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page one OLDApril & May 2007 NEWS$ 3.75 Nazis Seek “Heavy Water” For Atomic Bomb began to make plans to sabotage a older and better educated than most German naval base near Oslo and to Norwegian resistance fighters, with kidnap Vidkun Quisling, the leader a calm and amiable personality. After of the collaborationist government. one year of training, he was made an Haukelid’s plans were disrupted officer with the rank of lieutenant. when the Gestapo, the Nazi secret In early February of 1943, state police, discovered his activities Haukelid accepted an assignment in the winter of 1941. as second-in-command of a secret Haukelid narrowly escaped to mission to sabotage a Norwegian Knut Haukelid during the Second Sweden. From there he made his power and chemical plant fifty miles World War. (Courtesy of North way to England, where he joined the west of Oslo. This plant was the American Heritage Press.) Linge Company, a Norwegian Special world’s only commercial supplier of Forces unit being trained by the deuterium oxide, or “heavy water,” by Paul Chrastina British army to wage guerilla warfare used to moderate the process of Knut Haukelid, a twenty-nine- against the Germans in Norway. atomic fission in nuclear reactors. The year-old Norwegian surveyor, was At a training camp in the Scottish Germans, who were trying to invent returning home from a construction Highlands, British commandos an atomic bomb, had seized the plant View of a hut on the Hardanger site in northern Finland when the taught Haukelid to parachute into from the Norsk-Hydro Company and Plateau from which saboteurs set German army invaded Norway on mountainous terrain. He also received dramatically increased its production out for the Vemork plant, visible April 9, 1940. Haukelid immediately special training in lock picking, bomb of heavy water, which could be used in the valley below. (Courtesy volunteered to join the Norwegian making, and hand-to-hand combat. to generate explosive plutonium fuel of North American Heritage army and was issued a gun. Within a Haukelid was a natural leader, for a bomb. The Allies, who were Press.) few weeks, the Germans rolled over the Norwegian regular and volunteer forces, capturing the capital city of Oslo and forcing the Norwegian government to take refuge in England. By early June the well-supplied Germans controlled Norway’s major cities. They were also waging a brutal war of attrition in the countryside, isolating and destroying towns and villages to which groups of resisters had retreated. “The Germans set fire to all farms as they advanced,” Haukelid later wrote. “Civilians who refused to leave their homes were shot, and all livestock was burned to death. We swore then that we would never give in—not even if the Germans won the war.” Following the defeat of the Norwegian army and the imposition of a pro-German civilian government in Oslo, Haukelid joined a network of civilian underground resistance fighters who still opposed the Nazi occupation. An avid skier and outdoorsman, he established shortwave radio transmitters in remote wilderness areas to communicate with the Norwegian government- in-exile and with Britain’s wartime secret service, the Special Operations Executive (S.O.E.). With S.O.E. assistance, Haukelid This plant at Vemork, in German-occupied Norway, manufactured “heavy water.” (Courtesy of Norsk-Hydro.) page two trying to develop their own atomic north of Vemork. In a mission code- out of rations and were subsisting on bomb, feared that Norwegian heavy named Operation Grouse, an advance reindeer meat and a vitamin-rich tea water would allow the Germans to team of four Norwegian commandos brewed from moss and melted snow. win the race to build the world’s first had parachuted into Norway in Haukelid was told that he and five nuclear weapon. October of 1942. They had set up other men of Linge Company had The heavy-water plant was perched several camps and a series of supply been assigned to make a new attempt on the side of the steep mountain gorge caches on the plateau. to cripple the suspected German of the Mâne River at a place called The Grouse team was supposed to nuclear weapons program. Lieutenant Vemork, near the town of Rjukan. have been joined by a squad of thirty- Joachim Rönneberg would lead their The plant used hydroelectric power four British commandos to stage a mission. Haukelid would be second- derived from a five-hundred-foot raid on the lightly guarded plant, in-command, but all team members waterfall to power the manufacture of but this phase of the mission, code- were fully trained and each could heavy water and other chemicals. named Operation Freshman, had met complete the undertaking alone, if S.O.E. officers told Haukelid with catastrophe in November when a necessary. The other members of the that a Norwegian spy named Einar Royal Air Force (R.A.F.) bomber and team were Lieutenant Kaspar Idland Skinnerland had infiltrated the two gliders carrying the troops crash- and Sergeants Frederik Keyser, Hans Vemork plant and had set up radio landed in Norway. The survivors had Storhaug, and Birgir Stromsheim. transmitters nearby on the Hardanger been captured by German soldiers At one o’clock on the morning Commandos at a shelter. Plateau, a sparsely populated upland and then executed by the Gestapo. of February 16, 1943, the Operation Moreover, the Germans had either Gunnerside team boarded an R.A.F. learned or guessed the mission’s Halifax bomber in Scotland. They objective and had increased security crossed the North Sea by the light at Vemork. Installations of high- of a full moon and successfully caliber machine-guns, floodlights, parachuted onto the Hardanger and land mines now surrounded the Plateau. At dawn they set out on skis plant. Despite the disastrous setback to look for the Grouse team, but later of Operation Freshman, the Grouse in the day they were turned back by team remained encamped on the a blizzard and were forced to take Hardanger Plateau. They had run shelter in an abandoned hunting Knut Haukelid making a postwar visit to one of the huts in which the commandos stayed. (Courtesy of North American Heritage Press.) The gorge of the frozen Mâne River below Vemork. To reach their objective the commandos decided to climb down one side of the gorge, then up the other side. (Courtesy of North American Heritage Press.) Reenactors of the raid on the Vemork heavy water plant during fiftieth- anniversary events in 1993 commemorating the raid. (Photo by Terje S. After training in England, the commandos parachuted onto the Hardanger Knudsen.) Plateau in Norway. page three cabin. For the next three days heavy convinced, he exclaimed: “God, it’s accumulated as the product of a long, guarded by German sentries equipped snowfall and high winds made further great to see you fellows here, on the slow process of electrolysis. The most with floodlights and machine guns. travel impossible, but on the morning plateau of all places!” obvious way to reach the building Rönneberg and Haukelid studied of February 20, the wind died and the Kristiansen, who was familiar with was by way of a seventy-five-foot aerial photographs of the five- skies rapidly cleared. the surrounding countryside, agreed suspension bridge that crossed the hundred-foot-deep Vemork gorge, As the men prepared to leave the to guide the team in its search for the gorge of the Mâne River. The bridge looking for a way to penetrate its cabin, they each picked up a rucksack Grouse camp. Later that day the team was used by the plant’s regular natural defenses. They noticed areas packed with food, weapons, and encountered Grouse members Claus employees and visitors, and was of trees and shrubs growing on high explosives. Around the cabin in Helberg and Arne Kjelstrup. They all directions the flat surface of the said that their leader, Jens Poulsson, plateau lay buried under snowdrifts. was at a nearby cabin, while their The team members were about to fourth teammate was manning a set out when they noticed a man on shortwave radio station at another, skis in the distance, heading directly more secluded, hut further away. towards them. With the six Gunnerside men The Gunnerside commandos and three of the four Grouse team hid behind a corner of the cabin members united, it became necessary and waited as the man came closer to decide what to do with Kristiansen. and then stopped to examine the Rönneberg and Haukelid finally fresh ski tracks they had left around decided to tell the hunter to remain on the building. When he cautiously the Hardanger Plateau for three days approached the cabin door, they before going home, and to reveal immediately surrounded him with nothing about what he had seen. The drawn weapons. team then moved to a hut near the A brief interrogation revealed edge of the plateau, about seven miles that the startled skier was not a from their objective in Vemork. German soldier or Nazi sympathizer The heavy-water plant was located but a local reindeer hunter named in the basement of a complex of Kristian Kristiansen. Once this was buildings that housed hydroelectric established, the commandos had to turbines, laboratories, and chemical prove to the wary Kristiansen that factories. The facility contained they, too, were Norwegians, and not eighteen four-foot-tall stainless steel German troops. When he was finally tanks in which heavy water gradually Collection canisters for heavy water at the Vemork plant. (Courtesy of Norsk-Hydro.) After the commando raid. (Courtesy of Norsk-Hydro.) SUBSCRIBE TO OLD NEWS.