months behind and allowed the United States to overtake the Germans in the quest to produce the first atomic bomb...
The Manhattan Project – the American program to produce an atomic bomb – was actually undertaken in reaction to Allied suspicions that the Germans were actively pursuing such a weapon. Yet the fighting in Europe ended before either side had a working atomic bomb...
Had the Germans developed their own bomb just a few months earlier, the outcome of the war in Europe might have been completely different. The months of setback caused by the Norwegians’ sabotage of the Vemork chemical plant may very well have prevented a German victory.
(Excerpt) Read more at taskandpurpose.com ...
Six Norwegian soldiers were dropped in to meet up with four others already on location. (The four had parachuted in weeks earlier to set up a lighted runway on a lake for the British gliders that never arrived.) On the ground, they were joined by a Norwegian spy. The 11-man group was initially slowed by severe weather conditions, but once the weather finally cleared, the men made rapid progress toward their target across the snow-covered countryside.
The Vemork plant clung to a steep hillside. Upon arriving at the ravine that served as a kind of protective moat, the soldiers could see that attempting to cross the heavily guarded bridge would be futile. So under the cover of darkness, they descended to the bottom of the ravine, crossed the frozen stream, and climbed up the steep cliffs to the plant, thus completely bypassing the bridge. The Germans had thought the ravine impassible, so hadn’t guarded against such an approach.
The Norwegians were then able to sneak past sentries and find their way to the heavy water production room, relying on maps of the plant provided by Norwegian resistance workers. Upon entering the heavy water room, they quickly set their timed explosives and left. They escaped the scene during the chaotic aftermath of the explosion. No lives were lost, and not a single shot was fired by either side.
Outside the plant, the men backtracked through the ravine and then split into small groups that independently skied eastward toward the safety of neutral Sweden. Eventually, each made his way back to their Norwegian unit stationed in Britain.
The Germans were later able to rebuild their plant and resume making heavy water. Subsequent Allied bomber raids on the plant were not effective in stopping production due to the plant’s heavy walls. But the damage had already been done. The German atomic bomb effort had been slowed to the point that it would never be finished in time to influence the outcome of the war.
Today, we don’t hear much about heavy water. Modern nuclear bomb technology has taken other routes. But it was once one of the most rare and dangerous substances in the world, and brave soldiers – both British and Norwegian – fought courageously to stop its production.
And in modern tines the game Battlefield V changed the mission to having been done “realistically” (lol) by a teenage girl suffering hypothermia after a little swim in a river.
(Mission “Nordlys”, totally disrespects the sacrifices by the team that actually did the real life mission.)
They killed civilians, IIRC.
My uncle led a group of soldiers in Iceland during WWII - they hunted U-boats in the fjords using bazookas - skiing to different locations to wait and hopefully shoot.
They got one, but had a lot of close shots on others. I can’t imagine that after skiing in the Dolomites pulling those damn sleds.
He retired as an O-6, and was my reason to join the Army so long ago.
Thank you for posting this article.
It was a brave raid and the Norwegians did a great job on both missions to curtail the production of heavy water but spare us the drama. The Nazis were nowhere close to having the bomb.
Thank you for posting this.
God bless such brave men.
Think of the danger, physical effort, and all it took to accomplish that mission. And today it would be a cruise missile from a sub in the North Sea, or a smart bomb at night from the stratosphere.
Same for the raid on St. Nazaire, and other such commando raids.
So many WWII things like this took guts like we cannot understand today.
The Nazis miscalculated the amount of nuclear material needed for a bomb. They were under the assumption they needed something like ten times the amount that was really needed.
Wasn’t there a title, Heavy Water ... about this too.
“The physical effort”
Climbing cliffs at night in the Norwegian Winter, hauling the explosives - and then making it out to Sweden on foot and skis.
Got to have the right clothes too. Norwegians are great outdoorsmen.
They also screwed up the neutron absorption numbers for graphite. That’s why they thought heavy water was the only viable moderator.
It’s pretty amazing what people endured and accomplished in WWII.
The Greatest Generatiion.
I have been there a few times. An incredibly deep ravine that runs down and becomes an incredibly deep fjord (1000 ft). They retrieved the heavy water containers just a few years ago from the fjord. It is a beautiful drive to get there.
Heisenberg and von Weizsäcker had already pulled the plug.
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