February 26, 2019 • 25 mins
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 (00:24):
So close, so close, it is as 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 six, twenty nineteen, but
two days from now, if you're listening to this, the
(00:46):
day it comes out, we will hit the anniversary of
something called Operation gunner Side. I know you love a
good operation, Ben, I mean, who doesn't write this will
be the seventies six anniversary of Operation Gunner Side. And uh,
if you're wondering, hey, guys, what the heck is Operation
gunner Side, we're glad to tell you, of course, with
(01:09):
the help of our constant super producer, Casey Pegrum and
truest friend and confidante. The Golden Girls song is playing
in my head. I love that song is really good.
It's so good. 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 listened to the full version
(01:31):
of the Golden Girls song? 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. The best part is
the TV theme and if you had a party and
invited everyone, you know, it's my part. I like the end.
The card attached would say and everybody comes in, thank
(01:52):
you for being a you know, I say to you,
thank you for being a Ben, thank you, thank you.
You know what you're uh, You're no slouch at being
a knoll and Casey Pegram you were my favorite Casey. Well,
thank you, Ben. Okay, I didn't know if you were
going to respond to that. That's a casey on the case. There,
that's a casey on the case. That's a very nice
casey on the case. Do you know who else was
(02:15):
being good at what they were who else? Nazis? Nazis? Yeah, Nazis. Okay,
let me let me caveat that a little bit. But
they were, they were being successful at what they were doing.
That's what I'm saying. Yeah, So our story today takes
place in the nineteen forties in World War Two and
(02:38):
the rush to build the first nuclear weapon. 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 started doing our own version
(03:01):
right 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 called Lanvine, which translates to the Uranium Club,
and that was founded as a secret program in April
(03:22):
of nine nine, which was just shortly after Otto Han
and Fritz Strassmann, who are to German scientists, accidentally discovered
nuclear fission, giving the Germans quite an advantage over the
United States. Right. This was December ninety eight, over Christmas
vacation when these physicists made this discovery, and it's one
(03:45):
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 led by a is thisist named Kurt Diepner,
and he had built a think tank of the top
eggheads in Germany, including Verna Heisenberg. The Americans were working
(04:11):
on this too, the Germans had a different program, so
they're they're trying to accomplish the same thing they want
to build, ultimately an atomic weapon. But one of the
differences that they had was their use of what they
called a moderator. And a moderator is a component of
(04:31):
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 yea, and a nuclear
bomb similar to nuclear reactor is 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
(04:53):
or power exactly exactly. So, a moderator is a substance
that's essentially used to slowed 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
(05:16):
graphite blocks, and they don't have cooler, 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 what's it? What's heavy water? Aside from an awesome name,
for something. It's incredible, uh, and I did not know
what it was. UM. And heavy water is water that
(05:39):
has um a an atomic or molecular rather weight of
twenty rather than eight, and that's in a m U
or atomic mass units UM. To the layman or anyone,
really heavy water would taste the same as regular water.
It would feel same on your body. You could swim
(06:01):
in it, just the same as you could any other
kind of regular water. But it occurs incredibly rarely in nature, right, UM.
I think it's something along the lines according to the
Smithsonian magazine, UM, it is incredibly rare in nature happening.
Something along the lines of one in a billion llcules
of water that occur naturally would be considered heavy. UM.
(06:24):
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. Right right. It's
it's not a clever title, right, there's trying to be euphemistic.
The water is heavy, you know, it's super descriptive. It's true, UM,
But this is the substance that the Nazis decided to
(06:47):
use as that what was the word been moderate? 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. Um Graphite, as we know, super common,
easy to I'm buy, It's in all kinds of stuff.
Heavy water, on the other hand, you gotta make it,
and in order to make it for this research that
(07:08):
they were doing, the Germans had a pretty massive facility
where they did just that. Right. Oh and quick note
on heavy water. It has a larger than normal amount
of a hydrogen isotope called deuterium, which is also known
as heavy hydrogen. So it all works out. They've got
(07:29):
a theme, and they also have a plant where they
create this stuff, a place called their Mark, and their
mork was created in like more door. It sounds like
a very sounds like a very evil you know, sour
man Hitler esque name. Really does. Did you ever see
(07:50):
that Mitchell and Webb sketch where they say, are we
the batties? Of course because the skull has particular villains, right,
but they're confused about where they fit into the story.
I feel like you were going to say something that
pertained to our episode, though, so I don't I don't
want to roll over. All I was gonna know, you're
not at all been. All I was gonna say is
they got this place by invading another place. But they
(08:12):
actually acquired this um, this very sinister sounding plant. Uh.
It's called the vim Or Chemical Plant, and it was
in Telemark County UM in Norway, which was occupied by
the Nazis at this point in World War two, and
it became a very important strategic uh stronghold for them.
It was built like a fortress, and they were able
(08:34):
to use the fact that it was a chemical plant
to help aid their research and to produce this heavy water. Absolutely,
this plant was already producing heavy water through the thirties.
By January nine, it had produced more than a hundred
grahams of this substance. But after the Germans sees the plant,
(08:55):
they forced the workers to increase the production of heavy
water because they needed this moderate See. I did not
know that bad. I didn't know that they were already
making it there, because it's sort of a weird thing
to make, Like it's it's like, why, what what other
purpose does it serve? Chemically or in some kind of
industrial manufacturing process? You know, maybe maybe the Norwegians just
had a pet peeve about ice cubes that float. Maybe
(09:18):
they thought they were insolent. That seems very expensive. That's true.
That's a good point. Maybe that's what smart water is.
And maybe maybe they also added like extra electrolytes and
and all that. Yeah, yeah, well plants grave it's true. Um,
So here's the thing. This is the lynchpin in the
Nazis plan to develop this weapon. And they're pretty far
(09:40):
along in their research and this stuff that they have
to have a pretty sizeable manufacturing chemical plant to produce.
They need it to make the weapon that they will
it won't do without it, 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
(10:05):
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. There's a guy who obtains
this for the British named leaf Tron Stud and he
anonymously corresponds with the British forces, you know, to preserve
(10:27):
his identity, and they begin to hatch a plan. The
British say, well, let's engage in some some good old sabotage.
Sabotage itself has a very interesting etymology. What is it?
So sabotage comes from uh French? I believe casey? Is
(10:51):
that correct? Like sabotaire? Yeah? Yeah, that's okay. So this
is interesting. I don't know if you had heard the
etymology of sabotage were Casey. I feel like you probably have. No,
nothing's coming to mind right now. So it meant it's
always meant deliberately and maliciously destroying property. Right. The apparent
(11:12):
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 story about it.
We don't know exactly where it comes from, but it
is related to the word shoe allegedly, so like throwing
(11:33):
your shoe into like the gears of a machine or
something like that. That's very you know what makes me
think of like the whole like throwing a monkey wrench
into the works. Yeah, yeah, exactly, because it causes the
gears to grind to a halt. So they wanted to
They wanted to engage in some good old fashioned sabotage,
and they had a secret unit that was accomplished at
(11:56):
this called the Special Operations Executive or sometimes called the
Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. Is that like the League of
Extraordinary Gentlemen. Yeah? Yeah, They trained people to conduct covert
sabotage missions. I love the idea of that as being ungentlemanly.
(12:18):
It's not like coming right to your face and doing
us doing it like under cover of night, creeping around
dirty Pool, old Man, dirty Pool, dirty Pool. 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 nine and they had this crazy
(12:41):
training regiment in Scotland. They had to train under cover
of night to climb mountains, ford rivers, camp outdoors for weeks.
These these guys are being made into rangers almost you know. Yeah,
but they're rangers with a very particular skill set, their
ski rangers. Yes, yes, tell us a little more about that. Well,
(13:02):
I will let me you know what. In fact, I'm
gonna I'm gonna do it better better than tell you.
I'm gonna do a reading for you from a book
titled The Winter Fortress. The Epic Mission to Sabotage Hitler's
Atomic Bomb by Neil Bascomb. Missile Missile paint the pictures
to tell you exactly what these guys did. Nazi occupied
Norway in a staggered line, the nine saboteurs cut across
(13:25):
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 poked with empty hollows and thick drifts
of snow. Dressed in white camouflage suits over their British
Army uniforms, the men looked like phantoms haunting the woods.
(13:47):
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 was the same wind that would, eventually,
they hoped, blow their tracks away. So yeah, they did
(14:09):
super badass downhill skiing. Uh. 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, and then one was called
Operation Freshman, in which forty two British Allied soldiers died
(14:31):
um in a botched mission where they were going to
UM kind of gain entry to the facility using gliders
that had been deployed from UM planes, right, so they
had a little bit of internal tension. Bombing the plant
was the preferred tactic of the American military, but Transta
was opposed to this because if the bombs hit the
(14:54):
liquid ammonious storage tanks, the civilian population nearby would be
at risk. And secondly, bombing might not even 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. First. They sent in Grouse,
which was a small scout team. They parachuted from a plane,
(15:16):
They landed in the area, and they started literally sneaking around.
After they had been there for a month in November,
Operation Freshmen launched these thirty nine British air troops carried
by two military gliders. The idea is that they would
land near the plant using the information provided by the
scouting group Grouse, and then they would attack. But the
(15:40):
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 second glider died in their crashed the worm
was off target. The others were caught executed by the Gestapo. Additionally,
(16:02):
German forces found a map that identified Vermorc 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
the land, hunting reindeer to survive and they were renamed Swallow.
(16:24):
Three months pass and the Swallow 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
Norwegian commandos from the Norwegian branch of the s o E.
They were gonna parachute straight to the target zone instead
(16:47):
of using a glider. They were going to meet up
with the Swallows and then together they were going to
raid the Vermot plants. So they jumped from a plane
while it's snowing in February eighteen forty three. They dressed
in British uniforms under their snowsuits because they thought, you know,
(17:07):
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 uh They landed miles away from where they were
supposed to be. They traveled for five days and then
(17:27):
they connected with their friends Grouse now named Swallow, and
then they began their raid on February. That's right, Ben
So Gunner side. The Gunner Side group UM 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,
(17:50):
but that was covered in mine fields. And then they
also had to cross a incredibly fortified and heavily guarded
suspension bridge, 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 UM to
get to an area that was a lot less heavily police. Yeah,
(18:10):
and they broke through a fence. You can see an
interview about this with a guy named Newt Heikelid in
the New York Times. Uh. 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
(18:30):
wanted to enter the plant through a side door, but
the door was locked, and they tried to find aside
access tunnel. Uh. But they started getting divided, call it
the fog of war. Once they got in, they started
placing explosive charges next the heavy water production cells, and
(18:53):
they had to UM. They had to improvise a little bit.
The explosives were supposed to have minute fuses, but they
cut them to make them thirty second fuses, so they
had thirty seconds to run away, I know. And so
after they have successfully destroyed the heavy water facility, they
flee and they say, hey, guys, bonus points, Let's try
(19:16):
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. They travel more
than two hundred miles the four man explosive team on
skis to Sweden, Neutral Neutral, Neutral Sweden, land of modern
(19:38):
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. Um. 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 it out of there on their skis, get
his neutral Sweden, and then ultimately get back to get
(20:01):
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 of stealth spy types on skis is
a little funny, but man, what what what bravery these
(20:25):
these guys exhibited, and to to have it go so well,
it's so rare. How long does it take to ski
two hundred miles? I don't know, I don't know. Yeah,
I want the Proclaimers to do a version of their
song about this. So Operation Gunners Side was initially a success.
(20:49):
It did caused German forces to lose five ms of
heavy water and it knocked the plan out of action
for a few months. Unfortunately, by May of ninette, the
facilities were rebuilt and they were back in the heavy
water game. I see a message board here on J
two ski dot com where someone talks about completing a
ski marathon at a hundred and thirty kilometers in two days.
(21:14):
That's faster than walking. Yeah, but that's about That's about it.
Kilometer is more than a mile, so this will probably
take like maybe four days. Yeah, that's about on base
because a hundred forty kilometers is about eighty seven miles.
There's also a lot depends on the terrain, and I
gotta wonder if they had them maybe hoof it occasionally,
if it is if the yeah, or if it was
(21:35):
literally a two hundred mile completely downhill route to sweet
It's just a bunny slope, nothing to it. Um so
pretty cool. Huh, And we hope that you enjoyed the
story of Operation Gunners 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,
(21:57):
I I have some breaking news. I've been told that
we have an update on our etymology conversation. Is that correct, Casey?
That is correct? So I did look into the etymology
of saboteur or sabotage, and it does seem to derive
from the word the French word sabo for a wooden
(22:17):
shoe or a clog. So see that that would cause
some damage out absolutely, yeah, that would that would grind
the gears or 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 to when we talk about how intrepid these uh,
(22:38):
these guys were. They all were equipped with um, you know,
weapons and survival gear, but they had to travel lightly
because they did not have any vehicle support outside of
themselves and their their legs and their skis. They also
had sanide pills on them and so they couldn't be
taken alive. I mean, you know, we've all been in
that kind of situation at some point, and it's just
(23:00):
like the boy Scouts say, you have to be prepared
or excuse me. I think it's just the Scouts now,
isn't it. Yeah, that's right, that's right, that's right. We
hope that you have enjoyed this episode, and we would,
of course, as always, like to thank our superproducer, Casey.
You know, I always want to give you a nickname,
and I always stopped myself. Do you want to be
(23:20):
the saboteur? Oh? I like that idea. Yeah, I'm into it.
I support that wholeheartedly. So we'd like to take our superproducer,
Casey the sabot a pegrum. I would like to thank
Alex Williams, who composed our theme. We'd like to thank Gabe,
our research associate. Man. I'd like to thank you for
being a friend traveling down that road, whether on skis
or on foot, uh, and possibly back again, unless it's
(23:42):
uphill and you're expected to do it on skis, that's
not gonna 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. 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 blanches Ah dirty, dirty,
dirty personality, but lovable and hey, maybe that's the way
(24:05):
you think of us. If so, let us know, or
if not, you could just write to us. We are
on Instagram, We're on Facebook, we are on Twitter. You
can meet our favorite part of the show, your fellow
listeners on our Facebook page, Ridiculous Historians. You hit me
personally on Instagram at Embryonic Insider, where I post you know,
cat pictures and the like, and then Ben, I believe
(24:27):
you're on there as well. The rumors are true. You
can see my various misadventures that involve, frankly, all kinds
of weird stuff, from from travel to mysterious investigations, um
to god. I don't know there was a time when
I was going through a lot of puppet pictures. Either way,
that's at ben Boland. And of course, if you want
(24:50):
to check out our weird t shirts based on puns
and catchphrases that we are cartoonishly enamored of visit us
at our store on rich Aculous History Show dot com
the te Public Store um and join us next time
and we'll talk about some other stuff. But I haven't
quite gotten that far ahead yet, but we'll get there.
We'll see the
So close, so close, it is as 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 six, twenty nineteen, but
two days from now, if you're listening to this, the
(00:46):
day it comes out, we will hit the anniversary of
something called Operation gunner Side. I know you love a
good operation, Ben, I mean, who doesn't write this will
be the seventies six anniversary of Operation Gunner Side. And uh,
if you're wondering, hey, guys, what the heck is Operation
gunner Side, we're glad to tell you, of course, with
(01:09):
the help of our constant super producer, Casey Pegrum and
truest friend and confidante. The Golden Girls song is playing
in my head. I love that song is really good.
It's so good. 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 listened to the full version
(01:31):
of the Golden Girls song? 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. The best part is
the TV theme and if you had a party and
invited everyone, you know, it's my part. I like the end.
The card attached would say and everybody comes in, thank
(01:52):
you for being a you know, I say to you,
thank you for being a Ben, thank you, thank you.
You know what you're uh, You're no slouch at being
a knoll and Casey Pegram you were my favorite Casey. Well,
thank you, Ben. Okay, I didn't know if you were
going to respond to that. That's a casey on the case. There,
that's a casey on the case. That's a very nice
casey on the case. Do you know who else was
(02:15):
being good at what they were who else? Nazis? Nazis? Yeah, Nazis. Okay,
let me let me caveat that a little bit. But
they were, they were being successful at what they were doing.
That's what I'm saying. Yeah, So our story today takes
place in the nineteen forties in World War Two and
(02:38):
the rush to build the first nuclear weapon. 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 started doing our own version
(03:01):
right 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 called Lanvine, which translates to the Uranium Club,
and that was founded as a secret program in April
(03:22):
of nine nine, which was just shortly after Otto Han
and Fritz Strassmann, who are to German scientists, accidentally discovered
nuclear fission, giving the Germans quite an advantage over the
United States. Right. This was December ninety eight, over Christmas
vacation when these physicists made this discovery, and it's one
(03:45):
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 led by a is thisist named Kurt Diepner,
and he had built a think tank of the top
eggheads in Germany, including Verna Heisenberg. The Americans were working
(04:11):
on this too, the Germans had a different program, so
they're they're trying to accomplish the same thing they want
to build, ultimately an atomic weapon. But one of the
differences that they had was their use of what they
called a moderator. And a moderator is a component of
(04:31):
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 yea, and a nuclear
bomb similar to nuclear reactor is 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
(04:53):
or power exactly exactly. So, a moderator is a substance
that's essentially used to slowed 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
(05:16):
graphite blocks, and they don't have cooler, 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 what's it? What's heavy water? Aside from an awesome name,
for something. It's incredible, uh, and I did not know
what it was. UM. And heavy water is water that
(05:39):
has um a an atomic or molecular rather weight of
twenty rather than eight, and that's in a m U
or atomic mass units UM. To the layman or anyone,
really heavy water would taste the same as regular water.
It would feel same on your body. You could swim
(06:01):
in it, just the same as you could any other
kind of regular water. But it occurs incredibly rarely in nature, right, UM.
I think it's something along the lines according to the
Smithsonian magazine, UM, it is incredibly rare in nature happening.
Something along the lines of one in a billion llcules
of water that occur naturally would be considered heavy. UM.
(06:24):
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. Right right. It's
it's not a clever title, right, there's trying to be euphemistic.
The water is heavy, you know, it's super descriptive. It's true, UM,
But this is the substance that the Nazis decided to
(06:47):
use as that what was the word been moderate? 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. Um Graphite, as we know, super common,
easy to I'm buy, It's in all kinds of stuff.
Heavy water, on the other hand, you gotta make it,
and in order to make it for this research that
(07:08):
they were doing, the Germans had a pretty massive facility
where they did just that. Right. Oh and quick note
on heavy water. It has a larger than normal amount
of a hydrogen isotope called deuterium, which is also known
as heavy hydrogen. So it all works out. They've got
(07:29):
a theme, and they also have a plant where they
create this stuff, a place called their Mark, and their
mork was created in like more door. It sounds like
a very sounds like a very evil you know, sour
man Hitler esque name. Really does. Did you ever see
(07:50):
that Mitchell and Webb sketch where they say, are we
the batties? Of course because the skull has particular villains, right,
but they're confused about where they fit into the story.
I feel like you were going to say something that
pertained to our episode, though, so I don't I don't
want to roll over. All I was gonna know, you're
not at all been. All I was gonna say is
they got this place by invading another place. But they
(08:12):
actually acquired this um, this very sinister sounding plant. Uh.
It's called the vim Or Chemical Plant, and it was
in Telemark County UM in Norway, which was occupied by
the Nazis at this point in World War two, and
it became a very important strategic uh stronghold for them.
It was built like a fortress, and they were able
(08:34):
to use the fact that it was a chemical plant
to help aid their research and to produce this heavy water. Absolutely,
this plant was already producing heavy water through the thirties.
By January nine, it had produced more than a hundred
grahams of this substance. But after the Germans sees the plant,
(08:55):
they forced the workers to increase the production of heavy
water because they needed this moderate See. I did not
know that bad. I didn't know that they were already
making it there, because it's sort of a weird thing
to make, Like it's it's like, why, what what other
purpose does it serve? Chemically or in some kind of
industrial manufacturing process? You know, maybe maybe the Norwegians just
had a pet peeve about ice cubes that float. Maybe
(09:18):
they thought they were insolent. That seems very expensive. That's true.
That's a good point. Maybe that's what smart water is.
And maybe maybe they also added like extra electrolytes and
and all that. Yeah, yeah, well plants grave it's true. Um,
So here's the thing. This is the lynchpin in the
Nazis plan to develop this weapon. And they're pretty far
(09:40):
along in their research and this stuff that they have
to have a pretty sizeable manufacturing chemical plant to produce.
They need it to make the weapon that they will
it won't do without it, 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
(10:05):
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. There's a guy who obtains
this for the British named leaf Tron Stud and he
anonymously corresponds with the British forces, you know, to preserve
(10:27):
his identity, and they begin to hatch a plan. The
British say, well, let's engage in some some good old sabotage.
Sabotage itself has a very interesting etymology. What is it?
So sabotage comes from uh French? I believe casey? Is
(10:51):
that correct? Like sabotaire? Yeah? Yeah, that's okay. So this
is interesting. I don't know if you had heard the
etymology of sabotage were Casey. I feel like you probably have. No,
nothing's coming to mind right now. So it meant it's
always meant deliberately and maliciously destroying property. Right. The apparent
(11:12):
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 story about it.
We don't know exactly where it comes from, but it
is related to the word shoe allegedly, so like throwing
(11:33):
your shoe into like the gears of a machine or
something like that. That's very you know what makes me
think of like the whole like throwing a monkey wrench
into the works. Yeah, yeah, exactly, because it causes the
gears to grind to a halt. So they wanted to
They wanted to engage in some good old fashioned sabotage,
and they had a secret unit that was accomplished at
(11:56):
this called the Special Operations Executive or sometimes called the
Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. Is that like the League of
Extraordinary Gentlemen. Yeah? Yeah, They trained people to conduct covert
sabotage missions. I love the idea of that as being ungentlemanly.
(12:18):
It's not like coming right to your face and doing
us doing it like under cover of night, creeping around
dirty Pool, old Man, dirty Pool, dirty Pool. 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 nine and they had this crazy
(12:41):
training regiment in Scotland. They had to train under cover
of night to climb mountains, ford rivers, camp outdoors for weeks.
These these guys are being made into rangers almost you know. Yeah,
but they're rangers with a very particular skill set, their
ski rangers. Yes, yes, tell us a little more about that. Well,
(13:02):
I will let me you know what. In fact, I'm
gonna I'm gonna do it better better than tell you.
I'm gonna do a reading for you from a book
titled The Winter Fortress. The Epic Mission to Sabotage Hitler's
Atomic Bomb by Neil Bascomb. Missile Missile paint the pictures
to tell you exactly what these guys did. Nazi occupied
Norway in a staggered line, the nine saboteurs cut across
(13:25):
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 poked with empty hollows and thick drifts
of snow. Dressed in white camouflage suits over their British
Army uniforms, the men looked like phantoms haunting the woods.
(13:47):
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 was the same wind that would, eventually,
they hoped, blow their tracks away. So yeah, they did
(14:09):
super badass downhill skiing. Uh. 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, and then one was called
Operation Freshman, in which forty two British Allied soldiers died
(14:31):
um in a botched mission where they were going to
UM kind of gain entry to the facility using gliders
that had been deployed from UM planes, right, so they
had a little bit of internal tension. Bombing the plant
was the preferred tactic of the American military, but Transta
was opposed to this because if the bombs hit the
(14:54):
liquid ammonious storage tanks, the civilian population nearby would be
at risk. And secondly, bombing might not even 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. First. They sent in Grouse,
which was a small scout team. They parachuted from a plane,
(15:16):
They landed in the area, and they started literally sneaking around.
After they had been there for a month in November,
Operation Freshmen launched these thirty nine British air troops carried
by two military gliders. The idea is that they would
land near the plant using the information provided by the
scouting group Grouse, and then they would attack. But the
(15:40):
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 second glider died in their crashed the worm
was off target. The others were caught executed by the Gestapo. Additionally,
(16:02):
German forces found a map that identified Vermorc 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
the land, hunting reindeer to survive and they were renamed Swallow.
(16:24):
Three months pass and the Swallow 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
Norwegian commandos from the Norwegian branch of the s o E.
They were gonna parachute straight to the target zone instead
(16:47):
of using a glider. They were going to meet up
with the Swallows and then together they were going to
raid the Vermot plants. So they jumped from a plane
while it's snowing in February eighteen forty three. They dressed
in British uniforms under their snowsuits because they thought, you know,
(17:07):
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 uh They landed miles away from where they were
supposed to be. They traveled for five days and then
(17:27):
they connected with their friends Grouse now named Swallow, and
then they began their raid on February. That's right, Ben
So Gunner side. The Gunner Side group UM 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,
(17:50):
but that was covered in mine fields. And then they
also had to cross a incredibly fortified and heavily guarded
suspension bridge, 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 UM to
get to an area that was a lot less heavily police. Yeah,
(18:10):
and they broke through a fence. You can see an
interview about this with a guy named Newt Heikelid in
the New York Times. Uh. 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
(18:30):
wanted to enter the plant through a side door, but
the door was locked, and they tried to find aside
access tunnel. Uh. But they started getting divided, call it
the fog of war. Once they got in, they started
placing explosive charges next the heavy water production cells, and
(18:53):
they had to UM. They had to improvise a little bit.
The explosives were supposed to have minute fuses, but they
cut them to make them thirty second fuses, so they
had thirty seconds to run away, I know. And so
after they have successfully destroyed the heavy water facility, they
flee and they say, hey, guys, bonus points, Let's try
(19:16):
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. They travel more
than two hundred miles the four man explosive team on
skis to Sweden, Neutral Neutral, Neutral Sweden, land of modern
(19:38):
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. Um. 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 it out of there on their skis, get
his neutral Sweden, and then ultimately get back to get
(20:01):
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 of stealth spy types on skis is
a little funny, but man, what what what bravery these
(20:25):
these guys exhibited, and to to have it go so well,
it's so rare. How long does it take to ski
two hundred miles? I don't know, I don't know. Yeah,
I want the Proclaimers to do a version of their
song about this. So Operation Gunners Side was initially a success.
(20:49):
It did caused German forces to lose five ms of
heavy water and it knocked the plan out of action
for a few months. Unfortunately, by May of ninette, the
facilities were rebuilt and they were back in the heavy
water game. I see a message board here on J
two ski dot com where someone talks about completing a
ski marathon at a hundred and thirty kilometers in two days.
(21:14):
That's faster than walking. Yeah, but that's about That's about it.
Kilometer is more than a mile, so this will probably
take like maybe four days. Yeah, that's about on base
because a hundred forty kilometers is about eighty seven miles.
There's also a lot depends on the terrain, and I
gotta wonder if they had them maybe hoof it occasionally,
if it is if the yeah, or if it was
(21:35):
literally a two hundred mile completely downhill route to sweet
It's just a bunny slope, nothing to it. Um so
pretty cool. Huh, And we hope that you enjoyed the
story of Operation Gunners 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,
(21:57):
I I have some breaking news. I've been told that
we have an update on our etymology conversation. Is that correct, Casey?
That is correct? So I did look into the etymology
of saboteur or sabotage, and it does seem to derive
from the word the French word sabo for a wooden
(22:17):
shoe or a clog. So see that that would cause
some damage out absolutely, yeah, that would that would grind
the gears or 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 to when we talk about how intrepid these uh,
(22:38):
these guys were. They all were equipped with um, you know,
weapons and survival gear, but they had to travel lightly
because they did not have any vehicle support outside of
themselves and their their legs and their skis. They also
had sanide pills on them and so they couldn't be
taken alive. I mean, you know, we've all been in
that kind of situation at some point, and it's just
(23:00):
like the boy Scouts say, you have to be prepared
or excuse me. I think it's just the Scouts now,
isn't it. Yeah, that's right, that's right, that's right. We
hope that you have enjoyed this episode, and we would,
of course, as always, like to thank our superproducer, Casey.
You know, I always want to give you a nickname,
and I always stopped myself. Do you want to be
(23:20):
the saboteur? Oh? I like that idea. Yeah, I'm into it.
I support that wholeheartedly. So we'd like to take our superproducer,
Casey the sabot a pegrum. I would like to thank
Alex Williams, who composed our theme. We'd like to thank Gabe,
our research associate. Man. I'd like to thank you for
being a friend traveling down that road, whether on skis
or on foot, uh, and possibly back again, unless it's
(23:42):
uphill and you're expected to do it on skis, that's
not gonna 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. 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 blanches Ah dirty, dirty,
dirty personality, but lovable and hey, maybe that's the way
(24:05):
you think of us. If so, let us know, or
if not, you could just write to us. We are
on Instagram, We're on Facebook, we are on Twitter. You
can meet our favorite part of the show, your fellow
listeners on our Facebook page, Ridiculous Historians. You hit me
personally on Instagram at Embryonic Insider, where I post you know,
cat pictures and the like, and then Ben, I believe
(24:27):
you're on there as well. The rumors are true. You
can see my various misadventures that involve, frankly, all kinds
of weird stuff, from from travel to mysterious investigations, um
to god. I don't know there was a time when
I was going through a lot of puppet pictures. Either way,
that's at ben Boland. And of course, if you want
(24:50):
to check out our weird t shirts based on puns
and catchphrases that we are cartoonishly enamored of visit us
at our store on rich Aculous History Show dot com
the te Public Store um and join us next time
and we'll talk about some other stuff. But I haven't
quite gotten that far ahead yet, but we'll get there.
We'll see the
Ridiculous History News
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Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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