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Ridiculous History
CLASSIC: Operation Gunnerside: How a Crew of Military Skiers Ruined the Nazi Bomb
00:26:59
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- [00:00]
A
Fellow ridiculous historians, we have a classic episode that we can't wait to share with you. Max. It reminds me a little bit of how we learned about the phenomenal sport of curling, thanks to you, because this is the literal weaponization of a wintertime sport.
- [00:24]
B
Well, Ben, I don't know if you know this, but to date almost five years on the show, my favorite episode.
- [00:29]
A
Sticks still is the Sausage War episode.
- [00:32]
B
Which we talk about skiing and combat a lot on that one. And also the Anus expedition.
- [00:36]
A
Ah, yes. Yeah. All right, here's the skinny, folks. There's a thing called Operation Gunnerside. It's a story the Jedi won't tell you. On February 27, 1942, there were these guys who were super into sabotage. Real spec ops stuff. They wanted to attack a Nazi controlled plant in Norway, and they had to figure out how to pull this off. They were outnumbered, they were outgunned. 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. By gosh, by golly, they pulled it off. They ruined the Nazi bomb project on literal snow skis.
- [01:32]
C
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [01:34]
A
Guaranteed Human.
- [01:36]
C
Did you know Tide has been upgraded to provide an even better clean in cold water? Tide is specifically designed to fight any stain you throw at it. Even in cold butter. Yep. Chocolate ice cream. Sure thing. Barbecue sauce. Tide's got you covered. You don't need to use warm water. Additionally, Tide pods let you confidently fight tough stains with new coldzyme technology. Just remember, if it's gotta be clean, it's gotta be Tide. In the middle of the night, Saskia awoke in a haze. Her husband Mike was on his laptop. What was on his screen would change Saskia's life forever.
- [02:15]
A
I said, I need you to tell me exactly what you're doing. And immediately, the mask came off. You're supposed to be safe. That's your home. That's your husband.
- [02:28]
C
Listen to Betrayal Season 5 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [02:36]
A
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartrad. 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 26, 2019. But two days from now, if you're listening to this, the day it comes out, we will hit the anniversary of something called Operation Gunnerside.
- [03:33]
B
I know you love a good operation, Ben.
- [03:35]
A
I mean, who doesn't Right. This will be the 76th anniversary of Operation Gunnerside. And if you're wondering, hey, guys, what the heck is Operation Gunnerside? We're glad to tell you, of course. With the help of our constant super.
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B
Producer, Casey Pegram, and truest friend and.
- [03:55]
A
Confidant, the Golden Girls song is playing in my head. I love that song.
- [04:00]
B
It's really good.
- [04:01]
A
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 listen to the full version of the Golden Girl song?
- [04:12]
B
Is it just called thank you for being a Friend?
- [04:15]
A
I can't remember. But it's not as good, really. The best part is the TV theme.
- [04:20]
B
If you had a party and invited everyone, you know, it's my favorite part.
- [04:27]
A
I like the. And the card attached would say. And then everybody comes in, thank you for being a friend.
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B
You know what I say to you? Thank you for being a. Ben.
- [04:37]
A
Oh, thank you. Thank you. You know what? You're not. You're no slouch at being a Knoll. And Casey Pegram, you are my favorite Casey. Why, thank you, Ben. Oh, okay. I didn't know if you were going to respond to that one.
- [04:49]
B
That's Casey on the case there.
- [04:50]
A
That's Casey on the case. That's a very nice. Casey on the case.
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B
You know who else was being good at what they were?
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A
Who else?
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B
Nazis.
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A
Nazis.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Yeah, Nazis.
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B
Okay, let me caveat that a little bit.
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A
But they were being successful at what they were doing.
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B
That's what I'm saying. Yeah.
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A
So our story today takes place in the 1940s, in World War II, and the rush to build the first nuclear weapon.
- [05:22]
B
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 and started doing our own version.
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A
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.
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B
Which was called Uranwehn, which translates to the Uranium Club. And that was founded. It's a secret program in April of 1939, 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.
- [06:17]
A
Right. This was December 1938, 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 led by a physicist named Kurt Deipner, and he had built a think tank of the top eggheads in Germany, including Werner 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. 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 reactors usually have a couple of things in common. They have a fuel source, control rods, a moderator coolant and an encasement.
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B
Yeah, and a nuclear bomb similar to nuclear reactors. 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 power.
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A
Exactly, exactly. So a moderator is a substance that's essentially used to slow down the fission.
- [07:42]
B
Process, making it more controllable or at least more efficient.
- [07:46]
A
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 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.
- [08:13]
B
It'S incredible and I did not know what it was. And heavy water is water that has an atomic or molecular rather weight of 20 rather than 18, and that's in AMU or atomic mass units. To the layman or anyone, 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. Happening something along the lines of one in a billion molecules 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.
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A
Right, right. It's not a clever title. Right. It's not trying to be euphemistic. The water is heavier.
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B
No, 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, Ben?
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A
Moderator.
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B
As that. Moderator for splitt 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, easy to come by. It's in 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.
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A
Right. Oh, and quick note, on heavy water, it has a larger than normal amount of a hydrogen isotope called tube deuterium, 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 Vermork. And Vermork was created in.
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B
Is it like Mordor?
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A
Yeah, it sounds like a very. Sounds like a very evil, you know, Saurman Hitler esque name.
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B
Really does.
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A
Did you ever see that Mitchell and Webb sketch where they say, are we the baddies?
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B
No. Oh, yeah.
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A
You know what I'm talking about.
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B
Yeah, of course.
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A
Because of the skull hats.
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B
That's right. They're like Bond villains. Right. But they're confused about where they fit into the story. That's right.
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A
I feel like you were gonna say something that pertained to our episode, though, so I don't wanna roll over you.
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B
Oh, all I was gonna. No, not at all, Ben. All I was gonna say is they got this place by invading another place, but they actually acquired this very sinister sounding plant. It's called the Vemork chemical plant. And it was in Telema, which was occupied by the Nazis at this point in World War II. 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.
- [11:20]
A
Absolutely. This plant was already producing heavy water through the 30s. By January 1935, it had produced more than 100 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.
- [11:40]
B
See, I did not know that, Ben. 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 other purpose does it serve chemically or in some kind of industrial manufacturing process, do you know?
- [11:52]
A
I don't know, man. Maybe the Norwegians just had a pet peeve about ice cubes that float. Maybe they thought they were insulin. That seems very expensive. That's true.
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B
That's a good point. Maybe that's what smart water is. Maybe they also added, like, extra electrolytes and all that.
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A
Yeah, yeah. What plants grave.
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B
It's true. So here's the thing. This is the linchpin 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. They need it to make the weapon. It won't do without it.
- [12:33]
A
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 1941, and they get this via a message from the Norwegian underground. There's a guy who obtains this for the British named Leif Tronstad, and he anonymously 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. Some good old sabotage. Sabotage itself has a very interesting etymology.
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B
What is it?
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A
So sabotage comes from French, I believe, Casey. Is that correct? You're like saboteur. 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. No, nothing's coming to mind right now. So it meant. It's always meant deliberately and maliciously destroying property. Right. The apparent story, which 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.
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B
So, like throwing your shoe into, like, the gears of a machine or something.
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A
Like that, that's very.
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B
You know, it makes me think of, like the whole, like, throwing a monkey wrench into the works.
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A
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
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B
Because it causes the gears to grind to a halt.
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A
So 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.
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B
Ooh, is that like the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen?
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A
Yeah, yeah. They train people to conduct covert sabotage missions.
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B
Oh, I love the idea of that as being ungentlemanly.
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A
Yes.
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B
It's not like coming right to your face and doing it, it's doing it like under cover of night, creeping around. Dirty pool, old man.
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A
Dirty pool. Dirty pool. They had a Norwegian branch of the Special Operations Executive, and they recruited various Norwegians who had fled to England after Germany invaded their country in 1940. And. And they had this crazy training regimen in Scotland. They had to train under cover of night to climb mountains, ford rivers, camp outdoors for weeks. These guys are being made into rangers almost, you know.
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B
Yeah, but they're rangers with a very particular skill set. They're ski rangers.
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A
Yes, yes. Tell us a little more about that.
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B
Well, I will. Let me. You know what, in fact, I'm going to. I'm going to do a better. 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 Baskin.
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A
This will.
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B
This will paint the pictures to tell you exactly what these guys did. Nazi occupied Norway. In a staggered line, the nine 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 pocked 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. 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 Vestfjord Valley dampened even these sounds. It 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, and then one was called Operation freshman, in which 42 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.
- [17:21]
A
Right. So they had a little bit of internal tension. Bombing the plant was the preferred tactic of the American military, but Tronstead was opposed to this because if the bombs hit the liquid ammonia storage tanks, the. 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. They landed in the area and they started literally sneaking around after they had been there for a month. In November of 1942, Operation Freshman launched. These 39 British air troops carried by two military gliders. The idea was that they would land 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 second glider died in their crash. One was off target. The others were caught and executed by the Gestapo. Additionally, German forces found a map that identified Vermorkk 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. 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 Gunnerside. This was a small group of 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 Vermont plant. So they jumped from a plane while it's snowing. February 16, 1943. They dressed 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 miles away from where they were supposed to be. They traveled for five days, and then they connected with their friends, Grouse, now named Swallow, and then they began their raid on February 27th, 1943.
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B
That's right, Ben. So Gunnerside, the Gunnerside group decided that there were three ways to access the plant, and 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. 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.
- [20:50]
A
Yeah. And they broke Through a fence. You can see an interview about this with a guy named Nut Heikh Lid in the New York Times. They, 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 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. Call it the fog of war. Once they got in, they started placing explosive charges next to the heavy water production cells. And they had to improvise a little bit. The explosives were supposed to have two minute fuses, but they cut them to make them 30 second fuses. So they had 30 seconds to run away. I know. And so after they have successfully destroyed the heavy water facility and 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. They travel more than 200 miles. The four man explosive team on skis to Sweden.
- [22:12]
B
Yeah, neutral. Neutral. Neutral Sweden. Land of modern furniture and meatballs and neutrality and 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 hightail it out of there on their skis, get to neutral Sweden, and then ultimately get back home alive. And these were men who were going into the situation fully aware that they might not make it out alive. As you can tell, this is a pretty intrepid mission. Doesn't really fall under 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, these guys exhibited. And to, to have it go so well is so rare.
- [23:09]
A
How long does it take to ski 200 miles?
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B
Yeah, I don't know.
- [23:14]
A
I don't know. Yeah, I want the Proclaimers to do a, a version of their song about this. So Operation Gunnerside was initially a success. It did cause German forces to lose 500 kilograms of heavy water. And it knocked the plan out of action for a few months. Unfortunately, By May of 1943, the facilities were rebuilt and they were back in the heavy water game.
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B
I see a message board here on J2Ski.com where someone talks about completing a ski marathon at 130 kilometers in two days.
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A
Okay, well that's faster than walking.
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B
Yeah, that's about that's. About it. 130. No kilometers. More than a mile. So this would probably take like maybe four days.
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A
Yeah, that's about on base because 140 kilometers is about 87 miles.
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B
It's also a lot depends on the terrain. And I gotta wonder if they had to maybe hoof it occasionally. Yeah.
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A
Or if it was literally a 200 mile, completely downhill route to Sweden.
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B
Just a bunny slope, nothing to it. So. Pretty cool, huh?
- [24:23]
A
And we hope that you enjoyed the story of Operation Gunnerside. 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? 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 sabot for a wooden shoe or a clog.
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B
So see, then that would cause some damage.
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A
Absolutely. Yeah. That would. That would grind the gears or what have you. Literally.
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B
Hey, so it looks like Casey on the case, the segment. We never closed it out last time.
- [25:10]
A
So let's close it now. Casey on the case.
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B
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 any vehicle support outside of themselves and their. Their legs and their skis. They also had cyanide pills on them so they couldn't be taken alive.
- [25:35]
A
I mean, you know, we've all been in that kind of situation at some point. And 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? 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 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? Oh, I like that idea.
- [26:02]
B
Yeah, I'm into it. I support that wholeheartedly.
- [26:04]
A
Yeah. So we'd like to thank our super producer, Casey, the saboteur of Pegra.
- [26:09]
B
We'd 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 gonna work.
- [26:24]
A
I love playing that song. My cats are so sick of me playing that.
- [26:27]
B
It's a good show too. It really holds up very forward thinking.
- [26:30]
A
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. If so, let us know. Or if not, you could just write to us. We are on 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.
- [27:01]
B
You can hit me up personally on Instagram at Embryonic Insider, where I post, you know, cat pictures and the like. And then, Ben, I believe you're on there as well.
- [27:08]
A
The rumors are true. You can see my various misadventures that involve, frankly, all kinds of weird stuff from from travel to mysterious investigations 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 Bolan. And of course, if you want to check out our weird T shirts based on puns and catchphrases that we are cartoonishly enam, visit us at our store on ridiculoushistoryshow.com the TeePublic store.
- [27:43]
B
And join us next time and we'll talk about some other stuff. We haven't quite gotten that far ahead.
- [27:47]
A
Yet, but we'll get there.
- [27:48]
B
We will see you then. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
- [28:02]
C
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [28:04]
A
Guaranteed Human.