by Tony Insall
The sinking of the Hydro
Shortly after the attack on Vemork, the German scientist Kurt Diebner visited the Norsk Hydro headquarters in Oslo to assess the situation. He was told by Axel Aubert, who had been reappointed as director-general, that Norsk Hydro had decided to discontinue the production of heavy water because of the risks to staff and costs involved. Diebner agreed, saying he intended to move both the plant equipment and heavy water to Germany, where a new factory would be built. This information soon reached Stockholm, who informed London. A message was sent to Swallow asking Skinnarland to find out whether it was true.45 On 6 February, he confirmed that the factory would not be repaired and that existing stocks of heavy water would be transported to Germany within a week or so.46 They would be transported by train to the ferry terminal at Mæl, the rolling stock loaded onto a ferry for the journey across Lake Tinnsjø, taken by rail down to Menstad, near Skien and thence by ship to Hamburg.
On 8 February, Tronstad informed Wilson that Sir John Anderson had been informed and that ‘the responsible British authorities [i.e. the War Cabinet] have decided that in view of the importance of the matter, an attack should be carried out even if serious consequences for the local population may be involved’. Wilson noted that once Anderson’s decision had been received, both General Hansteen and Torp were informed, and their consent was received almost straight away, within an hour.47 Skinnarland was accordingly instructed that the heavy water – though not the plant equipment – should be destroyed, and that they should try to minimise the consequences for Norwegian civilians. Skinnarland replied on the following day that time was too short to mount an armed attack and that the only solution would be to sink the ferry or perhaps to blow up the train, warning that reprisals could be expected.48 Haukelid, who was still in the area, discussed the options with his team. They settled on an attack on the ferry – there were too many risks involved in an attack on the train, as it would be well guarded and they could not be sure that they would be able to destroy the entire consignment. The best solution would be to sink the ferry half an hour after its departure, when it would be over the deepest point of the lake. After a reconnaissance trip during one of its journeys on 18 February, Haukelid concluded that explosives placed in the forepeak, near the bow, gave the best chance of ensuring that the ferry would sink quickly before the captain could beach it on the shore of the lake. Through contacts in the plant at Vemork (Alf Larsen and Gunnar Syverstad), they had been able to delay the tapping of the heavy water into drums to give them more time both to prepare the operation, and also to try to ensure that it would be shipped on a Sunday. On that day there would only be one ferry (so they would know which one to attack) and a probability that fewer passengers would be on board. Even so, some of the team had concerns about Norwegian casualties and the risk of German reprisals. Swallow passed their reservations to London and sought confirmation that the attack was necessary. This was quickly received. SOE also prepared a fallback option in case Haukelid was unsuccessful. They passed instructions for Chaffinch, in Vestfold, to send two trained men to Skien and prevent any special cargo from Rjukan being loaded at the port. This back-up party later complained bitterly that they were waiting, had marked down the ship which was to take the special cargo by sea to Hamburg, made their plans to destroy her, and had all their preparations ready but no special cargo had come…49
Remarkably, although the Germans had increased their vigilance and security measures in the area, they did not place a guard on the ferry before the heavy water consignment was loaded. Haukelid was accompanied by Rolf Sørlie (an engineer at Vemork who had already provided information and assistance), and a local man, Knut Lier-Hansen, when they went on board to plant the explosives. They were challenged by a night watchman, who fortunately was a patriotic Norwegian, and persuaded him that they were members of the resistance who had some illicit materials to hide. He showed them the hatch down into the bilges, which were below the waterline, and Lier-Hansen engaged him in conversation while Haukelid and Sørlie went down to do their work. The space was confined and there was nearly half a metre of water on the floor. The two detonators Haukelid was using had only 2 mm of clearance on their contacts, so it was an extremely difficult task – he described it afterwards as ‘ticklish work’. Gunnar Syverstad’s mother had been due to travel on the ferry the next day. Syverstad could not commit a breach of security by telling her to avoid making the journey at that time. He chose instead to dose her dinner the evening before with a very large amount of laxatives, which caused bad stomach pains and left her too weak to travel. Gunnar looked after her solicitously.50 The following morning, the explosives worked effectively and the Hydro sank within five minutes. More than half the fifty-three passengers and crew were rescued by local boatmen, but fourteen Norwegians and four Germans were killed. The flatcars carrying the heavy water all sank, though a few containers holding less concentrated heavy water floated to the surface. They were salvaged and later shipped to Germany, together with some remaining low-concentration stocks totalling about 100 kilogrammes. Soon afterwards, Haukelid left for a break in Sweden. On this occasion, there were no German reprisals.
The sinking of the Hydro marked the end of Allied action against heavy water production in Norway. The equipment itself was dismantled in August and transported to Germany in September 1944. At the end of the war, there were attempts to recover it. Wilson was asked in May 1945 whether this would be feasible, because it was Norwegian property. He sought advice from the War Cabinet office and the MEW. They told him that most of the high-concentration electrolysis cells were in the Russian zone, but four of them were at Stadtilm, near Erfurt in the western zone. Since they would only be worth about £10,000, the MEW did not consider that they would be worth much effort – but suggested that Wilson inform the Norwegians, because they would be entitled to claim under the restitution of property formula.51
In October 1944, Tronstad, back in Norway on Operation SUNSHINE which was preparing to protect Norwegian strategic installations, confirmed the removal of the plant equipment from Vemork. However, it did not prove possible to establish where it had been sent, or how much progress the Germans had made in establishing their own source of production. Wilson asked him whether they could arrange for a director of Norsk Hydro to be evacuated to Sweden and questioned about this at greater length. He also asked about the possibility of kidnapping the German consul Erhard Schoepke, who, as a member of the Wehrwirtschaftsstab Norwegen (the War Economy Staff for Norway), was responsible for exploiting the Norwegian economy for German benefit, and had overseen the dismantling of the plant at Vemork. Tronstad doubted that either of these options would be worthwhile, commenting that Schoepke would not be in a position to add anything useful beyond what they already knew from other sources.52 Wilson informed R. V. Jones at SIS, who agreed that there was no point in pursuing the project.53 This was not the only time SOE considered the kidnap of a German in Norway. As Chapter 12 will highlight, in early 1945 they worked on a plan to kidnap Hans-Rudolf Rösing, the senior naval officer responsible for U-boat operations in Bergen. There were other plans, too, which did not get off the drawing board. For example, in December 1943, the SOE station Thrush Red recommended that kidnapping the Gestapo chief Siegfried Fehmer would help the fight against denouncers, and sought agreement for it, asking for confirmation that SOE would provide a pick-up and transport back to Britain. For good measure, they also enquired about a similar operation against Quisling and his equally unpopular lieutenant, Minister of Police Jonas Lie. SOE replied that this would not be possible. They agreed that Norwegian traitors should be taken, ‘but it is too dangerous to take Germans unless they disappear without leaving any trace’. The resistance should judge whether the benefits of removing Fehmer were so great as to justify the reprisals which would follow. They doubted that there would be any benefit in kidnapping Quisling and Jonas Lie at that time. The matter was not pursued further.§§ 54
The aftermath of the sin
king of the Hydro
There was an unseemly aftermath to this operation because Haukelid’s story was not initially believed. When he was put up for a DSO, Archie Boyle (A/CD, the Assistant to the Director) noted that Honours Board requirements meant that strict scrutiny was needed, doubted whether Haukelid’s account of the action was truthful, and so informed Wilson. He observed that the report had been scrutinised by the security section of SOE dealing with Norway (BSS or Bayswater Security Section). They considered that it contained a number of inconsistencies, for example, questioning Haukelid’s calculation that the ferry would sink within four or five minutes after the explosion. ‘It seems problematical whether a sausage of 8.4kg of 808 explosive would be sufficient to destroy a vessel if placed against the keel. Would it not need a very much greater charge to blow out a 0.6m square of the plates against the pressure of the water?’ One of the Security Section staff, BSS/A, added that he had spoken to a Norwegian who was knowledgeable about icebreakers and the nature of their construction, describing how ships were designed and built so as to enable them to clear a path through the ice without damage; with stern ballast tanks flooded, enabling their bows to ride up over the ice. He said the principles involved were almost universally used on inshore lakes in Norway and cited Hydro as an example. He stated that the consequence was that the forepeak would be small, and that the plates in this part of the ship would be extremely strong and reinforced. Moreover, the fact that the ship was designed to ride up onto the ice would almost inevitably mean that it was improbable that the flooding of the forepeak would tilt the ship so much that she went down by the head. BSS concluded that the report struck them as one written by a man who had in fact taken no part in the operation, but had heard the general details of it, and was now attempting to claim credit for the sinking which either occurred in some other way, or was organised by another group of people.
Wilson defended Haukelid robustly: ‘we regard this as a very typical Norwegian report and very much in keeping with others which we have had and which we know by our own observation to have been written by the man or men themselves’. Moreover, on the same day, Gubbins was informed that Selborne had read the complete report and considered it a very good account indeed! He wanted a copy to go to Lord Cherwell, the government scientific adviser, and another to Major Morton, Churchill’s intelligence adviser. The aspersions on Haukelid’s integrity were eventually seen off when advice was sought from Rear-Admiral Taylor (the head of SOE’s naval directorate), who stated that he considered the various BSS criticisms of the story as based upon the supposed construction of the vessel to be unfounded. Haukelid was subsequently awarded his DSO.55
We now know that the Allies chose the right path in determining that the Manhattan project should concentrate on isotope separation to obtain uranium-235 from natural uranium, which enabled nuclear fission and the production of an atomic bomb. The Germans made the wrong choice. This certainly does not mean that the operations to prevent the production of heavy water at Vemork were a waste of lives and effort. At that time, the Allies did not have information which could have enabled them to conclude that the German approach was wrong. They had no choice but to take whatever steps were available to stop or slow down German research and development of all potential secret weapons. Indeed it might be argued that continuing Allied attempts to disrupt the production of heavy water may have encouraged the Germans to think that they were on the right track, and not to consider diverting resources elsewhere into what might have proved to be a more profitable line of research.
Notes
1 TNA, HS 9/1603/3.
2 The development of the heavy water plant at Vemork, and the French operation to smuggle the stocks to France, are well described in N. Bascomb, The Winter Fortress: The Epic Mission to Sabotage Hitler’s Atomic Bomb (London: Head of Zeus, 2015), pp. 3–16. See also Njølstad, Professor Tronstads krig, p. 30.
3 Rørholt, pp. 64–65, Bascomb, p. 23 and Jeffery, p. 375.
4 TNA, minute by Ismay to Sir John Anderson, 4 September 1941, CAB 126/330.
5 TNA, minute to ACAS, 3 December 1941, CAB 126/330.
6 TNA, meeting of the German target committee, AIR 20/4772.
7 Jeffery, MI6, p. 375.
8 Tronstad diary 24 December 1941, quoted by Njølstad, p. 127.
9 TNA, AIR 8/1767 and HS 2/184.
10 NHM, Wilson history, pp. 71–72.
11 TNA, letter from Wilson to COHQ, 14 November. HS 2/184.
12 TNA, HS 2/184
13 TNA, DEFE 2/219.
14 TNA, DEFE 2/224.
15 There is a good account of the complex nature of this part of FRESHMAN and the use of gliders in Ion Drew (ed.), Silent Heroes: Operation Freshman and Others (Stavanger: Hertevig Akademisk, 2011).
16 TNA, HS 2/184.
17 TNA, HS 2/153. Jakobsen escaped to Sweden shortly afterwards, and was debriefed in London in January and February 1943.
18 NHM, Wilson history, p. 72.
19 Ibid., p. 73.
20 in TNA (HS 9/774/8)
21 (HS 9/689/6)
22 Gunnar Myklebust, Tungtvannssabotøren: Joachim H. Rønneberg, Linge-kar og fjellmann (Oslo: Aschehoug 2012), pp. 118–119.
23 TNA, HS 2/185.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid.
26 Jens-Anton Poulsson, The Heavy Water Raid (Oslo: Orion, 2009), p. 122.
27 TNA, HS 9/774/8.
28 TNA, HS 2/185.
29 TNA, HS 2/173.
30 TNA, CAS to Field Marshall Dill, Joint Services Mission Washington, AIR 8/1767.
31 TNA, minute from Wilson, 10 March, HS 2/190.
32 Ibid.
33 TNA, HS 2/186.
34 TNA, Wilson minute 10 August 1943, HS 2/187.
35 TNA, HS 9/1279/5.
36 TNA, AIR 8/1767.
37 TNA, HS 2/187.
38 TNA, HS 9/1436/4.
39 TNA, letter from Collier, AIR 2/8002.
40 See, for example Njølstad, Tronstad, pp. 281–282.
41 TNA, Tronstad to Hansteen, 30 November 1943, HS 8/955.
42 TNA, German target committee meetings. AIR 20/4772.
43 NHM, Wilson history, p. 75.
44 TNA, air attacks in Norway. AIR 2/8002.
45 Bascomb, p. 277–279.
46 TNA, HS 2/188.
47 TNA, CAB 126/171.
48 TNA, HS 2/188.
49 TNA, HS 7/175 appendix H.
50 Bascomb, p. 303.
51 TNA, HS 2/189.
52 Njølstad, p 396.
53 TNA, HS 2/188.
54 TNA, HS 2/234.
55 TNA, HS 2/188.
* Lucy Jago, The Northern Lights (London: Penguin 2002), pp. 180–193 and 200–201, gives an account of how the first fertiliser plant was initially equipped with two furnaces, one Norwegian and one German, built by the German company, BASF. If the German design had been adopted, it would have had serious consequences for Norsk Hydro, which would probably have remained Norwegian in name only. However, politics intervened. During the Agadir crisis of 1911, the Germans sent a gunboat to protect their interests. After the crisis had been resolved, the French government applied pressure to push the Germans out of Norsk Hydro and thus hinder their access to saltpetre, a key component in explosives. The Norwegian furnace designed by Birkeland and Eyde was then selected for the new fertiliser plant in Rjukan.
§ The first to be executed were the seven commandos captured after MUSKETOON, who were shot in Sachsenhausen concentration camp on 23 October 1942.
¶ There was a small number of people, both Norwegian and British, who switched from one service to the other, usually from SIS to SOE. Bjørn Rørholt was another. J. L. Chaworth-Musters transferred in the other direction in August 1943.
|| Rønneberg had been given outstanding reports during training. The commanding officer of STS 23 wrote to Norwegian High Command to say that he and Martin Linge both considered that he deserved immediate promotion. (TNA, HS 9/1279/5.)
** That is, SIS.
> †† That is, by contamination.
‡‡ The final section was underlined by a reader in the Air Ministry.
§§ Jens Chr. Hauge, the leader of Milorg, worked out a plan for the kidnapping which would have involved using Ola Fritzner, a senior Norwegian policeman who was a friend of Fehmer. However, Fritzner refused to cooperate. (See Njølstad, Jens Chr. Hauge: fullt og helt, pp. 194–199.)
CHAPTER 10
THE TIDE STARTS TO TURN
1943–1944: PREPARATIONS FOR LIBERATION
Communist resistance groups are becoming more active in Norway … SOE state that they are in touch with certain communist groups around Oslo, who have said that they are too short of supplies to engage in active warfare. SOE have supplied them with small quantities of arms but remain committed to send most to Milorg.
ANTHONY NUTTING, NORTHERN DEPARTMENT OF THE FOREIGN OFFICE, COMMENTING ON CONCERNS EXPRESSED BY THE BRITISH LEGATION IN STOCKHOLM IN FEBRUARY 1944 THAT COMMUNIST RESISTANCE IN NORWAY WAS INCREASING.1
Certain arguments had been advanced in favour of recognising the communist groups, and Colonel Øen raised this with the central leadership (of Milorg). Their experience led them to believe that this would be an unwise policy to follow … FO, OSS and SOE agreed that no support of any kind should be given to these groups, either directly or through Sweden.
EXTRACT FROM THE SOE NORWEGIAN SECTION HISTORY.2
The first major change in Allied fortunes was the victory at the first battle of El Alamein in July 1942, which was followed by landings in French North Africa in November 1942. Rommel’s Afrika Korps was forced to retreat, and the Germans finally surrendered in North Africa in May 1943. Soon after, the Allies landed in Sicily in July and took control of the island after a campaign which lasted six weeks. It would probably have been at this stage, with continued Allied concentration on the Mediterranean, that it started to become apparent to the Norwegians that Norway was unlikely to be high on the list for liberation. At the end of July, Benito Mussolini was deposed and the Italian government changed. On 3 September, the Allies made their first landing in southern Italy, and the Italian government surrendered. The main Allied landing took place at Salerno on 9 December. German resistance was stiff, and the Italian campaign lasted until almost the end of the war. These campaigns had their impact in Sweden, where there began to be changes in policy as it became clear that the Germans in some areas were on the retreat. In mid-1943 the Swedes agreed to set up secret training camps where Norwegians could be trained as policemen, who could take over in Norway after the liberation. The initial number was fifty, but by the end of the war the size of the force had risen to over 14,000.3