The Winter Fortress: The Epic Mission To Sabotage Hitler's Atomic Bomb, Bascomb - B

                                               As WWII approached, scientists around the world were developing theories about fission and fusion, leading all probable combatants to start thinking about atomic weapons. One of the possible facilitators of an atomic reaction was water with an extra hydrogen atom - heavy water. Heavy water was an offshoot of hydro-electric power generation and the only place in the world where it was created was in central Norway at Vermork. After Germany's April, 1940 occupation of Norway, the Germans demanded an increase in heavy water deliveries to Berlin. For many Norwegians, resistance meant escape to Britain and training for a return home. In the UK, the decision was made to pre-empt the Germans by depriving them of heavy water and sabotaging Vermork. An SOE-trained Norwegian team parachuted into their occupied homeland in Oct. 1942. Their role was to prepare the way for two teams of British sappers who came in on two gliders (towed from Scotland) a month later. Both gliders crashed, although on one, most of the men survived. The sappers were captured by the Germans and executed. The Germans ascertained that Vermork was a target and significantly increased security. The next attempt was a Norwegian team that parachuted into their home country in February. The nine man demolition team wore British uniforms, travelled through a massive winter storm and climbed an almost vertical 600 hundred foot cliff face to access Vermork. They entered the plant, blew up the heavy water section, and knocked the facility off line for a year. Miraculously, and again through another brutal winter storm, they escaped, and were able to travel over 200 miles to neutral Sweden. As well as Operation Gunnerside had done, the Germans had the plant up and running by August, 1943. The Allies decided to target the facility for a bombing run and lied to the Norwegians about their intentions. One-hundred and seventy-six bombers from the 8th Air Force headed for Vermork on Nov. 16,1943 and pounded the plant, but for all of the devastation, the heavy-water facilities were untouched. The Germans decided to dismantle the heavy-water facilities and move them to Germany. On February 20, 1944 a train left Vermork and headed to Mael, where the cars would be loaded onto a ferry. At the deepest part of Lake Tinn, a pre-placed bomb sank the ferry and all of its railcars. Germany would never obtain the materials necessary to build an atomic weapon.