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Thread: Man who foiled Nazi nuclear plan dies aged 99

  1. #1

    Man who foiled Nazi nuclear plan dies aged 99


    Man who foiled Nazi nuclear plan dies aged 99
    Reuters
    October 21, 2018
    https://ca.news.yahoo.com/man-foiled...163410027.html

    OSLO (Reuters) - The leader of a daring World War Two raid to thwart Nazi Germany's nuclear ambitions has died aged 99, Norwegian government officials said on Sunday.

    Joachim Roenneberg,
    serving behind enemy lines in his native Norway during the German occupation, in 1943 blew up a plant producing heavy water, or D2O, a hydrogen-rich substance that was key to the later development of atomic bombs.

    Picked by Britain's war-time Special Operations Executive to lead the raid when he was only 23 years old, Roenneberg was the youngest member of Operation Gunnerside, which penetrated and destroyed key parts of the heavily guarded Norsk Hydro plant.

    The subject of books and documentaries as well as movies and a TV drama series, the attack took place without a single shot fired.

    To Roenneberg's team, however, the stakes could not have been higher. An earlier raid failed to even reach the site, with dozens of attackers captured and killed, and Gunnerside members later described their own assault as a near-suicide mission.

    Parachuting onto a snow-covered mountain plateau, the small group teamed up with a handful of other commando soldiers before skiing to their destination, penetrating the plant on foot and blowing up the heavy water production line.

    Describing a pivotal moment, Roenneberg later said he made a last-minute decision to cut the length of his fuse from several minutes to seconds, ensuring the explosion would take place but making it more difficult to escape....




    ...For the Gunnerside crew, this hardly mattered at the time; only much later did they learn the true purpose of the attack they were asked to carry out.

    Born in 1919 in the town of Aalesund, Roenneberg fled to Britain after the German invasion of Norway in 1940, receiving military training before returning home for several missions during the war.

    After the 1945 liberation he became a radio reporter but rarely spoke of his wartime achievements. Later in life he gave speeches and lectures well into his nineties, warning against the destructive force of totalitarianism.

    Norway's Prime Minister Erna Solberg
    on Sunday praised Roenneberg for his work both during and after the war.

    "He is one of our great heroes," she told news agency NTB.







    This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity (futility) of their mind, having the understanding darkened...
    (Ephesians 4:17-18)

    Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly...
    (Psalm 1)

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    FireBrand (10-21-2018)

  3. #2
    Fascinating mission. Thanx for sharing.

  4. The Following User Says Thank You to FireBrand For This Useful Post:

    GodismyJudge (10-21-2018)

  5. #3
    Senior Member Colonel's Avatar
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    He was the last of the great Norwegian war heros. That era is coming to an end and is becoming just history.

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    GodismyJudge (10-21-2018)

  7. #4
    Some more good reading...


    Heavy Water and the Norwegians
    Written by Alan Bellows
    https://www.damninteresting.com/heav...he-norwegians/
    12 minute read

    On 19 November 1942, a pair of Royal Air Force Halifax bombers shouldered their way through thick winter clouds over Norway with troop-carrying assault gliders in tow. Inside each glider a payload of professional saboteurs from the 1st British Airborne Division weathered a rough ride as the planes approached their intended landing site on frozen lake Møsvatn. Somewhere in the snow-encased hills below, a team of Norwegian commandos vigilantly awaited their arrival.

    The ultimate objective of the joint mission was to penetrate and incapacitate the Vemork hydroelectric plant, a fortified Nazi facility nestled high in the mountains of Norway. Though the plant's original purpose had been the production of electricity and fertilizer, the German occupiers were capitalizing on the facility's ability to collect large amounts of heavy-water— a key ingredient in the Nazi effort to develop an atomic bomb. ..


    ***


    The Heavy Water War and the WWII Hero You Don't Know
    Leif Tronstad was a standout scientist. World War II made him a freedom fighter, spymaster, and above all, a patriot who helped prevent Hitler from getting an atomic bomb.
    By Andrew Han
    Jun 16, 2016
    https://www.popularmechanics.com/mil...leif-tronstad/

    They were going to sabotage the Nazi atomic bomb. But only Capt. Leif Tronstad, Sr. knew it.

    A week before Christmas, 1942
    , Tronstad gathered the six men he was about to send behind German lines as they prepared to ship out. Like him, the commandos of Operation Gunnerside were all Norwegians, exiled to the U.K. after the Nazis conquered their country two years before. Their target was a key part of the German nuclear program, but it was nowhere near the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute outside of Berlin, where a Nobel prize-winning physicist was trying to build a uranium reactor. It wasn't anywhere else in Germany, for that matter. They were going home.

    The Norwegians would leave the comfort of pastoral Brickendonbury Hall, located north of London, for the ice- and wind-ridden mountains of their native land. The long night of winter would cover them as they parachuted onto a plateau above a small factory town called Rjukan, which produced an ultra-rare kind of water that was a byproduct of fertilizer production. Then they would ski down to the plant and destroy it.

    The Winter Fortress,
    a new book about the string of Allied raids on the Nazi heavy water supply, recounts what Tronstad said next: ...












    This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity (futility) of their mind, having the understanding darkened...
    (Ephesians 4:17-18)

    Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly...
    (Psalm 1)

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    FireBrand (10-22-2018)

  9. #5
    Hey @Colonel this you may know about. Any of your relatives?

  10. #6
    Senior Member Colonel's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by FireBrand View Post
    Hey @Colonel this you may know about. Any of your relatives?
    My grandfather who was born in 1907 was a member of Mil.org, the Norwegian resistance movement. He was head of the courier service involving a certain stretch East of Oslo. A friend of mine who is about your age had a dad who was part of the same organization, just in Bergen. He died last year at the age of 99.

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    FireBrand (10-23-2018)

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