Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Telemark Raids

Episode Date: September 12, 2022

During World War II, one of the biggest concerns of the Allies was the development of an atomic bomb.  As such, the allies and various partisan groups in occupied countries made the destruction of anything related to the Nazi atomic program a high priority. One place, in particular, was subject to allied bombing, commando missions, and partisan sabotage throughout the war.  Learn more about the Telmark Raids and how Norway became an important front in the Second World War on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Subscribe to the podcast!  https://link.chtbl.com/EverythingEverywhere?sid=ShowNotes -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Darcy Adams Associate Producers: Peter Bennett & Thor Thomsen   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Search Past Episodes at fathom.fm Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EverythingEverywhere Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/everything-everywhere-daily-podcast/ Everything Everywhere is an Airwave Media podcast." or "Everything Everywhere is part of the Airwave Media podcast network Please contact [e-mail] to advertise on Everything Everywhere. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

During World War II, one of the biggest concerns of the Allies was the development of a German atomic bomb. As such, the Allies and various partisan groups in occupied countries made the destruction of anything related to the Nazi atomic program a high priority. One place in particular was subject to Allied bombing, commando missions, and partisan sabotage throughout the war. Learn more about the telemark raids and how Norway became an important front in the Second World War on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night and how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR.

I previously did an episode on the Nazi atomic weapon program, or the lack thereof. The Allies, working on their own atomic weapon, were concerned about the Nazis developing their own weapon. Before the war, many of the world's greatest physicists all came from Germany, and the Allies were certain that they were in a race to build an atomic bomb. It wasn't that the Germans weren't thinking about it. It was just that they never quite got as far as the Allies thought they did by the end of the war. When the Americans built their atomic bomb, they did so through the separation of uranium isotopes. They went through the extremely difficult and expensive process of separating uranium 235 isotopes from uranium 238 isotopes.

German physicists such as Werner Heisenberg knew of this option, but figured it was far too difficult and expensive to actually do in reality. In fact, after the Americans dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Heisenberg didn't initially believe it because he thought that the separation of uranium isotopes would have been too hard to do. German research pursued another option, which was still difficult but not nearly as difficult as the path the Americans took. Instead of separating uranium isotopes, you can put them in what is called a neutron moderator. A neutron moderator is a substance that can slow down neutrons emitted by radiation. When neutrons are slowed, they are more likely to produce a fission reaction. And one of the best neutron moderators is heavy water. Heavy water is H-2O, but with the hydrogen atoms consisting of the isotope deuterium.

Deuterium is a hydrogen atom with a neutron in the nucleus, whereas regular hydrogen doesn't have one. If you can make a heavy water reactor, then you can produce plutonium, which is much easier to separate chemically from uranium than trying to separate different uranium isotopes. Creating heavy water involves separating naturally occurring deuterium, which is found in very small amounts of water molecules. There are approximately 156 deuterium atoms per million hydrogen atoms. Separating deuterium from regular hydrogen and water takes a lot of electricity. Basically, you perform electrolysis on water over and over as you separate out the heavier molecules. One of the best places in Europe to do this, where you can find ample amounts of electricity and water, was at the Vomorch Hydroelectric Plant in the Telemark region of Norway.

The Norwegians began the creation of heavy water there in 1935 before the war started. In fact, it was the only place in the world that was creating heavy water before the war started. Heavy water wasn't something that could be created at a large scale. Even with one of the world's largest hydroelectric plants, the amount of heavy water it create was rather limited. In 1940, before the Germans invaded Norway, Vermeck could only produce 10 kilograms or 22 pounds of heavy water per month. The various world powers realize the value of heavy water, and also the threat from Germany. Just prior to the invasion of Norway in early 1940, the director of the Vamork facility agreed to lend to France 185 kilograms or 408 pounds of heavy water for the duration of the war. This was the entire supply of heavy water in the world at the time.

This was in response to German companies offering to buy Vomork's entire production of heavy water. water. In fact, they requested 10 times the amount that they were actually producing at that point. The water then found its way to France, and then after the German invasion of France ended up finding its way to Britain. When Germany invaded Norway in April of 1940, they found themselves in control of the only heavy water production facility in the world. German control of this facility deeply concerned the Allies. They knew very well what heavy water could be used for, and eliminating the German production of heavy water became a top priority. The initial Allied plan was to do what the Allies did best.

Just bomb it from the air. The problem was the facility was not a very good target for bombing. As I mentioned in a previous episode, strategic bombing in World War II was extremely inaccurate. Hitting a concrete facility on the side of a mountain in an occupied territory would be much harder than trying to bomb a regular factory in Germany. It was eventually decided to scrap the bombing missions and try a covert mission where they could destroy the facility from the inside. This mission took almost two years to plan. The first mission was just a reconnaissance mission that took place in March of 1942.

A single man, Einar Shinerland, had sailed to Britain, received intense training for 10 days, and then was parachuted back into Norway. He had contacts at the Vamark facility and was able to get an idea of what the defenses were like. That summer, a four-man team of Norwegian commandos was trained in the U.K. Everyone on the team was from that area of Norway, and they were trained in outdoor survival, sabotage, covert radio communications, and guerrilla warfare. This was given the code name Operation Grouse. On October 18, 1942, the four Norwegians were parachuted into Norway. They were actually dropped pretty far away from the target area so they would escape detection by the Germans.

and it took them two weeks to ski and hike cross-country to get into position. The Norwegians eventually made contact with the British, which would begin the next phase. They actually found the Vamork facility to be less heavily guarded than in earlier reports. The Germans had mostly older Austrian men guarding, and the numbers appeared to have been cut in half. On November 19, 1942, the British initiated Operation Freshman. This would drop in British commandos and heavy equipment on a glider that would land on a near-bush. by frozen lake. This was actually the first time the British had ever used a glider like this before. Two bombers, towing two gliders, took off from Scotland. From the start, things didn't

go well. One of the bombers crashed into a mountain in southwest Norway, killing everyone on board. Their glider managed to avoid the mountain, but still crashed, killing several. The other bomber couldn't find the landing site because the radio beacons had failed. They eventually ran low on fuel and aboard the mission. But on the way back, the tow rope of the glider broke, and it crashed not too far from the location in the other glider. The Norwegians couldn't get to the crash site in time, and the crash alerted the Germans. Eventually, all the surviving British commandos were captured and executed. In addition to losing all the commandos from Operation Freshman, it also alerted the Germans to the fact that the British were interested in the heavy water facility. While Operation

Freshman was a disaster, all was not lost. The team from Operation Grouse was still on the ground. The British then launched Operation Gunnorside on February 16, 1943. This abandoned the gliders and went back to what they knew worked. Parachutes. Six more Norwegian commandos were parachuted in along with additional supplies. They eventually found the Operation Grouse team who had been hiding for several months in the wilderness during the Norwegian winter. Now with 11 Norwegian commandos on the ground, they had a team that could assault the facility.

The problem was that the Germans had improved security. They placed mines around the facility as well as searchlights. Thankfully, the Norwegians had an inside man at the facility, who managed to get them inside via a tunnel for cables and then through a window. And once inside, they didn't encounter anyone other than a custodian who was more than happy to help the Norwegian commandos. They planted bombs on the electrolysis tanks with a delayed fuse and then left various British items, including weapons on the site,

so it would appear as if it were a British Commando action. This way, the Germans wouldn't take it out on locals if they thought it was Norwegians who were part of the raid. They managed to blow up all of the electrolysis tanks and the entire 500-kilogram supply of heavy water. The German ability to produce heavy water had been crippled. The Norwegian commandos managed to escape without notice. Five of them managed to ski to safety in Sweden. Two went to Oslo, and four of them stayed in the area to continue working on sabotage. The problem was the damage they did was only temporary.

By April, the Germans had the facility back up and running. The British felt another commando raid wouldn't work with increased security around the facility. They decided to give bombing missions another try. The Americans began running bombing missions over the city of Rukon where the facility was located. In early November, there was a massive daylight bombing rate of 143 bombers who dropped over 700 bombs. The earlier concerns about the effectiveness of bombers proved correct. 600 of the bombs missed, and while damage was done to the facility, it wasn't enough to shut down operations. Further nighttime raids that month eventually convinced the Germans to end heavy water production at the facility.

Norway simply couldn't be defended as well from air attacks as Germany could, so to that extent, the raids were a success. However, 20 Norwegians were killed in the bombing. The Germans were going to take all of the equipment in heavy water which they had produced and ship it back to Germany. Word of this eventually made it to Knut-Hulklead, who was one of the only commandos still on the ground in the area. He devised a plan to sink a ferry that would be transporting the rail cars across nearby Lake Tin as they were en route to Germany, and Lake 10 is one of the deepest lakes in all of Europe. Howclid recruited two locals to help with the mission. One of them knew one of the crew on the ferry, the S-F Hydro.

He managed to sneak on board the ship and planted eight and a half kilograms of plastic explosives on the keel. A little after midnight on February 20, 1944, the ferry pulled out of port and the bomb was detonated. The ship sank to the bottom of the lake, along with all of the heavy water on board. This mission did come at a steep cost. Fourteen Norwegians were killed, along with four German soldiers. However, this pretty much ended Germany's heavy water program and any attempts at developing a Nazi nuclear reactor. In 2004, divers went down to the rack of the SF hydro

and found the still sealed barrels of heavy water. They tested the water and found that it didn't have near the levels of deuterium that previous heavy water created at the facility had. Even if it was at the appropriate quality, it turned out that the Nazis only had about 10% of the amount of heavy water necessary to create a nuclear fission reactor. Today, you can visit the city of Rukon and the Vamork facility.

I visited several years ago, and there's actually a lot of history in the region. The Vimork plant was actually the largest hydroelectric plant in the world when it opened in 1911, and it was one of the first places on Earth to produce fertilizer based on the Hobber Bosch process. And you can also take a very similar ferry ride on Lake Tin as the SF Hydro took, and they have an extensive museum that gives a background on the raids. It is about a two-and-half-hour drive from Oslo, if you happen to be in the region. The Telemark raids have been popularized in media. Several movies and documentaries have been made, most popularly the heroes of Telemark from 1965 starring Kirk Douglas and Richard Harris.

While Operation Freshman was a disaster, Operation Gunnorside was actually one of the most successful commando raids in World War II. It remains the most celebrated Norwegian military operation of the entire war. And its success was all due to a team of Norwegians who were willing to pay the ultimate sacrifice, to prevent Nazi Germany from developing the ultimate weapon. Everything Everywhere Daily is an Airwave Media podcast. The executive producer is Darcy Adams. The associate producers are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett. I just wanted to extend a big thank you to everyone who is supporting the show over at patreon.com.

I have show merchandise available there, including hoodies, t-shirts, and stickers. Plus, it really just helps me get this show out every single day, including, of course, weekends and holidays. Remember, if you leave a review or send me a boostagram, you too can have it read on the show.