by Tony Insall
Plan to kidnap Captain Hans-Rudolf Rösing
SOE’s anti-U-boat campaign did not concentrate only on sabotage as the means of decreasing their efficiency. In January 1945 Firth suggested to SOE that they should consider organising the kidnap of Captain Hans-Rudolf Rösing, who had been Captain U-boats West in France, responsible for U-boats deployed to the Atlantic. After the fall of France, Rösing and many of the U-boats under his command were transferred to Norway. He was thought to be based in Bergen. At this time, the Admiralty was concerned about indications that the Germans were increasing the number of U-boats which they were producing, so such a target might deserve a higher priority. Firth had earlier discussed the possibilities for attacking the U-boat base and staff in Bergen with Louis Pettersen, a longstanding SOE agent operating in the Bergen area. Since October 1943, he had played an important part in providing intelligence about the U-boat pens in Laksevåg and in exploring the potential for sabotage operations against U-boats. Pettersen returned to Bergen by sub-chaser on 18 January to research further the idea of a kidnap.
The detail contained in the SOE enquiry about this possible kidnap (imaginatively codenamed Operation TIGER) showed how well informed they were about the movements of Rösing and his staff. Some of their information drew on interrogations of prisoners of war, but it is evident that most of it came from GC&CS. Unfortunately, despite extensive searches, Pettersen and his colleagues were unable to locate Rösing. The identities of U-boat crews were extremely difficult for them to establish. Pettersen reported that they had two contacts in German naval circles but neither of them had been able to confirm Rösing’s presence in Bergen. He asked whether SOE were really certain that he was there. SOE replied that they had information that the crews of his flotillas were based in Melkeplassen, a large camp near the U-boat pens at Laksevåg. Pettersen noted that he had not yet been able to develop a contact at Melkeplassen. The war ended before they were able to take this project any further. Pettersen was later awarded an OBE. The SOE citation stated that his work had been of the greatest possible value to the Admiralty’s anti-U-boat committee.8
The warm letter of appreciation from Vice-Admiral Mansfield to SOE deserves to be repeated in full:
I would like to thank you for the valuable and gallant assistance which your organisation has rendered to the anti-U-boat effort, particularly in Norway.
I well know the losses which have been suffered and the dangerous and arduous work which has been undertaken to interfere with U-boats and their facilities in harbour. Apart from the tangible results (such as the destruction of large quantities of diesel oil, of the torpedo store and workshops at Horten … and of the U-boat battery acid factories in the Oslo area) the intangible results on U-boat morale and the feeling of insecurity which you engendered have been of the greatest value. The other multitudinous activities not specifically aimed against U-boats, such as destruction of communications, continually pinpricked the enemy and made his operating conditions more difficult. Although I realise that this has been only a small part of their duties as a whole, nevertheless I would be grateful if you would convey to all concerned, particularly to Lieutenant Colonel J. S. Wilson OBE, the warm appreciation of the Navy on their fine efforts.9
Intelligence reporting on U-boat movements
It has sometimes been suggested that either SIS or SOE agents provided specific intelligence about the movements of U-boats which enabled them to be intercepted by the Allied forces shortly after leaving Norwegian ports. No documentary evidence has been found in British or Norwegian archives to support this hypothesis. The absence of evidence is not of course conclusive – and both services certainly tried hard enough. For example an SIS team was landed in December 1944 near Bergen, to set up station Pommac and report on U-boat movements. No contact was established, and they asked to be evacuated because of threats to their security.10 But given the importance of U-boats as targets, it would be remarkable if any SIS or SOE agents involved in the reporting of such traffic had not revealed their activities after the war if their efforts had proved to be successful. We know that Louis Pettersen had managed to infiltrate the U-boat pens in Bergen for sabotage purposes, but there is nothing to suggest that he was able thereby to obtain intelligence about U-boat movements, which would have been among the most closely protected German secrets. The limited reports which are available from either service are of a fairly basic nature. For example, an SIS report of June 1943 which was graded C5 (i.e. of low reliability) stated that German naval personnel in Trondheim had sabotaged fourteen (or, according to another informant, twenty) of their own U-boats. Crews considered that their training was insufficient and the hazards of U-boat service were too great. NID commented that they had no confirmation of this, and considered it implausible.11 There is though plenty of evidence of the extent to which GC&CS was able to provide reporting which predicted U-boat movements in and out of port. This would have been a far more reliable and useful source of intelligence, especially when it was timely. The remarkable achievements of the submarine HMS Venturer are a case in point. Venturer had a busy few months. While on a special operation in northern Norway, it had chanced upon U-771 and torpedoed it on 11 November 1944. It returned to the same area on the following night, landing and caching five boatloads of supplies for SOE at a deserted spot at Mefjord, on Sørøya, near Alta.12
On 9 February 1945, just outside Bergen, Venturer successfully attacked and sank U-864, a large submarine carrying Japanese and German scientists and engineers as well as a large quantity of mercury and military equipment back to Japan. On 5 February the Admiralty had recommended a patrol area which included two routes known to be used by U-boats operating from Bergen, advising that Venturer should concentrate on the one near Hellisøy.13 GC&CS had already picked up a series of messages concerning escorts for U-864 on previous voyages in and out of Bergen. These described the route which she would take or where and when she would rendezvous with escorts. On 8 February, the day before U-864 was sunk, they intercepted another message giving the location of Hellisøy for a further rendezvous with an escort and specifying the time at which the escort would be available. It was in that area that U-864 was intercepted. The remarkable feature of this engagement is that it was perhaps the only one in the war where the attacking submarine intercepted, tracked and sank another submarine while remaining submerged and using just hydrophones and echo ranging (without sonar, whose ranging pings would have alerted the German submarine) to assist with locating the exact position of the target it was attacking.† 14
Problems with effectiveness of air supply drops
Chapter 9 described the difficulties of navigation over snow-covered terrain in Norway at night, a problem which was exacerbated by inadequate maps. It was also noted that the GUNNERSIDE party had been dropped some twenty miles away from where the reception committee was waiting for them, and that this was in accordance with an arrangement reached between the pilot and Rønneberg before departure. These were not the only problems with navigation and, following the GUNNERSIDE incident, Wilson suggested to the ANCC that Norwegian pilots and navigators should be attached to 138 squadron and used on flights to Norway. This did not prove straightforward, for the Air Ministry was reluctant to comply with the request. Wilson therefore produced a list of nine examples where serious mistakes had been made. These included an incident when Andreas Fasting, the agent accompanying Odd Starheim, had landed on the edge of a precipice and an accompanying container had ended up on a mountain over half a mile away across the valley. Another one created serious problems for the Raven party when the party landed over ten miles from their agreed dropping place, and it took them eight days to work out where they were. Pheasant were slightly more fortunate, because they landed only four miles from their designated landing site, but that still presented significant difficulties for them in deep snow in the mountains in winter. Following an attempt to drop Chaffinch, the pilot reported that there were no lights to be seen – but the reception pa
rty stated that lights were shown throughout the period when the drop was scheduled, and that the aircraft had passed directly over them twice at a height of 500 metres. The difficulties of navigating in such unfamiliar terrain in difficult winter conditions were not underestimated, but these incidents were judged to be too many.
It eventually proved possible to persuade the Air Ministry to change its mind, and some Norwegians were posted to Tempsford, the main base for clandestine flights to occupied Europe, and used on flights to Norway. The first, in the summer of 1943, were Per Hysing-Dahl and Egil Sandberg. Their arrival led to some improvement, but there were still accidents. For example, of the four SOE parties which were dropped in Norway to undertake railway sabotage in support of OVERLORD, two experienced significant problems. In October 1943, three members of the Grebe party landed in a lightly frozen lake and were drowned. The Fieldfare party (which included Joachim Rønneberg, who had led the GUNNERSIDE party), refused to jump on their first attempt in November 1943, because after circling for twenty minutes the pilot could not find the pinpoint where they were to be dropped. They were finally successful in March 1944 – though landed nearly ten miles from their reception point and lost some of their food in a lake. Not least because of very poor weather, a limited resupply did not prove possible until July, and they were forced to subsist on short rations in the mountains for the rest of the year, until they were able to make their attack on 5 January. The poor diet and insufficient food took its toll on Rønneberg, who became ill and was later forced to return to Britain for treatment.15
The Oslo gang
William Mackenzie, SOE’s historian, wrote with reasonable justification that NORIC (Oslo), generally known as the Oslo gang, led by Gunnar Sønsteby ‘had some reason to think itself the best team of saboteurs in Europe’.16 The gang does not seem to have been formed as the result of any conscious decision either in London or in Oslo, but its members just gradually coalesced around Sønsteby. Indeed, Wilson took issue with a post-war account of its development, which rather misrepresented the manner in which it had been recognised by SOE. He commented, ‘No! Sønsteby received a personal message from Colonel Wilson shortly after his report of the formation of the detachment was received, giving full approval to his action and plans.’ Later, these were developed further when Sønsteby was given a very detailed directive in December 1944, after he and Hauge had visited Britain at the same time.17 SOE’s Norwegian section history described Sønsteby as the most intelligent, most efficient and most productive agent in Norway, noting that ‘he looked a most ordinary man until he smiled’.18
Following an earlier visit to Britain, Sønsteby parachuted back into Norway in November 1943 with Knut Haugland, a member of the Swallow party which had supported GUNNERSIDE. It was originally intended that he would continue to assist with courier routes to Sweden and provide general assistance, but he gradually formed a group comprising some of the most outstanding members of the Linge Company, including Max Manus, Gregers Gram, Edvard Tallaksen and Birger Rasmussen. Tallaksen and Rasmussen had recently carried out the very successful attack on the smelter at Eydehavn near Arendal, which produced large quantities of silicon carbide for the manufacture of abrasives in Germany. SOE informed Churchill that this was expected to interrupt production for six months.19
From the spring of 1944 onwards, Sønsteby was responsible for a remarkable range of successful sabotage attacks. One of the first was an operation to disrupt Quisling’s plans for labour mobilisation, intended to provide Norwegian troops for the German eastern front in Russia. Quisling’s earlier and more limited attempt in February 1943 had been obstructed by a mixture of passive resistance and sabotage of labour offices, which included support from the communist resistance. His second attempt was more ambitious and aimed to recruit 75,000 Norwegians by announcing a labour draft whereby those selected would then be enrolled into the military. Resistance operations were directed against labour offices and their record-keeping facilities, including IBM punched-card systems. On the day before young Norwegians were scheduled to register for the draft, Sønsteby was contacted by Jens Chr. Hauge and asked to blow up a labour office in Akers Gate just three hours later. The reason for the short notice was that Hauge could find no else to do the job. It needed to be done in daylight so as to provide time for word to spread of the outcome before the draftees turned up the following morning. Sønsteby rustled up Gram and Manus to support him, carried out a very limited reconnaissance and obtained an office key from a contact in the Labour Ministry. His basic plan worked perfectly, and the office was destroyed.
The success of this and similar sabotage operations crippled the attempts at wide-scale mobilisation and very few young Norwegians were drafted. Many more chose to avoid being picked up by the police by taking refuge in isolated areas in the forests or mountains. This created logistics problems for Milorg, who had to find means of feeding them all. Their difficulty was exacerbated by the decision of the Quisling government to cancel the ration cards of those who did not answer the summons for the draft. This would have made it practically impossible for Milorg to feed all of those who were in hiding. So Sønsteby was asked to steal a large consignment of ration cards which was being delivered from a printing plant. He achieved this discreetly and effectively by hijacking the lorry. Milorg were then able to hold the Minister of Supply to ransom. They informed him that the cards would be returned if he rescinded his instruction that no ration cards would be issued to those who had avoided the draft. This was done, though the Quisling government later put out a press release saying that the cards had been stolen by criminals, and announced a temporary ban on alcohol and tobacco rations. Their intention was to turn the population against the resistance and damage morale, but they were outwitted when the clandestine press quickly published the real story and no reputational harm was done. Sønsteby did however admit that another of his operations had an unwelcome consequence. He tried to blow up the headquarters of the official responsible for the draft. The attack was only partially successful – but largely destroyed the stock of the business next door, which was one of a limited number of Norwegian outlets licensed to sell wines and spirits. That would have had a much more serious effect on morale…
One of the key wartime products for both British and German industries was ball bearings, manufactured in Sweden and elsewhere in Scandinavia by SKF, a Swedish company. A major British success had been Operation RUBBLE, when in January 1941 George Binney succeeded in smuggling nearly 20,000 tons of ball bearings out of Sweden on five Norwegian merchant ships. To give some idea of the value of this consignment, the Ministry of Aircraft Production calculated in March 1943 that 100 tons of ball bearings would be sufficient to build about 75 per cent of the airframe work on about 1,200 Lancasters and about 60 per cent of the airframe work on about 1,600 Mosquitoes.20 The success of RUBBLE could not be repeated because of German naval interference, but Britain continued to import smaller quantities of ball bearings from Sweden using both aircraft and MTBs, which could carry up to fifty tons each. The Germans also procured ball bearings from Sweden and Norway, but in 1944 Allied diplomatic pressure gradually reduced the amount they were able to obtain from Sweden.21 SOE then turned its attention to Norway, and in November and December 1944, the Oslo gang carried out successful operations against three SKF subsidiaries in Oslo, Drammen and Larvik, rendering all three factories unusable.22
From the range of what SOE calculated to be twenty-two major operations carried out by Sønsteby and the Oslo gang in the last few months of 1944, three in particular are worth highlighting. In August, they attacked and destroyed an aircraft repair shop at Korsvoll in Oslo which contained more than twenty Messerschmitt airframes, 150 aeroplane engines and a wealth of auxiliary equipment such as grinding machinery and tools. This was not straightforward, because their two previously unsuccessful attempts had caused the Germans to reinforce the guards on the building. In September, they completed the work of Peter Deinboll at Orkla, by destroyin
g the last of the special locomotives which were used to transport pyrites from the mine down to the quay. This locomotive, damaged in a previous attack, had been brought to Oslo for repairs which were just completed. Finally, and perhaps most difficult of all because it was so heavily guarded, only two days later they attacked the weapons factory at Kongsberg, south-west of Oslo. The factory manufactured Bofors anti-aircraft guns and also repaired large field guns. With the help of local Milorg members, one of whom had cleverly smuggled over fifty kilograms of explosive inside the plant, they breached the defences and destroyed one large field gun, four Bofors guns and the two lathes which were necessary for their manufacture – and badly damaged the structure of the building as well.23
All of these sabotage operations were carried out without incident or German retaliation, though employees were occasionally brutally interrogated in attempts to obtain information about those responsible. However, two members of NORIC lost their lives in a separate incident. In November 1944, Edvard Tallaksen and Gregers Gram were lured to a meeting where they expected to meet two disaffected German soldiers whom they hoped might help them to subvert German troops.‡ It was a trap. In an exchange of shots when the Gestapo tried to arrest them, Gram was killed and Tallaksen injured. He committed suicide in prison.