Chief engineer Alf Larsen swept his torchlight around the heaps of steaming, ghostly wreckage. Ten minutes previously, this had been the world’s most prized and heavily protected industrial plant. Now … The eighteen stainless steel tubes lay in twisted ruins, their stands torn apart by the raw power of the blast, their forms ripped from the wall.
The white-painted room was scorched black, its windows shattered, its doors left hanging drunkenly. Water gushed from above, ruptured pipes emptying their contents into the debris-strewn room. Telephone cables and electrical wires had been torn from the ceiling, to be left hanging in twisted and deformed clumps—hence the pitch darkness. Outside, pumps and other machinery had stopped working, electrical surges from the explosion having fried the plant’s circuitry.
Engineer Larsen had replaced Jomar Brun at the Vemork works, after the latter’s mystery disappearance of a few months ago. He glanced at his watch: an hour after midnight. He’d been drawn here by the explosion. Inside the giant building, its effect had been far from muted. The power of the blast had been felt practically everywhere, reverberating throughout the entire seven-storey structure.
But still Larsen had never expected to discover anything quite as cataclysmic as this. He poked through the debris, getting soaked by the water that streamed from above. Shrapnel from the explosion had peppered the room, cutting through the SH200 plant’s intricate cooling system. Standing here was like being under a cold shower.
He made his way gingerly towards what had once been the high-concentration cells. The beam of his torch glinted upon the shattered remains of the first of the cylinders. It looked as if a giant had attacked it with a massive tin opener, desperate to get at its contents. He checked the cells in turn. Sure enough, each had had its guts ripped out.
Beneath his feet floor grates gurgled, as the last of the priceless liquid drained away.
Outside, stairwells and balconies rang with the clanging tread of scores of hobnailed boots. The Germans were convinced that the British saboteurs must still be on the premises. No one had crossed the suspension bridge or ascended via the heavily mined route of the pipelines. As the gorge was ‘unscalable’, the attackers had to be here still, hiding out somewhere.
But as engineer Larsen surveyed their handiwork, somehow he doubted this was the case. It was, as he would later report, a perfect sabotage’. The work of true professionals. The saboteurs had known exactly what they were doing. Men like that didn’t tend to leave their escape to the whims of chance.
Larsen was right: the saboteurs had planned their escape in exacting detail. But still chance, or fate—the foehn—might foil their getaway.
Right now, those nine men struggled across a fast-disintegrating ice bridge. The ‘ground’ beneath their feet was as treacherous as the devil himself. Angry water foamed around their legs, as white as any snow. Figures stumbled and slipped, grabbing at rocks and boulders and slabs of shifting ice.
At their head were Helberg and Poulsson, driven onwards by the wail of the siren as if they were men possessed. They knew from the intelligence briefings that the alarm would trigger searchlights, which could sweep the entire length of the gorge in a blaze of blinding illumination. If they were caught under that they would be helpless—sitting ducks to be picked off by the German machine-gunners at will.
‘It was as if we were being pursued across the river by the shrieking sound itself,’ Poulsson remarked of the wailing sirens. ‘We slipped and fell, grabbing onto rocks and blocks of ice, it didn’t matter which.’
Somehow, with their weapons held high to avoid the churning meltwater, all nine reached the far side … and still the gorge was cloaked in darkness. What had happened to the much-vaunted searchlights? No one knew. But there was no time to tarry now and question their good fortune. They climbed—straight up, grasping onto trees, shrubs, rocks and boulders, hauling tired bodies onwards.
‘It was already more than an hour since the attack,’ Ronneberg remarked, ‘and we were still at the bottom of the trap. Very much depended on good luck now …’ When he glanced towards the plant, car after car roared along at maximum speed heading for Vemork. We made ready to defend ourselves at any moment … should we meet any patrols.’
To their front the growl of powerful engines cut the night, as truckloads of reinforcements sped along the road leading from Rjukan to the Vemork works. To their back the fleeing saboteurs spotted a line of torchlights bobbing along the route of the way. One or two sporadic shots rang out through the distant trees. The Germans were shooting at wraiths and at ghosts.
As the nine saboteurs gained height headlights flashed through the forest, blinding them. They were being hunted on all sides.
‘Nice of the bastards to keep their lights on,’ someone growled. ‘At least we can see where we’re going.’
Fighting against a crushing burden of mental and physical fatigue, with their uniforms soaked and feeling frozen to the marrow, the nine made it to the main road that cut through the woods. Once over this obstacle they could swing east and head for the Ryes Road—the cable car switchback track leading to the high plateau.
Helberg waved them across, one at a time, checking that the coast was clear. Even so, the last two had to dive into the ditch that lined the road, to avoid a car that rounded the bend unexpectedly with dimmed headlights. They reached their cache of equipment and donned skis, whereupon the nine set out through the cover of the pre-dawn forest, heading for the road beneath the cable lines.
Behind them at the plant, a mortified sergeant of the guards was still searching for the switch that would operate the floodlights. He couldn’t seem to find it. Finally, he was forced to collar a Norwegian worker and ask where it was situated. By the time they’d found it and the searchlights had sparked into life, Ronneberg’s force was deep in the forest and too distant for any such illumination to reach them.
It was a stroke of good fortune. It wouldn’t be their last.
160 kilometres south-east, in Oslo, General von Falkenhorst was woken from his bed, as were Reichskommissar Josef Terboven and SS chief General Wilhelm Rediess. They were not best pleased. News of the sabotage landed like a bombshell. All three responded similarly: they would make an immediate journey to Vemork to investigate. If things were as dire as they sounded, Hitler would be apoplectic. Heads would roll, and none of them wanted to be the one to lose theirs.
In his Baker Street headquarters a scar-faced former Scoutmaster longed to hear news, good or bad, of Operation Gunnerside. Others in far greater positions of power waited on his word. And in a remote hut on the Hardangervidda, Knut Haugland and Einar Skinnarland were poised to send a message winging across the airwaves.
But they would only do so if one of the nine saboteurs made it out of the shadowed valley alive.
It felt as if they had been skiing for hours: upwards, ever upwards, around switchback bends that never seemed to end. After the superhuman efforts of that long night’s action, this was sheer torture. Skis had little purchase on the wet, sticky, foehn-plagued snow. Dragged down by their rucksacks, harried by exhaustion, the nine fell often. But they rose again and again and they kept going.
Helberg and Ronneberg set the pace, leading from the front. Speed, they knew, was of the absolute essence—the difference between death and survival. They had to make the summit by daybreak. To be caught on the Ryes Road in broad daylight would prove fatal. They pushed onwards, criss-crossing beneath the wires of the cable car station, gaining height; always gaining.
‘Up we climbed,’ remarked Ronneberg, ‘and every time we came to a bend we looked down … to see if anything was going on. With every bend we got nearer the top, until at last, five hours after the attack, we were able to … make for the high plateau. Now we had the mountains of Norway as our great ally.’
As they topped the last ridge opening onto the Vidda, the pine forests thinned to nothing. A savage wind cut into their faces—the all-too-familiar embrace of the Barren Mountain plateau. It carried with it the promise of heavy snow. Within minutes the nine were forced to shield their faces as wind-whipped ice particles laden with grit cut into exposed skin. The storm became a howling blizzard. It was agonizing, but still the nine skied willingly into its icy blast.
Helberg turned to Ronneberg. They had made it to the Vidda, and with this welcoming storm his thoughts had turned to that bottle of Upper Ten whisky and a celebratory drink. It lay eleven kilometres due west, at the Fjosbudalen hut, in the heart of the strengthening blizzard. What better place to hide up as the storm raged, and the German generals raged impotently?
‘They will never send search parties out in this!’ Helberg cried. ‘They’ll never dare the mountains in such a storm.’
Helberg’s words were whipped away on the thickening wind, but the Gunnerside leader recognized the sense in them. The storm was now their greatest friend. The dense, driven snow should obliterate the saboteurs’ ski tracks. The nine pressed onwards into the teeth of the gale, which howled out of the western skies. As they disappeared into the raging whiteout, they gave thanks for their second stroke of good fortune.
They were swallowed by the storm with barely a trace of their passage left for anyone to follow.
SS General Rediess was the first of the Nazi big guns to arrive at Vemork. Consumed by a cold fury, he was here to demand answers. How had such a sabotage operation even been possible? No one seemed able to say.
The saboteurs hadn’t crossed the suspension bridge and they hadn’t used the pipelines to gain access. Halfway along the route of the railway all signs of their passing—including a trail of blood indicating that one at least had been injured—seemed to disappear. So what on earth had happened to them?
Rediess knew from security reports that scaling the gorge was impossible, so how had they attacked and made their getaway? And where were they now, so he, General Rediess, could better direct the hunt? In the absence of any answers he ordered mass arrests. Fifty of the plant’s workers and technicians were taken in for questioning. Worse still, ten of the luminaries of Rjukan town were seized. They would be shot the following morning, Rediess declared, if he didn’t get answers.
General von Falkenhorst came hot on Rediess’s heels. He immediately saw the raid for what it was: a slick and professional military operation carried out by soldiers in British uniform. He surveyed the devastation, shaking his head with grudging admiration. ‘British gangsters,’ he muttered, declaring the attack to be ‘the finest coup I have seen in this war’. He countermanded Rediess’s orders; as this was clearly the work of Britischers, and a British military operation, no reprisals were to be taken against any locals.
Von Falkenhorst reserved his fury for the German guard force. In front of the twisted and still-dripping wreckage of the SH200 works he berated them: ‘When you have a chest of jewels like this, you plant yourself on the lid with a weapon in your hand!’ He ordered his men to stand permanent guard over the plant from now on.
His anger spiked when he heard how the plant’s guard dogs had not been out on patrol due to the foul weather. But he reached the absolute apex of his rage when the sergeant of the guards admitted that the searchlights hadn’t been turned on because no one could find the switch. He ordered that man to be sent to the Eastern Front, with immediate effect. That done, he stalked the length and breadth of the Vemork works, decreeing a series of measures be taken to bolster security.
Rediess meanwhile shifted his focus to Rjukan town, where he was joined by Reichskommissar Terboven. They declared a state of emergency and a night-time curfew. The telephone exchange was shut down and house-to-house searches begun. There were dozens of arrests. Posters were pasted on every corner. They warned the town’s residents that if there was a repeat of the Vemork sabotage, ‘the sharpest measures will be taken against the civilian population’.
The following morning, 1 March 1943, some thirty-six hours after the Gunnerside saboteurs had struck, Wilson got the first hint of their success. In a telegram to the key military and political leaders of the land, he outlined a Swedish radio report that had been—partially—intercepted by the BBC:
The following was received over the telephone from the B.B.C. Monitoring Service …
(First sentence has been missed by the B.B.C. and they are doubtful whether they will be able to get it.)
‘… perpetrated against Norwegian hydro installation. The damages are said to have been extensive, but at the point where the attack was made the destruction is said to be complete. The attack was made by three Norwegian-speaking soldiers in British uniform who are now being searched for …’
At the point where the attack was made the destruction is said to be complete. The intercept was tantalizing. It suggested that team Gunnerside had succeeded where all others had failed. It suggested that Wilson’s great gamble had paid off. If that was true, an incredible blow had been struck in freedom’s cause.
But Wilson needed more. He needed absolute verification. He was soon to have it, and from the most unlikely of sources. The following morning a copy of the Daily Mail newspaper landed on Wilson’s desk. The headline and dateline screamed out at him:
Daily Mail, 2 March 1943
CAME-AND-LEFT BY AIR: Nazi Works Wrecked
The Norsk Hydro works, which were the target of airborne wreckers on Saturday night, is a subsidiary of the famous I.G. Farben chemical factory. The plant produces sulphur and nitrogen for high explosives for Germany.
PLANE LANDED ON LAKE
Three Norwegian patriots in British uniform were landed from a plane on a frozen lake, 80 miles northwest of Oslo, during the half-moonlight of Saturday night.
The men, skilled saboteurs, succeeded in blowing up part of the great German-controlled Norsk Hydro Electric plant at Rjukan.
Then the patriots returned to the ice-covered lake, clambered aboard. The engines revved and the journey back to Britain was begun …
Spite at being outwitted led the German SS and Rediess, Norway’s chief of police, to seize 17 hostages.
The attack on the factory, producing quantities of nitrates and fertilizers, is the most sensational case of wrecking since the commando raids on Lofoten and St Nazare.
At least one section of the giant factory has been totally destroyed …
The explosions were timed so that only German and Quisling night-watchmen were killed …
The report, filed by Ralph Hewins, the Daily Mail’s Stockholm correspondent, was remarkably accurate, considering its publication less than seventy-two hours after a top-secret mission. Somehow, Hewins seemed to know more than Wilson, the architect of Operation Gunnerside, which rankled. How had a reporter beaten the SOE to such earth-shattering news, and only to place it slam in the public eye?
Admittedly, there were errors. No aircraft had picked up Wilson’s saboteurs from any frozen lake, of that he was certain. There were likely to be other mistakes too. But right now Wilson could verify few of the details, because he had no contact with his raiding party. Where was Haugland? Skinnarland? His superlative communications team? Why the silence?
Had they been captured? Injured? Killed? He just didn’t know. He would have to wait for them to come on air. In the meantime, he would try to do something about this breach of security. Someone had briefed the Mail reporter, and in significant detail—that much was clear. The saboteurs were reported as ‘knowing the country intimately’, and needing ‘no help from local agents’.
Who had done so and why?
It turned out that the Mail article was based in part upon reports that had appeared in the Swedish newspapers. The Dagens Nyheter (Today’s News) gave extensive detail of the Vemork raid. There was an obvious benefit to the coverage. The Swedish reports told of how the ‘three’ raiders ‘have now been picked up and returned to England. The German search for them has been fruitless.’
What if the Germans were to believe this? If so, it was fantastic disinformation. It might well result in the Germans calling off their search, which would be a magnificent outcome. On balance, Wilson decided that the press coverage was a good thing.
On a 2 March security briefing about the Mail article, Wilson was able to scribble a handwritten note: ‘No breach of security involved.’ Later that day a formal memo was circulated, which concluded that those on high were: ‘Delighted at the newspaper reports of the Gunnerside operation.’
Wilson may have taken a pragmatic line about the breaking news, but he remained desperate for absolute and irrefutable confirmation of the raid and its outcome. A Mosquito squadron was ordered to undertake a recce flight over Vemork. Wilson briefed its commander about how anxious he was for ‘factual evidence of the damage done’.
But securing photographic proof would be no easy undertaking. ‘It is possible that no outward sign of the explosion will show,’ Wilson explained. ‘On the other hand, there is a possibility that owing to the ignition of certain gases, considerably greater damage may have been done. As you are probably aware, this was the highest priority target in Norway.’
While he awaited the outcome of that air recce, Wilson longed for some kind of direct confirmation from team Gunnerside.
Those nine men had skied across the storm-lashed Vidda, making their way by stages to the Cousin’s Cabin. There they’d prepared a message for Haugland to send to Wilson, before they split up. Five, led by Ronneberg, were to ski for the Swedish border, in a bid to return to Britain. Four—Bonzo Haukelid, Kjelstrup, Poulsson and Helberg—would remain on the Vidda, with the intention of making life very difficult for the German occupiers.
On 4 March Ronneberg’s group set out, heavily laden, heading east across the Vidda. Haukelid and Kjelstrup, meanwhile, also took off on skis, to link up with Haugland and Skinnarland and get the good news to Wilson. Poulsson set off south towards Oslo, to rendezvous with Helberg—the man who had played such a key role in leading the Gunnerside team on the ground—who would make his way by a separate route to that city.
But little did they know that they were skiing into a whole world of trouble.