January 31, 2026 • 26 mins
What's the weirdest wartime heist you've ever heard of? In today's Classic episode, Ben, Noel and Max return to one of their favorites: On February 27, 1942, nine saboteurs set out in the middle of the night to blow up a Nazi-controlled heavy water plant in Norway. This operation was as crucial as it was complicated -- if the plant continued to function, the Nazis very well may have been able to construct an atomic bomb. Tune in to learn exactly how the commandos glided in and, eventually, skied away.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Fellow ridiculous historians, we have a classic episode that we
can't wait to share with you.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Max.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
It reminds me a little bit of how we learned
about the phenomenal sport of curling, thanks to you, because
this is this is the literal weaponization of a wintertime sport.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
Well, Ben, I don't know if you know this, but
to date almost five years on the show, my favorite
episode still is the Sausage War episode when we talk
about skiing in combat. Alit on that one, and also
the ow This expedition.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Ah yes, yeah, all right, here's the skinny folks. There's
a thing called Operation gunter Side. It's a story the
Jedi won't tell you. On February twenty seventh, nineteen forty two,
there were these guys who were super into sabotage, real
specop stuff. They wanted to attack a Nazi controlled plant
(00:59):
in away and they had to figure out how to
pull this off. They were outnumbered, they were out gunned.
They didn't know how they could get to the place,
much less get away without being instantly discovered and murdered.
But as we'll see in today's classic episode, Bye Gosh,
(01:23):
by Golly, they pulled it. Off they ruined the Nazi
bomb project on literal snow Skkes. Ridiculous History is a
production of iHeartRadio. So Close, So close, It is as
(02:03):
if we are in gliders, which will make sense in
a few minutes. We are so close to an anniversary
episode today. This episode is publishing on February twenty sixth,
twenty nineteen, but two days from now, and if you're
listening to this, the day it comes out, we will
(02:24):
hit the anniversary of something called Operation gunner Side.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
I know you love a good operation, Ben.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
I mean, who doesn't, right, This will be the seventy
sixth anniversary of Operation Gunner Side. And if you're wondering, hey, guys,
what the heck is Operation gunner Side, we're glad to
tell you, of course, with the help of our constant
super producer, Casey.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Pegrim and truest friend and confidante. The Golden Girls song
is playing in my head. I love that song. It's
really good. It's so good.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
It's only the This has nothing to do with today's episode,
and I'll keep the banter short. But did you ever
listen to the full version? Did either of you guys
ever listen to the full version? Of the Golden Girls song.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Is it just called thank you for being a friend?
I can't, I can't remember, but it's it's not as good. Really.
The best part is the TV theme and if you
had a party an invited everyone, you know, it's my
favorite part. I like the and the card atached would
say and everybody comes in, thank you for being afraid?
(03:31):
You know, I say to you, thank you for being
a ben.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
H thank you think you you know what you're not.
You're no slouch of being a knowl. And Casey Pegrim
you were my favorite.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Casey, well, thank you ben Oh. Okay, I didn't know
if you were going to respond to that way. That's
Casey on the case. There, that's Casey on the case.
That's very nice, Casey on the case. You know who
else was being good at what they were? Who else? Nazis? Nazis? Yeah, yeah, Nazis. Okay,
let me let me caveat that a little. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
But they were being successful at what they were doing,
That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
So our story today takes place in the nineteen forties
in World War Two and the rush to build the
first nuclear weapon.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
And this is something that I didn't know that I
didn't learn until I was looking into the story with you, Ben,
is that the Germans were kind of had a head
start on the Manhattan Project, and it was actually because
of progress the Germans were making towards developing a nuclear
bomb that we got involved. We started doing our own
version right.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Right, So, as early nuclear research, just nuclear research is
beginning in the United States, Germany is already moving forward
with its own energy research and atomic bomb program, which was.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Called Uhlinvine, which translates to the Uranium Club, and that
was founded as a secret program in April of nineteen
thirty nine, which was just shortly after Otto Hahn and
Fritz Strassmann, who are two German scientists, accidentally discovered nuclear fission,
giving the Germans quite an advantage over the United States. Right.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
This was December nineteen thirty eight, over Christmas vacation when
these physicists made this discovery, and it's one of those
world changing events where people in the know, people who
monitor this sort of stuff, can naturally begin going down
similar directions in terms of innovation. The Uranium Club was
(05:35):
led by a physicist named Kurt Diipner, and he built
a think tank of the top eggheads in Germany, including
Verner Heisenberg. The Americans were working on this too. The
Germans had a different program, so they're trying to accomplish
the same thing. They want to build, ultimately an atomic weapon.
(05:57):
But one of the differences that they had was their
use of what they called a moderator. And a moderator
is a component of a nuclear reactor. So nuclear actors
usually have a couple of things in common. They have
a fuel source, control rods, a moderator, coolant, and an encasement.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Yeah, and a nuclear bomb. Similar to nuclear actors, creating
is thriving on the same explosive energy, only it's just
released out into the world, as opposed to harnessed into
like electric electricity or.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Power exactly exactly. So, a moderator is a substance that's
essentially used to slow down the fission process, making it
more controllable or at least more efficient, right spot on.
So here's one of the big differences. In the US,
scientists are using graphite as a moderator. They're using these
(06:53):
graphite blocks, and they don't have coolant, they don't have radiation,
they don't have heat shielding. They're still figuring this out. Germany,
on the other hand, is using something called heavy water.
What's heavy water? Aside from an awesome name for something, it's.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Incredible and I did not know what it was. And
heavy water is water that has an atomic or molecular
rather weight of twenty rather than eighteen, and that's in
AMU or atomic mass units. To the layman or anyone,
(07:30):
really heavy water would taste the same as regular water.
It would feel the same on your body. You could
swim in it, just the same as you could any
other kind of regular water. But it occurs incredibly rarely
in nature, right, I think it's something along the lines
according to the Smithsonian magazine, it is incredibly rare in nature,
(07:52):
happening something along the lines of one in a billion.
Roleicules of water that occur naturally would be considered heavy.
One giveaway that you're dealing with heavy water would be
that ice cubes made out of it would sink rather
than float because they're a little heavier.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Right, Right, it's not a clever title, right, they're trying
to be euphemistic.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
The water is heavy, you know, it's super descriptive. Yeah,
it's true, But this is the substance that the Nazis
decided to use as that what was the word moderator,
as that moderator for splitting of the atom and slowing
down that reaction in a way that would allow them
to harness it more effectively. Graphite, as we know, super common,
(08:36):
easy to come by, and all kinds of stuff. Heavy water,
on the other hand, you got to make it, and
in order to make it for this research that they
were doing, the Germans had a pretty massive facility where
they did just that. Right.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Oh and quick note on heavy water, it has a
larger than normal amount of a hydrogen isotope called deterior,
which is also known as heavy hydrogen. So it all
works out. They've got a theme, and they also have
a plant where they create this stuff, a place called
(09:12):
Verir Mork, and their work was created in like Mordor.
It sounds like a very sounds like a very evil
you know, sour Man hitlerresque name.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
It really does.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Did you ever see that Mitchell and Webb sketch where
they say are we the baddies? Oh?
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Yeah, of course, because the skull hats like Bond villains, right,
But they're confused about where they fit into the story.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
I feel like you were going to say something that
pertained to our episode, though, so I don't.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
I don't want to roll over, Oh All, I was
going to know, you're not at all, Ben. All I
was going to say is they got this place by
invading another place. But they actually acquired this this very
sinister sounding plant. It's called the Vemmork Chemical Plant, and
it was in Telemark County in Norway, which was occupied
by the Nazis at this point in World War two,
(10:04):
and it became a very important strategic stronghold for them.
It was built like a fortress and they were able
to use the fact that it was a chemical plant
to help aid their research and to produce this heavy water.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Absolutely, this plant was already producing heavy water through the thirties.
By January nineteen thirty five, it produced more than one
hundred grams of this substance. But after the Germans seized
the plant, they forced the workers to increase the production
of heavy water because they needed this moderate See.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
I did not know that, Ben, I know that they
were already making it there because it's sort of a
weird thing to make. It's what other purpose does it
serve chemically or in some kind of industrial manufacturing process.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Do you know, man, maybe the Norwegians just had a
pet peeve about ice cubes that float. Maybe they thought
they were insolent. That seems very expensive. That's true. That's
a good point. Maybe that's what SmartWater is.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
And maybe maybe they also added like extra electrolytes and
all that. Yeah, yeah, well, plant's grave. It's true. So
here's the thing. This is the lynch pen in the
Nazis plan to develop this weapon, and they're pretty far
along in their research and this stuff that they have
to have a pretty sizable manufacturing chemical plant to produce.
(11:25):
They need it to make the weapon that they will
it won't do without it.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Right right, And British intelligence learns about this through some
connections to the plant and some connections to Norwegian domestic
resistance parties. So they hear that the Germans want to
increase the production during the summer of nineteen forty one,
and they get this via message from the Norwegian underground.
(11:52):
There's a guy who obtains this for the British named
leaf Tronstud and he a non famously corresponds with the
British forces, you know, to preserve his identity, and they
begin to hatch a plan. The British say, well, let's
engage in some good old sabotage. Sabotage itself has a
(12:20):
very interesting etymology.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
What is it?
Speaker 1 (12:23):
So sabotage comes from French? I believe Casey, is that correct?
Speaker 4 (12:29):
Like saboteur?
Speaker 1 (12:30):
Yeah, yeah, that's okay. So this is interesting. I don't
know if you had heard the etymology of sabotage before, Casey,
I feel like you probably have.
Speaker 4 (12:39):
Nah, nothing's coming to mind right now.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
So it meant it's always meant deliberately and maliciously destroying property.
Right The apparent story I can't verify here is that
the modern meaning derives from strikers who allegedly had this
tactic of throwing shoes into machinery. But this is apparently
not the you know, again, this is just a fun
(13:03):
story about it. We don't know exactly where it comes from,
but it is related to the word shoe allegedly.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
So like throwing your shoe into like the gears of
a machine or something like that. That's very you know,
it makes me think of like the whole like throwing
a monkey wrench into the works. Yeah, yeah, exactly, as
it causes the gears to grind to a halt.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
So they wanted to They wanted to engage in some
good old fashioned sabotage, and they had a secret unit
that was accomplished at this called the Special Operations Executive
or sometimes called the Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
Is that like the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Yeah?
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Yeah, they train people to conduct covert sabotage missions.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
I love the idea of that as being ungentlemanly. Yes,
it's not like coming right to your face and doing
us doing it like under cover of night around dirty Pool,
old Man, dirty Pool, dirty Pool.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
They had a Norwegian branch of the Special Operations Executive
and they recruited various Norwegians who have fled to England
after Germany invaded their country in nineteen forty and they
had this crazy training regimen in Scotland. They had to
train under cover of night to climb mountains, ford rivers,
(14:25):
camp outdoors for weeks. These guys are being made into
rangers almost, you know. Yeah, but they're rangers with a
very particular skill set. They're ski rangers.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Yes, yes, tell us a little more about that. Well,
I will let me you know what in fact, I'm
gonna I'm gonna do it better than tell you. I'm
going to do a reading for you from a book
titled The Winter Fortress, The Epic Mission to Sabotage Hitler's
Atomic Bomb by Neil Bascom, mis will paint the pictures
will tell you exactly what these guys did. Nazi occupied
(14:57):
Norway in a staggered line, saboteurs cut across the mountain slope.
Instinct more than the dim light of the moon guided
the young men. They threaded through the stands of pine
and traversed down the sharp, uneven terrain, much of it
parked with empty hollows and thick drifts of snow. Dressed
(15:17):
in white camouflage suits over their British Army uniforms, the
men looked like phantoms haunting the woods. They moved as
quietly as ghosts. The silence broke only by the swoosh
of their skis and the occasional slap of a pole
against an unseen branch. The warm, steady wind that blew
through the vest Fjord valley dampened even these sounds. It
(15:39):
was the same wind that would, eventually, they hoped, blow
their tracks away. So Yeah, they did super badass downhill
skiing in order to stealthily approach this facility. Because you see,
there had actually been two previous attempts, failed attempts to
do exactly what these guys were setting out to do
on their skis. One of them was called Operation Grouse,
(16:01):
and then one was called Operation Freshmen, in which forty
two British Allied soldiers died in a botched mission where
they were going to kind of gain entry to the
facility using gliders that had been deployed from planes.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
Right, so they had a little bit of internal tension.
Bombing the plant was the preferred tactic of the American military,
but Tronsta was opposed to this because if the bombs
hit the liquid ammonia storage tanks, the civilian population nearby
would be at risk. And secondly, bombing might not even
(16:39):
destroy the heavy water facilities because they were in the
basement of the plant under layers and layers of concrete.
So they had to actually send people in.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
First.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
They sent in Grouse, which was a small scout team.
They parachuted from a plane, They landed in the area,
and they started literally sneaking around. After they had been
there for a month. In November nineteen forty two, Operation
Freshmen launched these thirty nine British air troops carried by
two military gliders. The idea is that they would land
(17:10):
near the plant using the information provided by the scouting
group Grouse, and then they would attack. But the weather
was terrible, they had communication issues. One of the gliders
crashed into a mountain, the other crash landed way off course.
Everyone that was in the glider that hit the mountain
died in the crash. Some of the soldiers in the
(17:32):
second glider died and their crash law was off target.
The others were caught and executed by the Gestapo. Additionally,
German forces found a map that identified Vermork as a
British target, but there was still some hope. The Germans
were not able to find and capture the group known
as Grouse. They had remained in the wilderness, living off
(17:55):
the land, hunting reindeer to survive and they were renamed Swallow.
Three months pass and the Swallowed group gets word from
Britain that there are six more Norwegians who are going
to be sent to take out this plant in something
called Operation gunner Side. This was a small group of
(18:16):
Norwegian commandos from the Norwegian branch of the SOE. They
were going to parachute straight to the target zone instead
of using a glider. They were going to meet up
with the Swallows and then together they were going to
raid the Vermoch plant. So they jumped from a plane
while it's snowing February sixteenth, nineteen forty three. They dressed
(18:39):
in British uniforms under their snowsuits because they thought, you know,
if we get caught, we're almost certainly going to be
tortured and then die. But we would like them to
blame the British instead of the Norwegian resistance, so that
the Germans won't kill Norwegian civilians. They survived by the
way they landed my away from where they were.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Supposed to be.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
They traveled for five days and then they connected with
their friends Grouse now named Swallow, and then they began
their raid on February twenty seventh, nineteen forty three.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
That's right, ben so Gunnerside. The Gunnerside group decided that
there were three ways to access the plan. They knew
they had to rely on stealth. One of them was
to come down from the mountains which overlooked the plant,
but that was covered in minefields. And then they also
had to cross a incredibly fortified and heavily guarded suspension bridge.
(19:34):
And then they had to get to the bottom where
there was a gorge that led to a railway line
that they could follow alongside of to get to an
area that was a lot less heavily policed.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Yeah, and they broke through a fence. You can see
an interview about this with a guy named Newt Hyklid
in the New York Times. They broke through a fence
and then they divided their group into a five man
cover squad a four man explosives group. The explosives guys
(20:07):
wanted to enter the plant through a side door, but
the door was locked, and they tried to find a
side access tunnel, but they started getting divided.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Call it the fog of war.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
Once they got in, they started placing explosive charges next
to the heavy water production cells, and they had to
they had to improvise a little bit. The explosives were
supposed to have two minute fuses, but they cut them
to make them thirty second fuses, so they had thirty
(20:41):
seconds to run away. And so after they have successfully
destroyed the heavy water facility. They flee and they say, hey, guys,
bonus points, let's try to get out of here alive.
So they hop back on the skis and they ski
toward town. They reach a mountain plateau and they split up.
(21:03):
They travel more than two hundred miles. The four man
explosive team on skis too sweet.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Yeah, neutral, neutral, Neutral Sweden, Land of modern furniture and
meatballs and neutrality and the chocolate. Many many things are
good about Sweden. But those are the things that come
to mind for me. But here's the thing. They did
not fire a single shot. They were able to capitalize
on the chaos that those explosions created and high tail
(21:31):
it out of there on their skis, get to neutral Sweden,
and then ultimately get back to get back home alive.
And these were men who were going into the situation
fully aware that they might not make it out out alive.
As you can tell, this is a pretty intrepid mission.
Doesn't really fall under a ridiculous for me as much
as it does totally badass. Maybe the idea of stealth
(21:55):
spy types on skis is a little funny, but man,
what a what bravery These guys exhibited, and to have
it go so well is so rare.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
How long does it take to ski two hundred miles?
Speaker 2 (22:09):
Yeah, I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
Yeah, I want the Proclaimers to do a version of
their song about this. So Operation Gunner's Side was initially
a success. It did cause German forces to lose five
hundred kilograms of heavy water and it knocked the plan
out of action for a few months. Unfortunately, by May
(22:34):
of nineteen forty three, the facilities were rebuilt and they
were back in the heavy water game.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
I see a message board here on J two ski
dot com where someone talks about completing a ski marathon
at one hundred and thirty kilometers in two days. Okay,
so that's faster than walking. Yeah, well that's about That's
about it. One hundred and thirty kilometers more than a mile,
So this would probably take like maybe four days.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Yeah, that's about on base, because one hundred and forty
kilometers is about eighty seven miles.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
There's also a lot depends on the terrain, and I
gotta wonder if they had to maybe hoof it occasionally.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
If it is if that yeah, or if it was
literally a two hundred mile completely downhill route to sweet It's.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Just a bunny slope, nothing to it, so pretty cool.
Huh m hm.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
And we hope that you enjoyed the story of Operation
Gunner's Side. If you don't know how to ski yet,
I mean, hey, it's never too late to pick up
a new skill set. But before we go, I have
some breaking news. I've been told that we have an
update on our etymology conversation. Is that correct, Casey?
Speaker 2 (23:41):
That is correct?
Speaker 4 (23:42):
So I did look into the etymology of sabatur or sabotage,
and it does seem to derive from the word the
French word sabo for a wooden shoe or a clog.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
So see that that would cause some damage.
Speaker 4 (23:58):
Absolutely, yeah, that would that would grind the gears or.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
What have you. Literally, hey, so it looks like Casey
on the Case the segment. We never closed it out
last time, so let's close it now, Casey on the Case.
And I do want to point out too, when we
talk about how intrepid these these guys were. They all
were equipped with you know, weapons and survival gear, but
they had to travel lightly because they did not have
(24:23):
any vehicle support outside of themselves and their their legs
and their skis. They also had cyanide pills on them
and so they couldn't be taken alive.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
I mean, you know, we've all been in that kind
of situation at some point. It's just like the boy
Scouts say, you have to be prepared or excuse me.
I think it's just the Scouts now, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
Yeah, that's right, that's right, that's right.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
We hope that you have enjoyed this episode, and we would,
of course, as always, like to thank our super producer, Casey.
You know, I always want to give you a nickname,
and I always stop myself. Do you want to be
the saboteur?
Speaker 2 (24:58):
Oh? I like that idea? Yeah, I to it. I
support that wholeheartedly. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
So we'd like to thank our super producer, Casey, the
sabato of Pegrum.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
I would like to thank Alex Williams, who composed our theme.
We'd like to thank Gabe, our research associate. Ben. I'd
like to thank you for being a friend traveling down
that road, whether on skis or on foot, and possibly
back again. Unless it's uphill and you're expected to do
it on skis, that's not going to work. I love
playing that song. My cats are so sick of me
playing that. It's a good show too. It really holds
up very forward thinking.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
It does surprisingly watching it when I was very young
with my grandmother, I enjoyed it, but I think I
didn't get most of the jokes. So now it's Blanche
is a dirty, dirty, dirty personality, but lovable and hey,
maybe that's the way you think of us.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
If so, let us know, or if not, you could
just write to us. We are on.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Instagram, we are on Facebook, we are on Twitter. You
can meet our favorite part of the show, your fellow
listeners on our Facebook page Ridiculous Historians.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
You hit me personally on Instagram at embryon Insider, where
I post you know, cat pictures and the like, and
then Ben, I believe you're on there as well.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
The rumors are true. You can see my various misadventures
that involve, frankly, all kinds of weird stuff, from travel
to mysterious investigations to god, I don't know, there was
a time when I was going.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
Through a lot of puppet pictures.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
Either way, that's at Ben Bowling, And of course, if
you want to check out our weird t shirts based
on puns and catchphrases that we are cartoonishly enamored of.
Visit us at our store on Ridiculous Historyshow dot.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Com the Tea Public Store, and join us. Next time.
We'll talk about some other stuff. We haven't quite gotten
that far ahead yet, but we'll get there. We will
see that. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Fellow ridiculous historians, we have a classic episode that we
can't wait to share with you.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Max.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
It reminds me a little bit of how we learned
about the phenomenal sport of curling, thanks to you, because
this is this is the literal weaponization of a wintertime sport.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
Well, Ben, I don't know if you know this, but
to date almost five years on the show, my favorite
episode still is the Sausage War episode when we talk
about skiing in combat. Alit on that one, and also
the ow This expedition.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Ah yes, yeah, all right, here's the skinny folks. There's
a thing called Operation gunter Side. It's a story the
Jedi won't tell you. On February twenty seventh, nineteen forty two,
there were these guys who were super into sabotage, real
specop stuff. They wanted to attack a Nazi controlled plant
(00:59):
in away and they had to figure out how to
pull this off. They were outnumbered, they were out gunned.
They didn't know how they could get to the place,
much less get away without being instantly discovered and murdered.
But as we'll see in today's classic episode, Bye Gosh,
(01:23):
by Golly, they pulled it. Off they ruined the Nazi
bomb project on literal snow Skkes. Ridiculous History is a
production of iHeartRadio. So Close, So close, It is as
(02:03):
if we are in gliders, which will make sense in
a few minutes. We are so close to an anniversary
episode today. This episode is publishing on February twenty sixth,
twenty nineteen, but two days from now, and if you're
listening to this, the day it comes out, we will
(02:24):
hit the anniversary of something called Operation gunner Side.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
I know you love a good operation, Ben.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
I mean, who doesn't, right, This will be the seventy
sixth anniversary of Operation Gunner Side. And if you're wondering, hey, guys,
what the heck is Operation gunner Side, we're glad to
tell you, of course, with the help of our constant
super producer, Casey.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Pegrim and truest friend and confidante. The Golden Girls song
is playing in my head. I love that song. It's
really good. It's so good.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
It's only the This has nothing to do with today's episode,
and I'll keep the banter short. But did you ever
listen to the full version? Did either of you guys
ever listen to the full version? Of the Golden Girls song.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Is it just called thank you for being a friend?
I can't, I can't remember, but it's it's not as good. Really.
The best part is the TV theme and if you
had a party an invited everyone, you know, it's my
favorite part. I like the and the card atached would
say and everybody comes in, thank you for being afraid?
(03:31):
You know, I say to you, thank you for being
a ben.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
H thank you think you you know what you're not.
You're no slouch of being a knowl. And Casey Pegrim
you were my favorite.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Casey, well, thank you ben Oh. Okay, I didn't know
if you were going to respond to that way. That's
Casey on the case. There, that's Casey on the case.
That's very nice, Casey on the case. You know who
else was being good at what they were? Who else? Nazis? Nazis? Yeah, yeah, Nazis. Okay,
let me let me caveat that a little. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
But they were being successful at what they were doing,
That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
So our story today takes place in the nineteen forties
in World War Two and the rush to build the
first nuclear weapon.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
And this is something that I didn't know that I
didn't learn until I was looking into the story with you, Ben,
is that the Germans were kind of had a head
start on the Manhattan Project, and it was actually because
of progress the Germans were making towards developing a nuclear
bomb that we got involved. We started doing our own
version right.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Right, So, as early nuclear research, just nuclear research is
beginning in the United States, Germany is already moving forward
with its own energy research and atomic bomb program, which was.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Called Uhlinvine, which translates to the Uranium Club, and that
was founded as a secret program in April of nineteen
thirty nine, which was just shortly after Otto Hahn and
Fritz Strassmann, who are two German scientists, accidentally discovered nuclear fission,
giving the Germans quite an advantage over the United States. Right.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
This was December nineteen thirty eight, over Christmas vacation when
these physicists made this discovery, and it's one of those
world changing events where people in the know, people who
monitor this sort of stuff, can naturally begin going down
similar directions in terms of innovation. The Uranium Club was
(05:35):
led by a physicist named Kurt Diipner, and he built
a think tank of the top eggheads in Germany, including
Verner Heisenberg. The Americans were working on this too. The
Germans had a different program, so they're trying to accomplish
the same thing. They want to build, ultimately an atomic weapon.
(05:57):
But one of the differences that they had was their
use of what they called a moderator. And a moderator
is a component of a nuclear reactor. So nuclear actors
usually have a couple of things in common. They have
a fuel source, control rods, a moderator, coolant, and an encasement.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Yeah, and a nuclear bomb. Similar to nuclear actors, creating
is thriving on the same explosive energy, only it's just
released out into the world, as opposed to harnessed into
like electric electricity or.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Power exactly exactly. So, a moderator is a substance that's
essentially used to slow down the fission process, making it
more controllable or at least more efficient, right spot on.
So here's one of the big differences. In the US,
scientists are using graphite as a moderator. They're using these
(06:53):
graphite blocks, and they don't have coolant, they don't have radiation,
they don't have heat shielding. They're still figuring this out. Germany,
on the other hand, is using something called heavy water.
What's heavy water? Aside from an awesome name for something, it's.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Incredible and I did not know what it was. And
heavy water is water that has an atomic or molecular
rather weight of twenty rather than eighteen, and that's in
AMU or atomic mass units. To the layman or anyone,
(07:30):
really heavy water would taste the same as regular water.
It would feel the same on your body. You could
swim in it, just the same as you could any
other kind of regular water. But it occurs incredibly rarely
in nature, right, I think it's something along the lines
according to the Smithsonian magazine, it is incredibly rare in nature,
(07:52):
happening something along the lines of one in a billion.
Roleicules of water that occur naturally would be considered heavy.
One giveaway that you're dealing with heavy water would be
that ice cubes made out of it would sink rather
than float because they're a little heavier.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Right, Right, it's not a clever title, right, they're trying
to be euphemistic.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
The water is heavy, you know, it's super descriptive. Yeah,
it's true, But this is the substance that the Nazis
decided to use as that what was the word moderator,
as that moderator for splitting of the atom and slowing
down that reaction in a way that would allow them
to harness it more effectively. Graphite, as we know, super common,
(08:36):
easy to come by, and all kinds of stuff. Heavy water,
on the other hand, you got to make it, and
in order to make it for this research that they
were doing, the Germans had a pretty massive facility where
they did just that. Right.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Oh and quick note on heavy water, it has a
larger than normal amount of a hydrogen isotope called deterior,
which is also known as heavy hydrogen. So it all
works out. They've got a theme, and they also have
a plant where they create this stuff, a place called
(09:12):
Verir Mork, and their work was created in like Mordor.
It sounds like a very sounds like a very evil
you know, sour Man hitlerresque name.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
It really does.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Did you ever see that Mitchell and Webb sketch where
they say are we the baddies? Oh?
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Yeah, of course, because the skull hats like Bond villains, right,
But they're confused about where they fit into the story.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
I feel like you were going to say something that
pertained to our episode, though, so I don't.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
I don't want to roll over, Oh All, I was
going to know, you're not at all, Ben. All I
was going to say is they got this place by
invading another place. But they actually acquired this this very
sinister sounding plant. It's called the Vemmork Chemical Plant, and
it was in Telemark County in Norway, which was occupied
by the Nazis at this point in World War two,
(10:04):
and it became a very important strategic stronghold for them.
It was built like a fortress and they were able
to use the fact that it was a chemical plant
to help aid their research and to produce this heavy water.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Absolutely, this plant was already producing heavy water through the thirties.
By January nineteen thirty five, it produced more than one
hundred grams of this substance. But after the Germans seized
the plant, they forced the workers to increase the production
of heavy water because they needed this moderate See.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
I did not know that, Ben, I know that they
were already making it there because it's sort of a
weird thing to make. It's what other purpose does it
serve chemically or in some kind of industrial manufacturing process.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Do you know, man, maybe the Norwegians just had a
pet peeve about ice cubes that float. Maybe they thought
they were insolent. That seems very expensive. That's true. That's
a good point. Maybe that's what SmartWater is.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
And maybe maybe they also added like extra electrolytes and
all that. Yeah, yeah, well, plant's grave. It's true. So
here's the thing. This is the lynch pen in the
Nazis plan to develop this weapon, and they're pretty far
along in their research and this stuff that they have
to have a pretty sizable manufacturing chemical plant to produce.
(11:25):
They need it to make the weapon that they will
it won't do without it.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Right right, And British intelligence learns about this through some
connections to the plant and some connections to Norwegian domestic
resistance parties. So they hear that the Germans want to
increase the production during the summer of nineteen forty one,
and they get this via message from the Norwegian underground.
(11:52):
There's a guy who obtains this for the British named
leaf Tronstud and he a non famously corresponds with the
British forces, you know, to preserve his identity, and they
begin to hatch a plan. The British say, well, let's
engage in some good old sabotage. Sabotage itself has a
(12:20):
very interesting etymology.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
What is it?
Speaker 1 (12:23):
So sabotage comes from French? I believe Casey, is that correct?
Speaker 4 (12:29):
Like saboteur?
Speaker 1 (12:30):
Yeah, yeah, that's okay. So this is interesting. I don't
know if you had heard the etymology of sabotage before, Casey,
I feel like you probably have.
Speaker 4 (12:39):
Nah, nothing's coming to mind right now.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
So it meant it's always meant deliberately and maliciously destroying property.
Right The apparent story I can't verify here is that
the modern meaning derives from strikers who allegedly had this
tactic of throwing shoes into machinery. But this is apparently
not the you know, again, this is just a fun
(13:03):
story about it. We don't know exactly where it comes from,
but it is related to the word shoe allegedly.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
So like throwing your shoe into like the gears of
a machine or something like that. That's very you know,
it makes me think of like the whole like throwing
a monkey wrench into the works. Yeah, yeah, exactly, as
it causes the gears to grind to a halt.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
So they wanted to They wanted to engage in some
good old fashioned sabotage, and they had a secret unit
that was accomplished at this called the Special Operations Executive
or sometimes called the Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
Is that like the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Yeah?
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Yeah, they train people to conduct covert sabotage missions.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
I love the idea of that as being ungentlemanly. Yes,
it's not like coming right to your face and doing
us doing it like under cover of night around dirty Pool,
old Man, dirty Pool, dirty Pool.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
They had a Norwegian branch of the Special Operations Executive
and they recruited various Norwegians who have fled to England
after Germany invaded their country in nineteen forty and they
had this crazy training regimen in Scotland. They had to
train under cover of night to climb mountains, ford rivers,
(14:25):
camp outdoors for weeks. These guys are being made into
rangers almost, you know. Yeah, but they're rangers with a
very particular skill set. They're ski rangers.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Yes, yes, tell us a little more about that. Well,
I will let me you know what in fact, I'm
gonna I'm gonna do it better than tell you. I'm
going to do a reading for you from a book
titled The Winter Fortress, The Epic Mission to Sabotage Hitler's
Atomic Bomb by Neil Bascom, mis will paint the pictures
will tell you exactly what these guys did. Nazi occupied
(14:57):
Norway in a staggered line, saboteurs cut across the mountain slope.
Instinct more than the dim light of the moon guided
the young men. They threaded through the stands of pine
and traversed down the sharp, uneven terrain, much of it
parked with empty hollows and thick drifts of snow. Dressed
(15:17):
in white camouflage suits over their British Army uniforms, the
men looked like phantoms haunting the woods. They moved as
quietly as ghosts. The silence broke only by the swoosh
of their skis and the occasional slap of a pole
against an unseen branch. The warm, steady wind that blew
through the vest Fjord valley dampened even these sounds. It
(15:39):
was the same wind that would, eventually, they hoped, blow
their tracks away. So Yeah, they did super badass downhill
skiing in order to stealthily approach this facility. Because you see,
there had actually been two previous attempts, failed attempts to
do exactly what these guys were setting out to do
on their skis. One of them was called Operation Grouse,
(16:01):
and then one was called Operation Freshmen, in which forty
two British Allied soldiers died in a botched mission where
they were going to kind of gain entry to the
facility using gliders that had been deployed from planes.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
Right, so they had a little bit of internal tension.
Bombing the plant was the preferred tactic of the American military,
but Tronsta was opposed to this because if the bombs
hit the liquid ammonia storage tanks, the civilian population nearby
would be at risk. And secondly, bombing might not even
(16:39):
destroy the heavy water facilities because they were in the
basement of the plant under layers and layers of concrete.
So they had to actually send people in.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
First.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
They sent in Grouse, which was a small scout team.
They parachuted from a plane, They landed in the area,
and they started literally sneaking around. After they had been
there for a month. In November nineteen forty two, Operation
Freshmen launched these thirty nine British air troops carried by
two military gliders. The idea is that they would land
(17:10):
near the plant using the information provided by the scouting
group Grouse, and then they would attack. But the weather
was terrible, they had communication issues. One of the gliders
crashed into a mountain, the other crash landed way off course.
Everyone that was in the glider that hit the mountain
died in the crash. Some of the soldiers in the
(17:32):
second glider died and their crash law was off target.
The others were caught and executed by the Gestapo. Additionally,
German forces found a map that identified Vermork as a
British target, but there was still some hope. The Germans
were not able to find and capture the group known
as Grouse. They had remained in the wilderness, living off
(17:55):
the land, hunting reindeer to survive and they were renamed Swallow.
Three months pass and the Swallowed group gets word from
Britain that there are six more Norwegians who are going
to be sent to take out this plant in something
called Operation gunner Side. This was a small group of
(18:16):
Norwegian commandos from the Norwegian branch of the SOE. They
were going to parachute straight to the target zone instead
of using a glider. They were going to meet up
with the Swallows and then together they were going to
raid the Vermoch plant. So they jumped from a plane
while it's snowing February sixteenth, nineteen forty three. They dressed
(18:39):
in British uniforms under their snowsuits because they thought, you know,
if we get caught, we're almost certainly going to be
tortured and then die. But we would like them to
blame the British instead of the Norwegian resistance, so that
the Germans won't kill Norwegian civilians. They survived by the
way they landed my away from where they were.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Supposed to be.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
They traveled for five days and then they connected with
their friends Grouse now named Swallow, and then they began
their raid on February twenty seventh, nineteen forty three.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
That's right, ben so Gunnerside. The Gunnerside group decided that
there were three ways to access the plan. They knew
they had to rely on stealth. One of them was
to come down from the mountains which overlooked the plant,
but that was covered in minefields. And then they also
had to cross a incredibly fortified and heavily guarded suspension bridge.
(19:34):
And then they had to get to the bottom where
there was a gorge that led to a railway line
that they could follow alongside of to get to an
area that was a lot less heavily policed.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Yeah, and they broke through a fence. You can see
an interview about this with a guy named Newt Hyklid
in the New York Times. They broke through a fence
and then they divided their group into a five man
cover squad a four man explosives group. The explosives guys
(20:07):
wanted to enter the plant through a side door, but
the door was locked, and they tried to find a
side access tunnel, but they started getting divided.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Call it the fog of war.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
Once they got in, they started placing explosive charges next
to the heavy water production cells, and they had to
they had to improvise a little bit. The explosives were
supposed to have two minute fuses, but they cut them
to make them thirty second fuses, so they had thirty
(20:41):
seconds to run away. And so after they have successfully
destroyed the heavy water facility. They flee and they say, hey, guys,
bonus points, let's try to get out of here alive.
So they hop back on the skis and they ski
toward town. They reach a mountain plateau and they split up.
(21:03):
They travel more than two hundred miles. The four man
explosive team on skis too sweet.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Yeah, neutral, neutral, Neutral Sweden, Land of modern furniture and
meatballs and neutrality and the chocolate. Many many things are
good about Sweden. But those are the things that come
to mind for me. But here's the thing. They did
not fire a single shot. They were able to capitalize
on the chaos that those explosions created and high tail
(21:31):
it out of there on their skis, get to neutral Sweden,
and then ultimately get back to get back home alive.
And these were men who were going into the situation
fully aware that they might not make it out out alive.
As you can tell, this is a pretty intrepid mission.
Doesn't really fall under a ridiculous for me as much
as it does totally badass. Maybe the idea of stealth
(21:55):
spy types on skis is a little funny, but man,
what a what bravery These guys exhibited, and to have
it go so well is so rare.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
How long does it take to ski two hundred miles?
Speaker 2 (22:09):
Yeah, I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
Yeah, I want the Proclaimers to do a version of
their song about this. So Operation Gunner's Side was initially
a success. It did cause German forces to lose five
hundred kilograms of heavy water and it knocked the plan
out of action for a few months. Unfortunately, by May
(22:34):
of nineteen forty three, the facilities were rebuilt and they
were back in the heavy water game.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
I see a message board here on J two ski
dot com where someone talks about completing a ski marathon
at one hundred and thirty kilometers in two days. Okay,
so that's faster than walking. Yeah, well that's about That's
about it. One hundred and thirty kilometers more than a mile,
So this would probably take like maybe four days.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Yeah, that's about on base, because one hundred and forty
kilometers is about eighty seven miles.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
There's also a lot depends on the terrain, and I
gotta wonder if they had to maybe hoof it occasionally.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
If it is if that yeah, or if it was
literally a two hundred mile completely downhill route to sweet It's.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Just a bunny slope, nothing to it, so pretty cool.
Huh m hm.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
And we hope that you enjoyed the story of Operation
Gunner's Side. If you don't know how to ski yet,
I mean, hey, it's never too late to pick up
a new skill set. But before we go, I have
some breaking news. I've been told that we have an
update on our etymology conversation. Is that correct, Casey?
Speaker 2 (23:41):
That is correct?
Speaker 4 (23:42):
So I did look into the etymology of sabatur or sabotage,
and it does seem to derive from the word the
French word sabo for a wooden shoe or a clog.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
So see that that would cause some damage.
Speaker 4 (23:58):
Absolutely, yeah, that would that would grind the gears or.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
What have you. Literally, hey, so it looks like Casey
on the Case the segment. We never closed it out
last time, so let's close it now, Casey on the Case.
And I do want to point out too, when we
talk about how intrepid these these guys were. They all
were equipped with you know, weapons and survival gear, but
they had to travel lightly because they did not have
(24:23):
any vehicle support outside of themselves and their their legs
and their skis. They also had cyanide pills on them
and so they couldn't be taken alive.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
I mean, you know, we've all been in that kind
of situation at some point. It's just like the boy
Scouts say, you have to be prepared or excuse me.
I think it's just the Scouts now, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
Yeah, that's right, that's right, that's right.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
We hope that you have enjoyed this episode, and we would,
of course, as always, like to thank our super producer, Casey.
You know, I always want to give you a nickname,
and I always stop myself. Do you want to be
the saboteur?
Speaker 2 (24:58):
Oh? I like that idea? Yeah, I to it. I
support that wholeheartedly. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
So we'd like to thank our super producer, Casey, the
sabato of Pegrum.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
I would like to thank Alex Williams, who composed our theme.
We'd like to thank Gabe, our research associate. Ben. I'd
like to thank you for being a friend traveling down
that road, whether on skis or on foot, and possibly
back again. Unless it's uphill and you're expected to do
it on skis, that's not going to work. I love
playing that song. My cats are so sick of me
playing that. It's a good show too. It really holds
up very forward thinking.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
It does surprisingly watching it when I was very young
with my grandmother, I enjoyed it, but I think I
didn't get most of the jokes. So now it's Blanche
is a dirty, dirty, dirty personality, but lovable and hey,
maybe that's the way you think of us.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
If so, let us know, or if not, you could
just write to us. We are on.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Instagram, we are on Facebook, we are on Twitter. You
can meet our favorite part of the show, your fellow
listeners on our Facebook page Ridiculous Historians.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
You hit me personally on Instagram at embryon Insider, where
I post you know, cat pictures and the like, and
then Ben, I believe you're on there as well.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
The rumors are true. You can see my various misadventures
that involve, frankly, all kinds of weird stuff, from travel
to mysterious investigations to god, I don't know, there was
a time when I was going.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
Through a lot of puppet pictures.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
Either way, that's at Ben Bowling, And of course, if
you want to check out our weird t shirts based
on puns and catchphrases that we are cartoonishly enamored of.
Visit us at our store on Ridiculous Historyshow dot.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Com the Tea Public Store, and join us. Next time.
We'll talk about some other stuff. We haven't quite gotten
that far ahead yet, but we'll get there. We will
see that. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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