Night of feb 27- feb 28 Operation Gunnerside

[Joris]

Operation Gunnerside

British command was aware of the "success" of the Grouse team, and decided to build another operation in concert with them. By this time the original Grouse team were being referred to as Swallow. In February 1943, in Operation Gunnerside (named after a village and the moor where the Hambro Family and Sir Charles Hambro, the head of SOE, used to shoot grouse), an additional six Norwegian commandos were dropped into Norway by a Halifax bomber of 138 Squadron from RAF Tempsford. They too were successful in landing, and found the Swallow team after a few days of searching. The combined team then made final preparations for their assault on the night of 27 February.

 

Supplies required by the commandos were dropped with them in special CLE containers. (One of these was buried in the snow by a Norwegian patriot to hide it from the Germans; he later recovered it and in August 1976 handed it over to an officer of the Army Air Corps, who were exercising in the area. The container was brought back to England and is now on display at the Airborne Museum at Aldershot.)

 

Following the Freshman attempt, mines, floodlights and additional guards were set around the plant. Whilst the mines and lights remained in place, security of the actual plant had slackened somewhat over the winter months. However, the single 75-metre bridge spanning the deep ravine, 200 metres above the River Maan, was well guarded.

 

The force elected to descend into the ravine, ford the icy river and climb the steep hill on the far side. The winter river level was very low, and on the far side, where the ground leveled, they followed a single railway track straight into the plant without encountering any guards. Even before Grouse landed in Norway, SOE had a Norwegian agent within the plant who supplied detailed plans and schedule information. The demolition party used this information to enter the main basement by a cable tunnel and through a window.

 

The saboteurs then placed explosive charges on the heavy water electrolysis chambers, and attached a fuse allowing sufficient time for their escape. Other than the night watchman, whom they had to "silence", no one interfered with their mission, nor intercepted their escape. A British machine gun was purposely left behind to indicate that this was the work of British forces and not of local resistance, in order to prevent reprisals. The explosive charges detonated, destroying the electrolysis chambers and releasing the stocks of heavy water.

 

All ten made good their escape whereafter six skied 400 kilometres to Sweden and four remained in Norway for further work with the resistance. The plant was restored by April and SOE concluded that a repeat raid would be extremely difficult, as German security was thereafter very considerable. In November the plant was attacked by a massed daylight bombing raid of 143 B-17 bombers dropping 711 bombs, of which at least 600 missed the plant. The damage, however, was quite extensive; the reason for the original ground assault a year earlier was that the available alternative of night bombing was considered unrealistic at that time.

 

http://www.answers.com/topic/norwegian-heavy-water-sabotage

 

Listen to a BBC 4 show on this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/telemark.shtml