In the generator hall the cupric chloride acid ate away at what remained of the delicate timer pencil components. The thinnest wire finally severed, releasing a spring-loaded mechanism that hammered down the timer pencil tube, striking a percussion cap and so triggering the explosion.
It was 12.35 a.m. and the first sign of Black’s success was a series of blinding flashes that flared out of the power station and pulsed across the fjord, throwing sea and mountains into momentary stark, jagged-edged relief. As the explosions blew out the massive arched windows in a storm of shattered glass, so the blast wave swept across the fjord and thundered up the mountainsides.
Even at O’Brien’s eyrie-like vantage point, the shockwave hit with surprising force. So powerful was it that glass in the windows of the houses that lined the fjord was blown inwards, up to two miles away. And then the roar of the explosion washed over O’Brien, Chudley and Curtis in an awe-inspiring whirlwind of sound.
In his apartment overlooking the fjord, Oberleutnant (First Lieutenant) Wilhelm Kelle just happened to be at his window the moment the charges blew. The initial explosion was followed almost instantly by a second, and flames could be seen licking through the generator hall. Oberleutnant Kelle knew instantly that something had gone badly wrong at the plant, one that it was his responsibility to protect.
He was unsure if this was some kind of an accident or … sabotage. Moments later the air raid siren sited at the aluminium factory began to wail, slowly at first and then with increasing urgency. The rhythmic howl echoed across the fjord’s dark waters, serving to alert Oberleutnant Kelle that somehow, Glomfjord was under attack.
Crouched next to the pipelines high above the plant, tousle-haired man of action Chudley grinned. He gestured at the power station. ‘Ooooo, didn’t she glow! Wasn’t it lovely!’
The explosions were the signal that O’Brien and his men had been waiting for. They bent to their task, crushing the ends of the timer pencils on their own charges. Black and his sabotage team now had thirty short minutes to make it out of the inlet, before the pipelines blew.
Fuses set, O’Brien turned to his men. ‘Come on, if you want to get out of here alive …’
There was no easy route to follow. If they strayed downslope, they risked getting caught in the devastation caused by their own handiwork. O’Brien turned east, leading Curtis and Chudley across a rock face slick with running water. They were making for the rendezvous with Black and his men, who even now would be climbing up from the fjord.
As the air raid siren continued to blast out its unearthly, echoing wail, the three parties—Houghton’s, O’Brien’s and Black’s—converged.
‘Okay, Joe?’ Black hissed. ‘Is everyone here?’
‘All here,’ Houghton confirmed.
Having checked that O’Brien had set his fuses, they made for the rough track that led along the wooded shore of Lake Fykan. Soon, twelve men were moving eastwards at a fast jog, their rubber-soled boots whispering over the uneven, rocky surface. With Granlund in the lead they crossed the first footbridge and powered into the darkness.
It was rough going, but everyone in Black’s force knew that speed was of the essence. Relieved of the massive weight of their explosives, they should be able to move fast, and if they could put enough distance between themselves and the German garrison they might well evade capture. They’d have to hole up come daybreak and sneak further away at nightfall, but escape seemed within their grasp.
Behind them, there was a sudden eerie concussion. The blast was muffled by thick woodland, but still the flash of the explosion threw a pulse of harsh light across the high ground to either side. No one doubted that O’Brien’s pipeline charges had just blown.
As if to confirm their suspicions, moments later a blinding white flare floated into the dark sky over the power station. Whatever might be happening there, it looked as if a total emergency was being declared.
High above the power plant the two pipelines had been ripped asunder. The initial burst of water exited with such force that it plucked boulders from the ground, threw them high into the air, which landed throwing off sparks visible for several kilometres down the fjord. The massive deluge that followed ripped trees out by the roots, shovelled up gravel and rocks by the truckload, and sent it all plummeting downhill.
The first of the water and heavy debris hit the rear wall of the power plant like a fusillade of cannon fire. As the murderous cascade carved a clearer path down the mountainside, the pressure and rate of flow strengthened. Soon, it was hammering into the rear of the power station with incredible force.
Within minutes a vast heap of debris had piled up against the back wall, the sheer weight threatening to collapse the building. Water surged in through broken windows and doorways, carrying with it a sludge of mud, gravel and detritus. It hit the first of the generators, throwing off clouds of thick steam as it made contact with the mangled metal; where the Nobel 808 charges had exploded, twisted and shattered steel and copper was still glowing hot.
In the aluminium factory further down the fjord, the lights flickered and went out. All machinery ground to a standstill. And as the floodwater surged around the power station, seeking an exit into the fjord, some found its way into the tunnel leading to Glomfjord village, flooding its smoke-filled interior.
At the far end of that tunnel, Oberleutnant Kelle had ordered twenty-five German troops to board the Storegutt, a small freighter that he had commandeered. The tunnel was out of action, and Oberleutnant Kelle was desperate to know the worst. He’d heard reports of British saboteurs at work, and he ordered the freighter’s captain to take them across the fjord.
As the Storegutt chugged out into the normally pitch-dark inlet, Kelle could see light spilling across the water. Each of the power station’s huge blacked-out windows had been blown out. A separate generator house provided back-up electricity, and it had escaped whatever havoc had been wreaked on the main plant, hence the light.
More worrying still, there was a deafening roar coming from the direction of the pipelines above, as if a gigantic express train was thundering down a long and echoing tunnel. It bored into Oberleutnant Kelle’s ears. He had no idea if the British saboteurs were still at the plant. Were they lurking in cover, waiting to hurl grenades onto the Storegutt as soon as she steamed within range?
The freighter nosed cautiously towards the power station’s wharf. No British commandos leapt out of the shadows. Instead, one of the German sentries was there to receive the ship, but he seemed to have little idea of what had happened, or where the British saboteurs might have fled to.
Oberleutnant Kelle made a mental note to deal with him later. He split his men into three groups. Two were to search the power station and its grounds. The third was to climb up the pipelines, to see if the saboteurs had fled that way and if they might be cut off.
While Kelle headed for the power station control room, his second-in-command, Leutnant Wilhelm Dehne, led his party of men into the generator hall. For a moment Leutnant Dehne stood stock still, surveying in shock the scene of devastation. The massive generators had been ripped out of the iron plates that held them to the floor, and gravel, mud and broken plaster were churning around in the floodwaters.
Hardly had Dehne had time to take in the devastation when a salvo of bullets splattered into the water at his feet. He and his men dived for cover behind one of the wrecked turbines, as more shots hammered out. Unbelievably, the fire seemed to be coming from the shattered windows of the power station control room, where his commander was supposed to be with his force.
Leutnant Dehne could only presume that the saboteurs were still in the plant. As he readied his weapon, his mind flipped back to an image from a few days earlier, when he had been surveying the terrain above Bjærangsfjord. He didn’t doubt any more that the group of figures in single file that he’d spotted high on the mountains had been the British saboteurs.
Before Dehne could return fire, there was an almighty crack, and the rear wall of the power station caved inwards. The sheer weight of sodden debris piling up behind it had finally become unsupportable. Water thundered in, surging to chest height, and in the force of the flow Leutnant Dehne and his men were swept back outside.
The two German commanders, sodden, bruised and enraged, gathered to confer. The bullets fired at Leutnant Dehne and his men turned out to have originated from his own side. Some of Oberleutnant Kelle’s men had mistaken Dehne and his party for British saboteurs sneaking around the plant. Leutnant Dehne gave voice to a growing concern: would the British saboteurs try to escape via the same route he now believed they had trekked in—via Lake Fykan?
Oberleutnant Kelle ordered Dehne to take his force in that direction and to find out. A second boat, the Skarsfjord, was inbound with more soldiers, so Kelle had troops to spare.
But even as the Skarsfjord docked, the power station was plunged into darkness. The floodwaters had found their way into the separate generator house, shutting down the plant’s electricity supply. Everything was thrown into dark confusion.
At the rear of the plant, Leutnant Dehne was not to be deterred. He led his force on the first leg of the climb towards Lake Fykan. The normal route following the stairway running alongside the pipelines was unusable; it had been transformed into a raging torrent. Instead, he was forced to take them up the rock face to one side.
It was steep and dark and flecked with spray from the water spurting from the ruptured pipes, but still Dehne and his men pushed relentlessly onwards. Below, more grey-uniformed figures slung their rifles on their backs and set hands and feet to the cold rock. The hunt was on.
A way to the east, a breathless Granlund rounded the end of Lake Fykan. He’d been running for a good hour now. Behind him in the darkness Black and his men were strung out in single file. Granlund hit a steep slope where the track started to climb and his pace slackened.
Further east and towering above them lay the dark mass of the Navervann Mountain. If Granlund could navigate them past that, they would be into true wilderness terrain, and the enemy would have little idea in which direction they might have fled. But between their position and open country lay a knife-cut gorge, with a lone suspension bridge running across it.
Granlund needed to lead the saboteurs directly to that bridge, and in the thick darkness he feared that he would miss his way. He spotted a cluster of workmen’s cabins. He decided to stop and ask for directions. Once he’d woken from his sleep, one of the Norwegian workers sketched a rough map for Granlund, showing the route to the vital bridge.
As Granlund took the map and thanked him, Joe Houghton and Djupdraet appeared—drawn to the lights now burning in the cabin. But so too were the leading German soldiers. There were two, and somehow they had overtaken Black and the rest of his men. They entered the wooden building, only to come face to face with Djupdraet and Houghton, who were about to leave.
A brutal fight at close quarters ensued. Houghton went to open fire, but the nearest German managed to knock the Sten’s unwieldy silencer aside, and the rounds went wide. As he and Houghton grappled with each other, the second German hurled his bayoneted rifle at Djupdraet, the blade slicing through the Norwegian’s stomach.
Djupdraet sank to his knees, but somehow he kept his cool. He grabbed the rifle with both hands and pulled the bloodied blade out. On his feet again he staggered out of the hut into the darkness.
Black was drawn to the commotion. He ducked into the hut, but came under fire from a German rifle. Acting on instinct, he managed to corner the enemy soldier—the one who had bayoneted Djupdraet—behind the hut’s stove, and shot him with his Colt.
In the kitchen, Joe Houghton was still grappling with his adversary. Finally he managed to twist the Sten’s barrel up enough and he pulled the trigger. The German was blasted away from him, slumping to the ground. Presuming both enemy soldiers to be dead, Black and Houghton backed away from the hut and slipped into the shadows.
Quickly, Black called his men together. It was time to split up, he told them. ‘They’re after us! Choose yourself a couple of lads and go!’ They should make for the Swedish border, Black urged, and with all speed.
In groups of twos and threes the eleven men—Djupdraet was too badly injured to move—melted into the darkness. O’Brien, Trigg and Granlund pushed east, heading for the elusive bridge across the gorge. Others began to head southwards, seeking safety in altitude, struggling through stands of stunted trees.
Fairclough and Yorkshireman Dusty Smith were pushing through tangled woodland when Smith decided that he had to turn back. He’d been tasked to give morphine to the badly wounded Djupdraet, but in the confusion he had forgotten to do so.
Fairclough waited for Smith to rejoin him, only to hear powerful shots cut through the darkness. Rifle fire. It had to be the enemy, for only they carried such weapons. Remembering Black’s orders to get away as fast as possible, Fairclough turned back to the slope and resumed his exhausting climb alone.
Back at sea level, the Skarsfjord and Storegutt were continuing to ferry German troops to the plant. Scores were sent into the high ground. The gunfire drew them onwards. They converged on the source of the firing, throwing a ring of steel around the base of the mountain up which they believed the British saboteurs had fled. Still more kept arriving. They were ordered to advance through the ring, drawing the noose ever tighter.
It was Leutnant Dehne who discovered the injured Djupdraet. The wounded Norwegian was found lying in the darkness, unarmed, and clearly in great pain. Finally, Dehne was face to face with one of the figures he had spotted six days earlier as they had crossed the mountains. The German officer crouched over the wounded man.
‘Comrade, don’t shoot,’ Djupdraet implored, in English.
Dehne bent lower, hooked his arm around the wounded man’s shoulder and helped him to the nearest cabin. There he made sure that Djupdraet’s injuries were properly dressed, before he turned back to the hunt.
In all the darkness and confusion, Black’s force had split in two different directions. While Granlund, O’Brien, Trigg and Fairclough had fled east, into the shadow of the Navervann, Black and the rest of his men had veered south, up the slopes of the Middago Mountain.
On the Middago’s perilous slopes Joe Houghton found himself fighting a desperate rearguard action. The only one of the raiders armed with anything more substantial than a pistol, he squirted off the odd burst from his silenced Sten, only to receive a barrage of rifle fire in return.
The Sten was designed for fighting at close quarters and the Colt .45s were next to useless in such terrain; the British commandos were hopelessly outgunned. Eventually, one of Houghton’s pursuers managed to shoot him in the right forearm. His ammunition all but expended, and his trigger arm bleeding profusely, a pain-racked Houghton turned and hurried upslope.
Black and his men climbed ever higher. As they neared the summit the first rays of dawn filtered through the thinning trees. They crested a ridge, only to find themselves on the lip of a shallow crater. Ffity metres across, this was the summit of the Middago Mountain. By now they were all out of ammunition, and still the sound of relentless pursuit echoed from below.
Black surveyed the terrain before them. The crater was mostly bare of vegetation, so there was little cover if they attempted to dash across. He was readying his men to move when the first figures appeared at the crater’s edge. Their helmets and rifles were unmistakable, and soon Black could tell that they were surrounded.
Ducking behind some boulders, he ordered his men to dismantle and bury their weapons. Strangely, the Germans still held their fire. Then a voice rang out. Whoever it might be was speaking fine, if heavily accented, English.
‘Come out! We don’t want to shoot anyone!’
It was Oberleutnant Kelle. He repeated the order. Black and his men held their silence. No one moved.
‘Come out! You are surrounded. You cannot get away.’
Still no response.
Kelle ordered one of his men to throw a hand grenade. He indicated where he wanted it to fall. It thumped into the open area at the crater’s centre, a good distance from the commandos, but the message it sent was clear.
Kelle repeated his order. Finally Captain Black raised himself, hands in the air. One by one the others did the same and were taken prisoner. At gunpoint and bound at the wrists they were herded back down the mountainside. As they reached the final descent, the Canadian captain gazed upon the power station. Water still thundered downslope from the ruptured pipelines, and the rear of the generator hall had been transformed into a mass of sodden boulders and debris.
Momentarily, Black’s teeth flashed a smile. They’d done it. Mission accomplished!
He wondered why the automatic valves hadn’t shut off the water flow. By rights, they should have done so fifteen minutes after the explosions. There was no obvious explanation, but it was immensely gratifying. Black and his men were still smiling as they were led aboard the Storegutt, to be shipped across to Glomfjord village.
Once safely incarcerated in the Ortskommandantur building, Oberleutnant Kelle’s headquarters, the commandos’ hands were untied. Leutnant Dehne was put in charge of searching Black. Acting on a whim, his memory drifting to the crumpled packet of Player’s cigarettes that he had found near the Black Glacier, he offered Black a smoke.
‘Have a cigarette. A German cigarette! That’s all I have for you.’
Black demurred. He’d far prefer a pull on his trusty pipe.
On Oberleutnant Kelle’s orders, German soldiers had climbed up to the valve house and ordered the flow to be stopped. The local workers stationed there claimed that the valves were out of order. The German troops had no option but to climb to a higher point where a barrier could be lowered manually. It was only then—and with the reservoir lake drained almost dry—that the flow was finally halted.
By that time, Black and his men had got just an inkling of what fate might hold in store for them. At first, they were questioned firmly but politely by one Oberst (Colonel) Franz Henschel, who had flown in directly from regimental headquarters in Fauske, seventy kilometres north of Glomfjord.
Black and each of his men responded to the interrogation in the same manner.
‘Did you come by aircraft?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘By parachute?’
‘Maybe.’
‘By boat?’
‘Not necessarily.’
‘Over the mountains?’
‘Possibly.’
Nothing was given away.
But then a contingent of SS arrived. The SS officers told Oberst Henschel that he was to hand over the captives to them. Henschel refused. For now at least he prevailed. That evening, Black and his six men were loaded aboard a ship, en route for Norway’s third city, Trondheim. They were being sent to Akershus Prison, a facility under the control of General Nikolaus von Falkenhorst, Commander-in-Chief of German forces in Norway.
General von Falkenhorst had an interesting résumé. With craggy features and a hawk-faced demeanour, he was both a decorated First World War veteran and something of a favourite of Hitler’s. Born a Polish noble, he had changed the family name—Jastrembski—to the Germanic-sounding Falkenhorst—‘falcon’s nest’—to better suit his standing as a senior officer in the German military.
In May 1940, when the Führer had ordered that Norway be invaded, von Falkenhorst had been given twenty-four hours to come up with a master plan. The German general had sketched out a scheme of attack based largely upon a Baedeker travel guide that he’d found in a local bookshop, and the invasion of Norway was launched.
Von Falkenhorst was fiercely loyal to the Führer, but he was also a soldier of the old school, and disapproved of the SS and Gestapo’s terror tactics. It was far better to fall into his hands, for with von Falkenhorst the Musketoon captives would at least be extended the protections afforded to bona fide prisoners of war.
As the ship carrying them steamed out to sea, so the Musketoon seven had left behind one of their number in Glomfjord: mortally wounded, Djupdraet would not last out the next forty-eight hours. Shortly before passing away he would tell the Norwegian doctor caring for him: ‘Some of us must die … if Norway is to live.’
They’d also left behind a local German commander, Oberleutnant Kelle, who was mystified as to how the attack could have proven so successful. Surely, eight men could hardly have wreaked such havoc and destruction. There had to be others, and the Oberleutnant’s instinct—plus a growing body of evidence—told him that they must have landed somewhere along the Bjærangsfjord.
He sent ships packed with soldiers to scour the length of the fjord. At the same time, he despatched spotter aircraft to fly over the mountains and snowfields to the east, in case the rogue saboteurs had escaped that way.
Come hell or high water, Kelle was determined to find the saboteurs. The power station lay in ruins. His career was hanging by a slender thread. Hunting down the British commandos—every last one of them—was one of the few ways in which he might redeem himself.
Granlund, O’Brien, Trigg and Fairclough—the four raiders still at large—had reached the summit of the Navervann Mountain just prior to dawn. It was freezing cold, and to make matters worse the men fancied a storm was in the air. Without food, they had only Benzedrine tablets with which to fuel their march; unless they could get help—and, crucially, sustenance—they knew that they were finished.
Fairclough shared out the last of the cigarettes. Barely had the four lit up when a pair of German aircraft swooped low across the summit of the Navervann, their engines roaring in the fugitives’ ears. The saboteurs dived for cover as the spotter planes turned beyond the peak, and came back for a second run.
The four men—hungry, cold and hunted—were forced to lie low most of that day, as the German aircraft quartered the skies above. Come nightfall they set off eastwards, towards Sweden, and into the teeth of what would soon become a howling blizzard of a storm.
As those brave young men put their shoulders into the biting wind, so in London a grey-haired, balding, fifty-something former Scoutmaster sat hunched over his desk at the SOE’s Baker Street headquarters. An alumnus of Scottish public school Glenalmond College—which had transformed him from a sickly infant with swollen glands into the young man who would captain the school rugby team—Major John Skinner Wilson had devised the SOE’s entire training programme.
Between 1923 and the outbreak of the war Wilson had been the director of training of the Boy Scouts Association, and the SOE had sought him out in large part due to his Scouting experience. When called for ‘special duties’—the euphemism for going into the SOE—Wilson had told the Scouting Association that his new role was ‘considered of sufficient importance to justify the Boy Scouts Association in releasing me’. He’d promised that he was not ‘deserting the ship’, and that he looked forward to a time when ‘the clouds roll by … and all our energies will be required in the re-establishment of peace and goodwill.’
Wilson had proved admirably suited to his new role at SOE, and in recent months he’d been transferred to their very active Norwegian Section, making Musketoon very much his baby. With his weather-beaten demeanour, prominent nose, balding pate and greying hair, age set him apart from the rank and file at the SOE. By his own admission he often used it to get his own way—others might outrank him, but few were his senior in years or, for that matter, experience.
At Glenalmond, Wilson had earned the somewhat unflattering nickname of ‘Tubby’. Nowadays he unarguably did share a stout, bulldog-like profile with the SOE’s chief sponsor, Winston Churchill. He’d earned a corresponding reputation for stubbornness and tenacity.
After Glenalmond School, Wilson had joined the then Colonial Police Service in India, where he’d become a specialist in counter-espionage and guerrilla warfare. When not riding elephants or hunting, he’d spent much of his time living with the local Santhal tribes, learning to track animals—and humans—and to hunt with bow and arrow. On one such sojourn he’d been scarred badly on the nose, neck and back by a marauding tiger, one that he’d had to fight off with his bare hands. That episode had earned him a new nickname; to the locals he became ‘Baghmara’—the leopard killer.
At school, in India and in the Scouting movement, Wilson had learned to appreciate the camaraderie of like-minded souls. Dry-humoured and implacable to a fault, he cared for his men as if they were his own flesh and blood. He had special reasons to view the Norwegians under his command as ‘family’. Wilson traced his lineage back to ancient Norwegian ancestors, and he felt a certain kindred spirit with the Viking warriors he was sending into battle.
As Brigadier Colin McVean Gubbins, then the SOE’s operations director, would write, Wilson was ‘in day-to-day control of … his comrades in Norway, and to him and his staff they looked for guidance, for warning of Gestapo activity, for supplies to enable them to live and to fight—in fact he was their father and mother.’
On 17 September news had reached Wilson of Musketoon’s fortunes thus far. A ‘Most Secret’ report had landed on his desk. Originating from the Junon, it read: ‘Black, Houghton and party were landed at 22.30 hrs on September 15th … at Point marked X on the map’. The report anticipated that the attack might take place, ‘between tomorrow and Sunday.’ But several days had passed since then, and he’d had no word of how the mission might have fared.
That was all about to change.
A first message was telegraphed from Norwegian sources, signalling the success of Musketoon. It concluded: ‘The attack was carried out … with such precision it is believed to be highly improbable that the power station can be put in proper working order again … The aluminium works, which have just been greatly enlarged, will also be idle for the duration of the war.’
This was fantastic news and Wilson felt vindicated. Musketoon had done all it had set out to do, which might help silence some of the SOE’s more vocal detractors. But the mission’s success—it was hailed as being the first of its kind—had been achieved at some considerable cost.
The Germans had calculated that two tonnes of dynamite would have been required to cause the devastation at the power plant. They believed local Norwegians must have provided the explosives, for no one could have carried such a weight over the Black Glacier. Reprisals against the Glomfjord villagers were swift and brutal.
As the story of the raid broke in the Norwegian underground press and was picked up by the wider media, Wilson learned of the probable fate of his men. A Reuters report proved remarkably detailed and accurate. It spoke of Black’s force splitting up in an effort to escape the Germans, and of them running out of ammunition. ‘Eight are believed to have escaped,’ the Reuters report concluded, ‘the other six being taken prisoner.’
In fact, eight had been captured and four were on the run.
Wilson waited anxiously for further news, expecting the British press to pick up the scent. Normally, such small-scale clandestine operations were cloaked in utmost secrecy, but with the story of the raid breaking he thought it best to prepare a short communiqué to brief the British media.
It began: ‘An operation, small if the numbers taking part in it are considered, but large in its consequences, took place hundreds of miles to the northward, on the coast of Norway.’ It went on to detail the perilous approach taken to the plant, and concluded by saying: ‘The destruction wrought was in the highest degree effective.’
Effective it most certainly had been, but Musketoon was quick to attract its critics. Few in power liked a shake-up of the ‘natural order of things’, and the SOE had its share of enemies. The regular military complained that the SOE stole missions that should rightfully fall to them. The Secret Intelligence Service argued that the SOE trod on their toes, especially when it came to running agents in the field.
Musketoon was criticized as being badly planned, rushed and lacking in proper intelligence. Worse still, the team was accused of being successful only ‘due to a combination of luck and skill on behalf of the C.O.’
The SOE and Combined Operations Headquarters hit back with a pithy riposte: ‘It is not agreed that a party could land on a strange coast; reach a Power Station, blow it up extremely thoroughly, and four of them escape … merely by a combination of luck and skill … Meticulous preparations were made.’
To hell with their detractors, was Wilson’s attitude. For him, Musketoon was proof that Churchill’s edict to enforce a ‘reign of terror down the enemy coast’ was achievable. But lessons would need to be learned: the escape plan had been woefully inadequate; the raiders had been close to exhaustion, even prior to trying to make their getaway; and more training in mountain warfare was necessary, as was better equipment—particularly when it came to rations and weaponry.
Still, Musketoon had succeeded beyond Wilson’s wildest dreams.
Indeed, few could foresee the full impact, or the unintended consequences, of this one daring operation. Unbeknown to all at the SOE and their fellow strategists at Combined Operations Headquarters, Black and his men had just played a seminal role in one of the greatest dramas of the entire war: the race to stop Germany acquiring an atom bomb.
To the south of the Glomfjord power station lay a similar, if larger, power plant, which was also the Nazis’ single greatest prize in the race for nuclear supremacy. Armed with a nuclear weapon, Hitler would doubtless secure victory: in one fell swoop he would acquire the capacity to cause practically unlimited devastation.
The wildly successful Glomfjord raid would provide a model for how to hit this second—nuclear—target. Yet equally, the fallout from Operation Musketoon would lead to that target being transformed into a veritable fortress, which was something the Allies could ill afford.
For in the autumn of 1942 the Nazis had seized a frightening lead in the race to build the bomb.