While Poulsson and his men battled the monstrous storm, Wilson was wrestling with his own demons. He had one ear tuned to his Operation Grouse team, newly inserted into the Vidda. From the Halifax aircrew he’d received a report of their successful arrival: ‘Load dropped from 700 to 1,000 feet flying due south … Men jumped well and without hesitation … 12 chutes seen to open and all men to land …’
But since then, silence. It was disconcerting.
He had his other ear tuned to Operation Freshman. The powers that be were trying to thrash out the final details of the mission and, frankly, Wilson didn’t like what he was hearing. In his view Freshman was ill-conceived in its present form, and he didn’t rate its chances.
Worse still, if the operation failed it risked alerting the enemy to a pending attack on Vemork. If that happened, it would spell disaster. There was little doubt how General von Falkenhorst would react: it would be the Musketoon effect, but quadrupled.
It wasn’t the assault force itself that worried Wilson: they were well capable of the job. It was the means of their insertion into the Vidda. The scribbled notes of an October meeting at Combined Operations HQ listed the basics of the Freshman plan of attack. First, a truck was to be hijacked at the Lake Møs dam, adjacent to their landing zone. From there, the soldiers would drive hell for leather to Vemork.
‘Lorry with our men could drive up and do in sentry,’ the notes proposed, referring to the guards on the bridge that gave access to the Vemork plant. Having gained entry that way, the force would blow up certain targeted buildings, which should ‘explode and wreck whole installation and kill whole valley … Turn off tap closing pipeline … warn families to fly.’
The handwritten notes recorded that ‘access is barred on south side by impossible precipices’. In other words, no one was about to descend into the Vestfjord Valley and scale the 600-foot rock-face that led up to the plant, which was why a ‘lorry or bus [was] strongly recommended’ as the means to gain access, via the suspension bridge.
In theory, all of this was fine. But the proposed means of insertion—using a pair of Horsa gliders, towed by Halifax aircraft all the way from Scotland—had Wilson seriously worried.
The Airspeed AS.51 Horsa was named after the legendary fifth-century British warrior-leader of the same name. It measured sixty-seven feet from nose to tail, and was constructed from a solid timber frame with a curved outer skin of plywood. It was considered a sturdy and nimble aircraft, at least for a glider. The bare cockpit seated two, and the Horsa could carry a payload of four tonnes—a jeep, or a field gun, for example—plus there were foldable seats to accommodate troops.
But glider-borne missions were notoriously hazardous in the best of conditions, and Norway didn’t exactly offer those. Gliders needed flat landing ground—near impossible to find, and especially on the Hardangervidda. Putting down on a frozen lake was considered, but it was just as quickly discounted: as the Horsa careered forwards it would bulldoze up its own wall of rock-hard ice, the weight of the aircraft finally breaking through the lake’s frozen surface.
To make matters worse the weather over Norway was proving atrocious, as the Grouse party had discovered. The gliders might take off in perfect conditions in Britain, only to fly into a hellish storm, especially over the Vidda.
Being a glider pilot was one of the most dangerous roles in the entire British armed forces, but this mission was truly off the scale. Combined Operations ran the Freshman plan past Wilson and Tronstad. They formulated a detailed response, one that typically didn’t pull any punches.
‘Of all countries, Norway is the least suitable for glider operations. Its landing grounds are few; its mountains thickly clustered, precipitous and angry.’ The success of the mission demanded fine conditions over the Vidda, where ‘in winter the weather is seldom favourable and hardly ever predictable … The plateau is noted for sudden up-and-down air currents powerful enough to make a bucking bronco of a Horsa glider.
‘The landing-site would be difficult to identify if clouds obscured the moon, or if, more likely at that altitude, there was low cloud cover … The night landing of a fragile craft in an area known for its fissures and ridges, huge boulders and outcrops of rock would be extremely hazardous.’
An official report on Freshman would echo such concerns. ‘Even in the planning stage, it was realized that the operation was exceptionally dangerous. Of all countries, Norway is the least suitable for glider operations … To a pilot … the mountains seem to rear up, claw at his wing-tip and sink back almost with a snarl as he passes … Weather conditions in the Autumn of 1942 were vile.’
The fact that Operation Freshman got the green light, regardless, reflected how desperate the Allies were to strike back at the Nazi’s nuclear programme. Vemork had to be destroyed at all costs.
Wilson would describe Freshman as one of his ‘biggest headaches’ in the entire war. Obdurate and plainspoken to the last, he decried what he feared would prove to be a disaster. ‘Against all outside advice, including mine, Combined Operations had decided to dispatch a force of 30 Special Service … troops, in two gliders towed by aircraft.’
He was not alone in expressing such concerns. ‘I do not consider the use of gliders is either necessary or desirable,’ the chief of the air staff wrote of Freshman. ‘We have not enough experience of long-distance towing at night, and the operation apparently can be done by parachute.’ He added a hand-written note: ‘Use of gliders seems mad to me …’
In his view—and Wilson’s—the Freshman force should follow in Grouse’s footsteps, and parachute in. The counter-argument—that gliders would get the force onto the ground as one concentrated unit, thus enabling them to launch a fast and concerted attack—didn’t add up. It only made any sense if the soldiers survived the glider-borne insertion, and the fear was that they had precious little chance of doing that.
Wilson also questioned how the force was supposed to escape once the attack had taken place. They would need to cross several hundred miles of wilderness in the midst of winter, hounded by the enemy all the way. The men would have to ‘fight their way to Sweden’, with little chance of making it. They were back to sending in a ‘suicide squad’, with little real prospect of any of them getting out alive.
Regardless, by late October 1942 Freshman had been green-lit as a glider-borne operation and training was in full swing. The operational plan involved each Halifax towing a glider packed with troops to a position above the Hardangervidda—a landing zone marked by team Grouse on the ground. There the tow lines would be let go, the Horsa gliders would drift down to the marshes that edge Lake Møs, landing on the skids that ran beneath their fuselage.
The Horsas would be packed with explosives, weaponry and … folding bicycles. A mountain road led from Lake Møs to Vemork. Upon landing, the thirty troops would unfold the bicycles, mount up and pedal like hell for the target, which from Lake Møs was largely downhill. They’d reach Vemork in darkness, the bicycles giving them the added advantage of silence and surprise.
All telephone lines into the plant would be cut. In case they encountered electrified wiring, the team were to carry ‘Gloves—rubber: for 500 volts’. They’d sneak across the suspension bridge, kill the guards using silenced Sten guns, and blow up the plant and any existing stocks of heavy water. That done, they were to split into small groups and escape to Sweden. Any injured were to be given a morphine injection and left behind, for flight would be impossible if laden down with wounded.
Crucially, the plan relied upon a new and untested piece of equipment, the Rebecca/Eureka homing beacon system, which was designed to ‘steer’ an aircraft onto target. More accurately known as the ‘Rebecca/Eureka transponding radar’, it consisted of an airborne receiver and antenna system—the ‘Rebecca’—fitted to an aircraft, which picked up a radio signal transmitting from the ground-based ‘Eureka’ unit.
The Rebecca calculated the range and position of the Eureka, based upon the timings and direction of the return signal. It was accurate up to eighty kilometres in good weather, and even under cloud or thick fog it was still detectable from up to several kilometres away. The Grouse team had flown in with the Eureka, which in theory they should be able to use to steer the aircraft in, no matter what the weather on the ground.
Overall command of Operation Freshman—something of a poisoned chalice—fell to Lieutenant Colonel Henneker of the Royal Engineers Airborne Division. In recruiting a team for the forthcoming mission, he faced what appeared to be an impossible task. He was to ask for volunteers for hazardous duties, without being able to tell them any details of the mission, including the country they were deploying to.
The entire operation was cloaked in such secrecy that he could reveal only this much: it would be a mission deep behind enemy lines. Any volunteers with compelling reasons not to go, such as having young children or a pregnant wife, would be allowed to withdraw at any time, and without any repercussions.
It was 19 October 1942, the same day that the Grouse team had parachuted onto the Vidda, when Henneker addressed his potential recruits. They gathered at Bulford military camp, set on Salisbury Plain in the midst of the Wiltshire countryside. In a cold and bare Nissen hut, Henneker stood before the men of two Royal Engineer units—the 9th and 216th Field Companies—to appeal for volunteers.
Henneker—his craggy face hardened by his experiences fighting a desperate battle against the advancing Germans during the fall of France—told the men that they were all ‘keen as mustard’ to see some action, that he knew. But the forthcoming mission was no ordinary undertaking. It was extremely dangerous. Its out-come might determine the fortunes of the war: if they failed, the Germans might seize victory within six months.
It says much for the calibre of these men that every single one amongst them stepped forward. The oldest, at thirty-one, was Ernest Bailey, just back from leave in his native Hampshire. The youngest was Gerland Williams, of Doncaster, who’d just celebrated his eighteenth birthday with one pint of beer too many. A third was Bill Bray, a former truck driver whose wife was due to give birth in three months’ time.
Henneker was right: these young men—former plumbers, cobblers, carpenters and mechanics—hungered to hit back against the enemy. None wanted to turn down a chance—however mysterious, however daring—to do so.
Henneker was immensely proud of his men. He wanted nothing more than to see them accomplish the mission. But one thing troubled him: the insertion. This would be the first operational use of gliders in the war. Henneker wasn’t interested in firsts. He didn’t want his men to be ‘fresh men’, as the mission name implied. He wanted them to get in, to get the job done, and to get out again alive.
A cover story had to be provided, to explain why these men would now disappear for weeks of punishing and intensive training. They were supposedly taking part in ‘The Washington Competition’, an endurance contest held against their American equivalent unit, hence the name.
Royal Engineers—more commonly known as ‘Sappers’—had been chosen for Operation Freshman because this was first and foremost a demolitions job, one of the Sappers’ specialist skills. An official planning report on Freshman gave a sense of the scale of the task before them.
Describing the Vemork electrolysis plant, it recorded: ‘This, the world’s largest, is housed in an eight-storey building … The building is of ferro concrete, 45 metres high and strengthened internally with ferro concrete beams and supporting pillars.’
There were thousands of tonnes of steel and reinforced concrete to blow up at Vemork. Highly regarded by the wider British military, these combat engineers were more than capable of fighting their way into the plant and setting the explosives to wreak havoc.
To prepare for what lay ahead, the Sappers were put through a commando-style training course, involving forced marches under 80-pound loads. They were dropped in the midnight darkness of Snowdonia, surviving on what they carried on their backs, as they made their way to a prearranged rendezvous using only map and compass.
At the summit of one peak former truck driver Bill Bray collapsed from exhaustion. His companions picked him up, dusted him down and split his load between them. Anyone who didn’t last the course was off the mission, and they didn’t want to lose him.
One of those who helped carry Bray’s load was Wallis Jackson, a well-built 21-year-old, with three sisters back in his native Leeds. A natural at handling explosives, Jackson had a surprisingly soft side to his character. He was in the habit of penning letters to his mother and sisters, full of affection, and hope for the fortunes of the war.
But there was nothing he could write home about the forthcoming mission. Even had he known anything about it, they were forbidden to breathe a word. The Sappers moved on to the Highlands of Scotland to rehearse mock raids and assaults, and at every turn any who failed were mercilessly weeded out. Only the best would be good enough for Freshman.
Despite such rigorous training, the specialists at MI9—the secret wartime escape and evasion agency—didn’t rate the Sappers’ chances of survival any more than did Wilson. Major de Bruyne, an MI9 escape expert, pointed out the dangers of their escape plan—fighting a running battle over 300 kilometres in hostile terrain. He feared that none would make it back alive.
MI9 produced a set of Norwegian-looking clothes for each man, to boost their chances of survival. They were to get them worn in and comfortable prior to the assault. The Sappers were to go in wearing full British battledress, so the Germans would be left in no doubt as to who had hit the plant. This was crucial, to prevent local reprisals. But as soon as possible thereafter they were to change into their civilian clothing, and to escape posing as locals.
A hand-scribbled note from MI9 listed the escape and evasion ‘Necessities’. These included ‘files to cut padlocks for boats’. Lakes would need to be crossed, and if a boat was borrowed by an escapee a few kroner were to be left in it, as a ‘thank you’. And, of course, high on the list was a generous supply of Benzedrine, to fuel their escape march.
Key phrases in Norwegian were taught to the Freshman volunteers. These included: ‘Jeg har vœrt ute og kjøpt litt proviant til mor’ (I’ve just been out buying stores for mother); ‘Leve Norge og Heil Quisling’ (Long live Norway and hail Quisling); ‘Unnskyld men jeg ma hurtigst til tannlegen’ (Sorry, but I must get to the dentist as quickly as possible). That last phrase was ‘to be spoken with stone or cork in mouth’.
Paper and envelopes embossed with the words ‘Reich Commissioner for the Occupied Norwegian Territories’, were to be carried. A note was to be stuck onto each of the glider’s windscreens, with the words ‘DO NOT TOUCH!’ written on it in Norwegian. Hopefully, the locals would conclude that the aircraft were German, and so delay reporting their presence to the occupying authorities.
En route to the plant and during the attack, members of the assault force were to identify themselves as friendly to each other by whistling ‘Hurrah for the CRE’, the de facto anthem of their parent regiment, the Corps of Royal Engineers. A martial tune sung with gusto by Sappers the world over, it ends with the immortal lines:
Ma-ninga sabenza, here’s another off.
Oolum-da cried Matabele, oolum-da, away we go,
Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah ah.
Shush … Whoow!
At the eleventh hour, Lieutenant Colonel Henneker asked for permission to join the mission, and to lead his men in the field. It was refused. He was needed back at headquarters to coordinate what was in any case a complex undertaking, involving several different arms of the British military.
On 18 November Mountbatten wrote to Churchill, laying out the final plan for Freshman. ‘Thirty-six all ranks of the Airborne Division will be flown in two gliders to destroy the Power Station, electrical plant and stocks of “heavy water” … The Germans have about 1 ton of “heavy water” … When they have 5 tons they will be able to start production of a new form of explosive a thousand times more potent than any in use today …’
Churchill replied: ‘Approved. Ask Lord Cherwell to report to me on the technical aspect. He is already my advisor on the main question. W.S.C.’
The die was cast.
There was one unforeseen problem, as far as Wilson was concerned: right at this moment he had no reception party to guide the Freshman force in. For days now he’d not heard a squeak out of Grouse.
Poulsson and his men had dropped into the Hardangervidda, seemingly to disappear without trace.