The First War of Physics (26 page)

A team of six Norwegians was drawn from the ranks of the Norwegian Independent Company. The team was led by 22-year-old Joachim Rønneberg, regarded as one of the best of the commandos from among those who had graduated from the SOE’s Special Training Schools. Rønneberg selected Haukelid, who had by now recovered from the wound he had picked up in training, Kasper Idland, Fredrik Kayser, Birger Strømsheim and Hans Storhaug. All were accomplished skiers and outdoorsmen.

Unusually, all six were fully briefed by Tronstad about the fate of Operation Freshman, and Hitler’s new commando directive. Tronstad and Wilson ‘had thought it best to explain the whole situation to us’, Haukelid later wrote. ‘We must be prepared to receive no better treatment than the British soldiers if we were taken prisoner.’

The new raid was codenamed Operation Gunnerside. This time the planning was detailed and meticulous. Under Tronstad and Brun’s direction, a replica of the heavy water plant was constructed at the SOE’s Special Training School in Hatfield, Hertfordshire (STS-17). The sabotage team practised laying charges in precisely the right places on each high concentration cell to cause maximum damage. ‘None of us had been to the plant
in our lives but by the time we left Britain we knew the layout of it as well as anyone’, said Rønneberg.

Each member of the team was issued with suicide pills, small quantities of cyanide encased in rubber that, if bitten through, would ensure death in three seconds. On their last day at STS-17, Tronstad explained how their mission would live on in Norway’s history in a hundred years’ time.

From Hatfield they headed north to STS-61, a large eighteenth-century country house near Godmanchester in Cambridgeshire. Here the team could enjoy some rest and relaxation prior to the mission, entertained by women from the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, who kept house, cooked and organised their social lives. The house was also known as Farm Hall. It belonged to the SOE but was used as a staging-post for SIS agents about to depart for occupied territories, and as a debriefing or interrogation centre for agents or captives coming into Britain. Eric Welsh had had Farm Hall wired throughout, with concealed listening devices in all the bedrooms and reception rooms. A listening post was installed in a service wing, behind doors secured by special locks.

While it was pleasant, the team’s extended stay at Farm Hall frayed their nerves. In December 1942 Operation Gunnerside was delayed by bad weather. Rønneberg insisted on a return to more arduous training in Scotland. The mission was delayed again on 23 January 1943, when the RAF pilot and navigator failed to find the designated drop zone and, running low on fuel, turned around and headed back to Scotland.

On the Hardanger Plateau, the Swallow team was experiencing the worst weather in living memory, the temperature barely rising above minus 30° Celsius. Though they were still in good spirits, their food rations were now very meagre and their health was deteriorating fast. When the Gunnerside team got airborne again on 16 February, the advance party had been holding out in Europe’s most inhospitable wilderness for nearly four freezing months. They were in bad shape.

The advance party had been advised by wireless that the Gunnerside party had landed, but a severe storm had since descended and after several days without contact they began to fear the worst. A week later, the Gunnerside team finally made contact with two of the advance party,
Helberg and Kjelstrup, who had been sent by Poulsson to search for them. Four months surviving on the Hardanger Plateau had taken its toll. Helberg and Kjelstrup looked like tramps, their clothes filthy and covered in reindeer blood, bearded, malnourished, their emaciated faces a sickly yellow.

Back-slapping and hearty congratulations were followed by a veritable feast of reindeer and fresh rations. After a couple of days’ recuperation, the Norwegians were ready to mount their attack. Helberg was dispatched to Rjukan to source information on the Vemork defences from a contact in the town, an engineer at the plant called Rolf Sørlie. The team then set to work to figure out how they were going to carry out their task.

There were about 30 German troops based at the plant itself, with many more garrisoned in Rjukan. The plant could be reached from the road only by a narrow suspension bridge, about 75 feet long. The bridge spanned the deep ravine which now separated the saboteurs from their target, and it was closely guarded. Gaining access to the plant without being detected and without an exchange of fire appeared impossible.

But what had been considered impossible by the German defenders was considered quite feasible by the Norwegian attackers. Helberg discovered that it was possible to descend into the ravine, cross the frozen river Mima at the bottom and ascend the other side, where the saboteurs could access a railway line cut into the mountainside. This railway line, which ran from Vemork to Rjukan, was used only occasionally to transport heavy machinery to the plant. It was not guarded. They had found a way in.

Finding a way out was more problematic. The explosion would undoubtedly alert the German troops, and if they chose to retreat via the ravine they risked becoming trapped. Rønneberg and Poulsson favoured fighting their way out across the bridge, but the others were not convinced. Democracy prevailed, and a retreat via the ravine was agreed.

The party split into two teams. Rønneberg led the sabotage team which included Idland, Kayser and Strømsheim. Haukelid led the covering team, comprising Poulsson, Helberg, Kjelstrup and Storhaug. Haugland and Skinnarland were to remain in wireless contact with the SOE and report the results of the operation.

They set out at 8:00pm on Sunday, 28 February. They all wore British uniforms and carried British papers so that their action would be seen as a military operation, hopefully reducing the risk of reprisals against the local population. Although it was a steep climb, they crossed the ravine without incident and managed to get to the railway line. They walked along it, a strong south-westerly wind covering any noise they made. They reached a small building about 500 yards from the plant at about 11:30, and waited for the change of sentry on the suspension bridge which was due at midnight.

The group separated at 00:30. The sabotage team cut through the flimsy chain on the fence around the plant and headed for the heavy water concentration cells in the basement. They split into two pairs as they tried to find a way in. Rønneberg and Kayser eventually gained access via a narrow cable shaft, surprising the Norwegian nightwatchman inside. Kayser covered the nightwatchman with his gun, as Rønneberg started to place charges.

He was about halfway through when Strømsheim crashed in through a window. He and Idland had tried to get in through the door on the ground floor, but had found it locked. Unable to find any other way in, they had decided to risk a noisy break-in. Kayser instinctively swung his gun from the nightwatchman to the window. ‘I almost killed him’, Kayser said later. ‘If there had been a bullet in the chamber of my gun, I probably would have. I recognised him just in time.’

Idland kept watch outside the broken window as Rønneberg and Strømsheim placed the last of the charges. They had set the fuses when they were interrupted by a Norwegian foreman. Rønneberg lit the fuses and Kayser suggested to their two captives that they head upstairs as quickly as possible. By his reckoning, they should be able to get to the second floor before the explosion. The saboteurs left by a cellar door, and were no more than twenty yards from the building when they heard a muffled explosion.

‘The explosion itself was not very loud’, Poulsson later recalled. ‘It sounded like two or three cars crashing in Piccadilly Circus.’ However, inside the building it was a different matter, with one plant engineer who
had been up on the third floor remarking: ‘The explosion was tremendous, the power of it reverberated throughout the entire building.’

The sabotage party took cover as Haukelid and the covering team prepared for the appearance of German troops from the nearby barracks. But outside, the explosion had not been loud, and small explosions from the plant’s combustion equipment (called ‘cannons’ because of their shape) were not unusual. A single guard appeared, flashed a torchlight inches above Haukelid’s head, and went back inside.

The covering and sabotage parties reunited. They began their retreat back along the railway line, and then back down the ravine. They were crossing the now rapidly thawing river at the bottom when they heard the first sounds of sirens. Rønneberg had feared they would be trapped in the ravine, picked out by searchlights with no means of escape. But the Germans were busy searching the plant itself, convinced the saboteurs were still somewhere on the premises. They knew that nobody had passed the sentries on the bridge, and as far as they were concerned that was the only way out.

The raid had been a success, and now the party’s main concern was for their own safety. They scrambled up the other side of the ravine. The road from Rjukan was now busy with traffic, including trucks carrying more German troops. Across the ravine they could see flashlights darting through the night as Germans traced their retreat along the railway line. They didn’t have much time.

They followed the power line towards Rjukan, and then climbed up along Ryes Road as it zig-zagged beneath a cableway. The cableway had been built before the war to allow the citizens of Rjukan an opportunity to escape the gloom of winter during its four long months of darkness. It was now discontinued for public use. The road led up to the top of the cableway at Gvepseborg and the edge of the Hardanger Plateau.

There had been no exchange of fire. Aside from a couple of Norwegian workers at the plant, nobody had seen the raiders enter or leave. Between four and five months’ production of heavy water washed uselessly over the basement floor.

General Rediess decided that this was the action of British intelligence and the Norwegian resistance, and threatened to execute ten of Rjukan’s leading citizens in reprisal. Arriving on the scene shortly afterwards, Generaloberst Nikolaus von Falkenhorst, commander-in-chief of the German forces in Norway, decided that this had been a military operation, carried out by uniformed British soldiers. He called it ‘the finest coup I have seen in this war’, and ordered that the Rjukan citizens be released.
⁴

This admiration spilled over into the media. A report on Swedish radio on 1 March claimed that the sabotage of the heavy water facility at Rjukan was intended to disrupt production of high-quality explosives. A garbled account appeared in the
Daily Mail
on 2 March 1943, submitted by the
Mail’s
correspondent in Stockholm. This account contained no reference to heavy water. A further report in the
Svenska Dagbladet
linked the raid with a ‘secret weapon’ based on heavy water.
The Times
reported on the raid on 4 April. On the same day the story made its way into the
New York Times
, which made a muddled connection between heavy water and atomic energy. To Groves, who was not well-disposed towards the British, these press reports were further examples of lax security. Bush wrote an angry note attached to the clipping from the
New York Times
, arguing that it ‘gives sufficient basis in itself for insistence that knowledge be passed only to those who really need to know it’.

Special resolution

Against the odds, the Soviet forces held on in Stalingrad. Stalin sent the saviour of Moscow, Marshal Zhukov, to organise a counter-attack. Zhukov assembled massive forces on the steppes to the north and south of the city. On 19 November 1942 the Red Army launched its counter-offensive, codenamed Uran. Uran is usually translated into English as ‘Uranus’, but can also be translated as ‘uranium’. The choice of codename may have been quite coincidental, but the counter-offensive was a turning point in the battle (and arguably the entire war). Within a day the Romanian Third Army, which protected the German Sixth Army’s northern flank, was crushed. The next day the Romanians guarding the Germans’ southern flank were swept aside. Soviet forces completed their encirclement two days later.

Hitler insisted there would be no surrender, but attempts to relieve the trapped German forces by air failed. With ammunition and rations fast running low, the Germans surrendered on 2 February 1943. In all, the battle of Stalingrad had lasted nearly 200 days and had claimed between 1.7 and 2 million lives.

Nine days later, on 11 February, the Soviet State Defence Committee passed a special resolution on research into atomic energy.

Igor Kurchatov had studied physics at the Crimea State University and ship-building at the Polytechnic Institute in Petrograd before joining Abram Ioffe at the Fiztekh in Leningrad. With Ioffe he had worked on radioactivity before receiving funding to set up his own nuclear research programme in 1932. During the first years of the war he had worked on ways to demagnetise ships to protect them from magnetic mines. After the Nazi invasion, he declared his intention not to shave his beard until the enemy was defeated. Consequently, he grew a flourishing beard that gave him the appearance of an Orthodox priest. Inevitably, he gained the nickname ‘the Beard’.

As the State Defence Committee searched for a scientific director for its atomic bomb programme, it was Kurchatov who impressed the most. His appointment was officially announced by Viacheslav Molotov, deputy chairman to the committee, later in February 1943.

But although Kurchatov understood the physical basis for an atomic weapon, he was also very well aware of the many problems standing in the way. ‘Then I decided to give him our intelligence materials’, Molotov later recalled. At the beginning of March, Kurchatov sat for several days in Molotov’s office in the Kremlin studying the conclusions of the MAUD Committee and various papers on the Tube Alloys project on gaseous diffusion that Fuchs had provided.

This material showed that the British and the Americans were taking the possibility of a bomb very seriously, and confirmed some of the thinking about detonation of a U-235 bomb that had been developed largely by Flerov. But the material also provided new information that would help save time and effort in the Soviet programme. The British had abandoned thermal diffusion in favour of gaseous diffusion. A uranium reactor could be used to produce element 94, potentially more powerful than U-235 and without the problems associated with physical separation of a rare isotope.