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.
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.
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.
The rest of the story is that the Nazis where trying to take what was left of the heavy water back to Germany and the locals were able to sink the ferry boat carrying the casks. Unfortunately they had to sacrifices innocent Norwegian lives to do so.
Nazi Germany was never close to developing a nuclear weapon. The purpose of the heavy water plant was to provide a moderator for a nuclear reactor to produce plutonium. Had the plant not been molested, Germany would still fall far short of the amount of heavy water needed for one reactor. The US used two graphite moderated reactors to produce plutonium for Trinity and Fat Man. We knew that enough heavy water couldn’t be produced in time. The Germans didn’t think graphite would work. They also never enriched uranium, so a Little Boy type bomb was out of the question.
my wife and i just finished an biography/history of just this story.
it’s amazing how the Norwegian resistance were able to pull it off (with inside help) and then just ski away.
these guys were brave, determined and physically tough. a very encouraging read in these times of what a determined resistance can accomplish against overwhelming odds.
We learned years later - long after his death - that my uncle was the leader of this group. He married my mother’s sister - their father was also born in Norway. He was the only resident of Miami, Flordia, who spoke Norwegan, so he was used by the government as the official translater for any problems with Norwegan speaking sailers. This young man needed a transaltor, and ended up staying in my grandfathers upstairs appartment - eventually wedding my mother’s sister. Many years later one of his daughters visited Norway on what happened to be the 50 anniversery of this raid, and found his picture all over the papers. So the secret was out. You just never know . . .
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We would have killed them even worse ...
Unfortunately, this author has never read the “Farmington Notes”. Farmington was where the German nuclear scientists were kept after the war and spied on by the allies. The scientists were stunned by the bomb dropped in Japan and were besides themselves for not knowing the weapon could be built. They did not have a clue that it could be done!
Just wondering if the British included a Tea and Crumpet Time in the overall plans for the Mission that they botched ?
I’ve read about this.....if I recall the CO of the group was in his early 20s.