It was midnight at RAF Wick, where Henneker had established the Freshman ops room. A dense fog of cigarette smoke hung heavy in the air. So too did the tension. The first hint of bad luck and trouble had come in five minutes ago, and it had thrown the place into utter chaos.
Out of the blue a radio message had been received from A for Apple: ‘Glider released in sea.’ In the sea? Henneker could only imagine that the lead tug had been trying to return to base when something had gone terribly wrong.
He tried to scramble aircraft for a search and rescue operation. None were available. Unbeknown to him, this was largely a blessing. Group Captain Cooper’s message had been a deliberate deception, designed to alert Wick to the dire situation without betraying the errant glider’s location. If the Germans were listening in—and they were bound to be—it made sense to try to obfuscate where the Horsa had broken free.
The situation grew more and more confusing. A garbled message was received from B for Baker, asking for a bearing on Wick. It looked as if both tug aircraft were trying to make it back to base. But what of the gliders and the men they carried?
Then … nothing. No further contact could be made with either of the aircraft. Ashen-faced, Henneker could know few of the details of what had happened, but he feared the worst.
At two kilometres of altitude, the ice-encrusted Horsa had broken away from A for Apple without any warning. For the previous few minutes the heavy glider had been thrown about like a toy in a giant’s hands. The grooves in the aircraft’s corrugated metal floor were there to prevent vomit from making it slippery underfoot. But as the Horsa had bucked and twisted and writhed in the grip of the savage turbulence, the Sappers had turned sick with fear.
The Horsa felt like a snowflake in the grip of a blizzard. Then a sharp crack had been heard from forward, as if from a giant gun, and the aircraft had plummeted into freefall. The wooden-walled Horsa went into a violent spin. In the cockpit the pilots, seated side by side, wrestled with all their strength at the controls. To their rear the Sappers gripped their fold-down seats for the hellish bare-knuckle ride into the unknown.
As the Horsa plummeted, from all sides the mountain winds cried out in shrieks and howls. The thin wooden fuselage answered, creaking and groaning horribly as it threatened to tear itself to pieces. The Sappers might be strapped in, but much of their equipment wasn’t. It tumbled around the enclosed space, cannoning off the plywood ribs of the hold and beating out a terrible funeral rhythm.
With the cloud and the darkness thickening, the pilots tried to steer blind for where they guessed the ground had to be. But they were riding a runaway express train, and the cliff was fast approaching. At around 600 metres they tore out of the base of the cloud, and got a glimpse of their surroundings, which were wreathed in fog. Snow, rock and ice flashed past the cockpit at a dizzying speed.
‘Ditching stations!’ they cried.
The fifteen Sappers and their one officer just had time to link arms, before the glider ploughed into the mountainside. The glass nose cone crumpled like tinfoil, and the pilots were killed at once. As the Horsa careered onwards, tearing itself to pieces on rocks and boulders, its wings were torn asunder.
When the wreck of the aircraft finally came to a halt, the fuselage had been ripped open in several places, and a trail of kit and equipment had been vomited across the frozen wilderness behind her. The miracle was that some of those who’d suffered that hell ride to earth had survived.
If anything, B for Baker had suffered a blacker fate. Having likewise quartered the Vidda for the landing zone, tug and glider had finally been forced to turn for home—into the same freezing cloud mass as had claimed the first glider. In terrible visibility and icing up, B for Baker had been forced to descend to a lower altitude.
Just as the Halifax crossed the Norwegian coastline she had clipped the hidden peak of the 1,700-foot Haestad Mountain, smashing herself to fiery ruin on the far side. So cataclysmic was the resulting explosion that it was visible from the other Halifax, although they hadn’t at first known that it was their sister aeroplane. The crash had appeared as a bright flash that illuminated the cockpit of A for Apple with a ghostly orange light.
None of the aircrew of B for Baker survived. To their rear the Horsa had broken free of its tow. The wooden-hulled aircraft had swept across a thickly wooded valley, where the pilots had attempted an emergency landing. The fir trees had cushioned the blow for the Sappers, but not for those to the fore of the glider. Broken boughs had smashed into the cockpit, killing both pilots instantly.
The Horsa came to rest with its nose sheared off and its fuselage badly mangled, but the brave actions of the pilots had at least saved the lives of many in the rear. There were a number of injuries, but incredibly only one of the Sappers had died.
As the wind shook the wreckage, and thick flurries of snow blasted through the Horsa’s shattered entrails, their commander, Lieutenant Alexander Allen, wondered where on earth they had come to rest, and what in the name of God he was supposed to do now.
Three hours later A for Apple made landfall in Scotland. Having lost its glider, the Halifax had ample fuel to make it home. Group Captain Cooper told Henneker as much as he was able: that their glider could never have made it to the intended landing zone. When it had broken free it was dozens of kilometres away from the Skoland Marshes; it had no hope of getting there.
‘The tow finally parted,’ Cooper explained. ‘There was nothing we could do for the poor devils spiralling down into the snow.’
At dawn the first search aircraft got airborne, although Henneker held out few hopes. B for Baker must have gone down. The Halifax hadn’t the fuel to stay airborne for such a length of time. There was of course a vague possibility that B for Baker had made it to the landing zone and released its glider successfully before coming to grief. For now, that was all the Freshman commander had to cling to.
Those hopes were shattered with Haugland’s first radio message. ‘Light and Eureka O.K. at agreed time. Weather changed at 1900 hours to wind and in parts low cloud cover. Plane heard in Eureka about 2040 hours … Later during course of an hour loud engine hum. Eureka battery running for four hours.’
The Grouse team had waited on the landing zone as arranged. They had heard aircraft overhead and had appeared to get a positive Eureka reading, but no gliders had appeared. Both Horsas had to be lost somewhere as yet to be identified.
Henneker paced the runway alone and lost in an inner darkness. What were the chances of the wooden-hulled aircraft having made a safe landing? In Norway? In a storm-swept night? In uncharted, wild country? They had to be pretty near zero. In which case, were there any survivors? If there were, had any been taken captive? And if they had, what hopes were there that they would not be made to talk?
Those men had set out with pure hearts and with the bravest of intentions. Volunteers all. Yet in the back of Henneker’s mind there lurked the darkest worry of all: Freshman had failed, which meant that the Nazi nuclear monster had not been slain.
Henneker sought scant comfort in the thought that any Sappers captured would be made prisoners of war. The German Army should treat them humanely. They were a professional and respected military force, after all. But that wasn’t the key point right now. It was this: who now would take on the monster that was Vemork? Who now could conceive of a mission that might succeed, after Freshman’s failure and all that it doubtless signified?
Fortunately, there was one man, a scar-faced former Scoutmaster who’d once earned the nickname ‘Baghmara’: the leopard killer.
Once, in India, Wilson had been called to a remote settlement to deal with some apparently minor dispute. He’d arrived in the village to find a major riot about to break out. Not for the first time in India it all boiled down to religion: a Muslim boy had come and washed in the well from which the Hindu villagers drew their water.
A hugely obese Babu—a respected elder and Hindu holy man—was leading the charge, whipping the crowd into a frenzy. Wilson ordered the man to be quiet while he tried to sort things out. The Babu had refused. ‘I’m afraid I lost my temper with him,’ Wilson recalled. He grabbed the immense Babu, upended him and threw him into the nearby water tank.
Now you’ve torn it, Wilson told himself. That’ll finish you.
The holy man had bobbed to the surface, his head covered in a magnificent crown of green waterweed. At the very sight of it the villagers had burst into laughter. The murderous atmosphere dissipated. In one fell swoop the troubled situation had been defused. Wilson helped the Babu out, and the two men apologized to each other. From time to time thereafter they would run into each other, and they would joke about that first unforgettable meeting.
Sometimes, Wilson told himself, you just had to take the bull—or the Babu if it came to it—by the horns.
As soon as he’d heard that morning’s dire news from Henneker he’d called Tronstad. The two men sat in his Chiltern Court office contemplating the very worst. It was early on 19 November 1942 and Freshman had proved an unmitigated disaster.
Somewhere in the Norwegian wilds two gliders packed with Sappers, explosives and other specialist demolitions kit had crash-landed. Of the thirty-two men aboard, some would surely have survived. And a living man—even if badly injured—could be questioned. Wilson and the Professor had to work on the assumption that the Germans would discover everything.
This was potentially catastrophic as far as stopping Hitler’s nuclear programme was concerned. No one could foresee the full consequences on the ground, but one thing was for certain: Vemork was about to be transformed into a veritable fortress. And that, as far as Wilson saw things, meant there was absolutely no time to lose.
He didn’t hesitate for long. Without a word to his superiors he picked up the phone and called the officer responsible for Freshman at Combined Operations. Having expressed his sympathies for their loss, he broached what he had in mind.
‘Our latest information and deductions tell us that the job can be done by a small party of Norwegians,’ Wilson explained. ‘All expert skiers. All with detailed local knowledge. Would you be happy for us to take over all responsibility?’
There was an audible sigh of relief on the far end of the line. ‘Thank God. Please do.’
The SOE had just been handed all responsibility for the heavy water sabotage.
Still without any formal clearance from on high, Wilson dialled a second number. He spoke to Colonel Charles Hampton, who ran the SOE’s Norwegian training school at Glenmore, in the Cairngorms. He asked the colonel to release one Joachim Ronneberg—presently an instructor at the school—from all other duties. Ronneberg was to select five men, all good skiers, for ‘a particularly dangerous enterprise’.
Wilson promised to send someone by the night train to Scotland to brief Ronneberg. Meanwhile, he had a little business to deal with: getting all this cleared on high. His calls made, Wilson wandered across to the office of Brigadier Colin McVean Gubbins, the SOE’s Director of Operations. Of course Gubbins knew about the Freshman debacle, as did so many of the Baker Street Irregulars that grim morning.
‘I’ve been in touch with Combined Operations,’ Wilson announced. ‘I’ve expressed our sympathies.’ A weighty pause. ‘And I’ve taken over the job as a wholly SOE enterprise.’
The normally imperturbable Gubbins visibly blanched. ‘But you can’t do that! It’s too difficult.’
It was time to play the age card. Gubbins was forty-six, Wilson fifty-four, and with his tiger-scarred features and balding pate he looked all his years and more. His face adopted a mien of seasoned gravitas, his voice resonating with experience as he set about talking Gubbins around.
‘I’ve already done it. I’ve appointed a mission leader, at Glenmore, and he’s selecting the others who’ll be required. I’m positive we can do the job. It will be done.’
For some unfathomable reason Wilson felt certain that the seemingly impossible was possible, if only the right men could be got in to do this in the right way. And Brigadier Gubbins also had reasons to believe. He had a particular affection for Norway and its people. He’d fought there in the spring of 1940, and had a huge respect for the Norwegians as guerrilla fighters. Plus he’d sponsored Wilson’s appointment as the chief of his Norwegian section, having every faith in the man.
But if they failed in such a high-stakes enterprise as this, it might well sound the death knell for the SOE, which had powerful detractors. More importantly, it might well result in nuclear supremacy—and ultimately victory—for the wrong side: Hitler’s Germany. Against all that he was being asked to bet on a grizzled former Scoutmaster and a handful of Norwegian raiders mounted on skis.
It says much for Gubbins’s inspirational leadership that he let Wilson have his head, in spite of the odds. But Wilson wasn’t being given total free rein: Gubbins made it clear that from now on he was to be kept informed at every juncture.
With Wilson gone, Gubbins bent at his desk. He scribbled a note for his secretary to type. It was addressed to Mountbatten, head of Combined Operations. ‘We might now be able to attempt the operation ourselves on a smaller, but, we hope, effective scale,’ he wrote, as he struggled to find a diplomatic way of saying that SOE was taking over where they had failed. From the point of view of the scientists, he added, they could brook no delay.
Wilson, meanwhile, was drafting his own urgent communiqué—this one for Grouse. ‘Your work has been done magnificently. Change in weather meant gliders had to be released over 100 KM from target. Operation cancelled for this moon period. We are planning to effect it with our own men next moon. Have you any suggestion? Eureka should be hidden most carefully for future use.’
Haugland’s reply typified the seemingly unbreakable spirit of the small team working in utter isolation on the Vidda. ‘Is the operation still to be carried out by Englishmen? … Skiers would be advantageous. If it would assist the operation we would gladly take active part.’
The following morning Wilson’s darkest fears were largely confirmed. The Germans had sent out a report by radio, which had been picked up by the BBC. ‘19-20th November two British bombers, each towing a glider, flew over southern Norway. One of the bombers and both gliders were forced to land. The sabotage squads brought by them were engaged in combat and finished off to the very last man.’
The detail in the message convinced Wilson that much of it had to be true. One British bomber and two gliders: just as he had feared, the three missing aircraft had gone down. Whether all aboard had been killed ‘in combat’, as claimed, was a moot point. In a sense, he’d prefer it if they had. Dead men can’t talk. But he doubted if it was true. It was more than likely disinformation. Right now, some of the Freshman Sappers were very likely in German hands.
Churchill was informed. It was far from being the first such setback that Britain had suffered during the war, but the stakes with this, the single most important sabotage effort of the entire conflict, could not be higher. Typically, Britain’s wartime leader remained unruffled. He scribbled a poignant one-word comment in reply: ‘Alas.’
Having taken on the responsibility of hitting Vemork almost singlehandedly, Wilson worked around the clock. In a ‘Most Secret’ communiqué he laid out exactly what the ramifications were of that morning’s German radio broadcast and with remarkable foresight and clarity.
‘Almost everything depends on whether: A. Any of the force have been captured alive; B. Documentary evidence is available disclosing the target; C. The enemy’s deductions lead them to the vulnerable point.’
The ‘vulnerable point’ was the four SOE agents presently holed up in the Sandvatn hut, above Lake Møs.
‘Grouse’s position is of primary importance,’ wrote Wilson. ‘The party must be safeguarded both for its own sake and on account of its future usefulness.’ Wilson proposed that Haugland be sent a warning message, outlining in full the content of the German broadcast, so they could take all possible precautions.
Wilson’s warning was duly sent. It ended thus: ‘It is vitally necessary that you should preserve your safety … It is almost equally important that we should have earliest possible information in regard to increases of enemy troops in neighbourhood of target.’ Wilson asked the Grouse team to work with Einar Skinnarland to gather that intelligence, whereupon they should disappear.
‘Keep up your hearts,’ he urged. ‘We will do the job yet.’
On receipt of his message, the four men hunkered down at the Sandvatn hut had few illusions as to what was going to happen. The Germans were bound to send up a hue and cry as never before. It would soon be time to slip even deeper into the wintry wastes of the Vidda to lose their pursuers.
‘We will withdraw from the area in next few days,’ read Haugland’s reply to Wilson. ‘Wireless communication will still be partly maintained.’
In truth, the four men had been deeply shocked to learn the fate of the Freshman Sappers. ‘London’s radio message about the glider disaster was a hard blow,’ wrote Poulsson. ‘It was sad and bitter, especially as the weather in our part of the country improved …’
In the shock of the moment, Haugland had made a rare and potentially deadly error in his radio message. Wilson sent him an urgent warning by return, ordering him to burn all his codes. ‘In the stress of the moment on the 21st you transposed your message No. 1 once only. This may make it possible for the enemy to break your code.’ Wilson advised them to get out of the area without delay and to disappear.
Haugland’s reply sounded harried: ‘Primus code burnt … going into the mountains today.’ With that, he, Poulsson, Kjelstrup and Helberg upped sticks and left the Sandvatn hut. They headed north on skis, making for the remote and frozen heart of the Vidda. They had an idea where they might hide up and ride out the coming storm.
They left only just in time. Messages would be sporadic now, but one reached Wilson indicating that Haugland was shutting down all communications: ‘Working conditions difficult. German ski patrols searching huts and farms … Radio D/F station established at Møsdammen. Only contact now Grouse One.’
Von Falkenhorst had found out about Operation Freshman, and in great detail. The German counter-actions had begun, including placing a radio detection station on the Møs dam itself, adjacent to the Skoland Marshes. And the Vidda’s snowbound hunting shacks and farms were being scoured by German troops equipped with skis.
With Poulsson and his men in full flight, Wilson’s attempt to force through a new attack on Vemork appeared increasingly doomed. Running from a vengeful enemy, Grouse had handed over to the one man who could keep London briefed: Einar Skinnarland—‘Grouse One’. But even now, the Gestapo were closing in on Skinnarland and his family.
Wilson was not to be deterred. By 23 November 1942—just three days after the Freshman debacle—he’d secured Brigadier Gubbins’s go-ahead for the new mission to destroy the Vemork heavy water plant, plus the War Cabinet’s blessing. Operation Gunnerside—named after a remote Scottish hunting lodge with which Wilson was familiar—was a go.
The stakes with Gunnerside could not have been higher, as William Stephenson—Intrepid—made clear to US president Roosevelt. ‘If the Germans capture the … team alive, they may well deduce that such a suicidal attack has been launched only because the Allies have now proved an atom bomb is a practical proposition.’
With Gunnerside, no longer would they attempt to blow the entire Vemork plant to pieces. With only a small band of raiders to hand, Wilson’s aims were far more focused.
‘Object: To destroy the essential plant necessary to prevent output of LURGAN …’ A force of 6-8 men would attack the essential cells in the basement of the manufacturing plant’—those that produced the final, concentrated SH200.
With no time to lose, Wilson’s force would go in during the very next moon window.