Today in WWII History

Please explain

 

Sir,
I thought maybe you were upset or something, that's all

 

I wasn't but I am now. Think this should end now.

 

Firefoxy . Liberator is one of most valuable contributors. You'd better think twice before you start criticism about someone with such a knowledge The man has put more useful posts alone than many of us will ever be able to post together and you are certainly in no postion to challenge him on the matter. I shall give no second warning.

 

65 years today since the US bombed the heavy water plant at Vemork in Telemark:

The Heavy Water Sabotage in Telemark between 1942 and 1944

Large scale heavy water production in Norway
At the outbreak of World War II, the Vemork hydroelectric plant at Rjukan in Telemark, Southern Norway was the only facility in Europe that produced heavy water in large-scale volumes.

The Germans kept the plant under heavy guard during World War II - for good reason. The barrels of heavy water that were rolled out were sent to Germany, where they were used to control nuclear fission.

Following the occupation of Norway in the spring of 1940, it soon became clear that the Germans were interested in heavy water. By the start of 1942, production at new installations in Rjukan, based on a German method, increased to 100 kilos per month. Not long after, the Germans announced they wanted to increase output further.


The threat of a potential nuclear weapon
It was known in London and Washington that two German atomic physicists were working on nuclear fission and it was assumed that heavy water had something to do with Hitler's threat of a secret weapon.

A huge political thriller began to unfold in 1943 and 1944. Was this a question of preventing the development of a nuclear weapon? Was this an arms race? In any case, the outcome could determine who won the war. The Allied forces high command in London had determined that the Germans must be stopped from developing an atomic reactor and nuclear bomb at any cost.

The first attempt to attack the Vemork plant ended in tragedy. Two planes from the 1st Airborne Division crashed in fog in Southern Norway, and all aboard were either killed in the crash or shot by the Germans. A sabotage operation was then planned. This was to be carried out by specially trained Norwegians.

In 1990, the heavy water saboteurs met up again at Rjukan and followed the same route from the mountains to the Vemork plant.


The planning of the sabotage of the Vemork plant


The sabotage of the Vemork power plant was planned by the British secret unit called the SOE (Special Operations Executive). SOE was formed out of existing secret departments in the UK: Section D, a sub-section of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, aka MI6); a department of the War Office known as MI R.
SOE was established for the purpose of conducting warfare by means other than direct military engagement. The mission of the SOE was to encourage and facilitate espionage and sabotage behind enemy lines and to serve as the core of a resistance movement in Britain itself in the possible event of an Axis invasion. SOE was also known as Churchill's Secret Army and charged by him to "set Europe ablaze". SOE directly employed or controlled about 10,000 people in over 15 countries.
Norwegians in London assisted in the plans to sabotage the heavy water unit at the Vemork power plant at Rjukan, and photographs and sketches of the plant were sent to London by Norwegian contacts at the facility, in particular Jomar Brun, who was the manager of the heavy water unit at Vemork.

In October 1942, four SOE hand-picked trained Norwegian commandoes were dropped by parachute onto the Hardangervidda mountain plateau, a good distance to the west of Rjukan and the Vemork plants. They stayed on the plateau, some 1,200 metres above sea level, throughout several winter months, eating nothing but moss for weeks before they finally shot a reindeer. In February an additional six SOE Norwegian commandoes were parachuted onto Hardangervidda to join the team.

To reach the Vemork plant, the group of saboteurs had to cross the river right at the bottom of the gorge, as they could not use the 75 meter long suspension bridge across the deep ravine. It was only after one of the commandoes, Claus Helberg, had been out on a couple reconnaissance missions in the area that the group decided that the seemingly impossible task of climbing across the gorge could be attempted.

Operation Gunnerside
One hour before midnight on February 27, the saboteurs climbed down the gorge and across the ice-choked river, edged up the rock face on the other side, and emerged by the railway track to the hydrogen plant. They found the path alongside the railway line, but felt reasonably sure that mines had been laid to protect the facility from intruders. They cut the iron chain that blocked the way. Even before the group of commandoes had landed in Norway, SOE had a Norwegian agent, Jomar Brun, within the plant who supplied detailed plans and schedule information. The saboteurs used this information to enter the main basement by a cable tunnel and through a window.




The wrecked upgrading unit for heavy water is today exhibited in the Industrial Workers Museum at Vemork.



Joakim Rønneberg and Hans Storhaug made it in this way and took the guard by surprise. Birger Strømshaug, Fredrik Kayser and Kaspar Idland broke a window to get in, but the German guards heard nothing above the powerful drone of the generators.

Two of the saboteurs mounted the explosive charges. The fuses were about two minutes long, but they were cut down to 30 seconds and then lit. Rønneberg had a key so they could get out fast, and they knew that their cover squad was in position. The German guards had been put out of action as they had been locked up in the guardhouse.

The charges blew, the sound of shattering glass again split the air, but the German guards can hardly have grasped that it was an explosion. A guard sauntered out, tried the door to the electrolyser facility, found it locked, and went back inside the guardhouse. A short time later, he came out again with a torch and shined it along the ground. The Germans must have thought the snow had triggered one of the mines to explode. The guard gave up and went back into the guardhouse again - and probably saved his life.

The saboteurs purposely left a British machine gun at the site to indicate that this was a British raid and not local resistance, to try to prevent reprisals.


Full-scale search
By the time the Germans had realized what had happened and soldiers started streaming up to the Vemork plant, the saboteurs were already far down the railway line on their way to Rjukan. It was very dark and the snow was deep but they all got away.

Once back on the mountain plateau, the group split up. The explosives team travelled by ski, fully armed and in their camouflage uniforms, the 400 kilometres over the high country and across the valleys of Eastern Norway to Sweden. The others spread out over the plateau, and remained in Norway to carry out other operations under SOE command. The Germans brought in thousands of soldiers and organized an extensive search, but were unable to find any of the saboteurs.

The action destroyed the facility and large quantities of heavy water only for a period of time.

The Rjukan plants were heavily bombed in the autumn of 1943. The damage was extensive.


Many killed in bomb raid
The heavy water plant was rebuilt and production restarted during the next six months. The Allied forces worried about German nuclear capability and research and decided to destroy all facilities with capabilities to develop nuclear power, including the Vemork power plant. Before dawn on the 16 November 1943, 161 Allied Bombers took off from their bases in east Anglia in the direction of Norway. In order to limit civilian losses the attacks were scheduled to take place at noon, when many of the workers would be out for their lunch breaks. At 11.45 the first of the 143 B-17 Bombers came over Vemork at an altitude of 12.000 feet. They dropped 711 bombs of 500 kilos each during the first fifteen minutes. Because of smoke and poor visibility 13 bombers did not let go of their cargo over Vemork but dropped the bombs into the ocean on their way home. 70 tons of bombs were dropped, but only 18 bombs hit the Vemork plant. The bombs were spread over a large area. Bombs were found more than 30 kilometres from the target area. Six civilian houses were destroyed and several damaged. One bomb hit a bomb shelter, killing all of its occupants, mostly women and children. A total of 22 civilians were killed in the attack. The damages were sufficient to convince the Germans to terminate the heavy water production at Vemork. The Norwegian London based Government had not been consulted before the attack, and there were strong reactions from Norway, condemning “precision” bombing from such altitudes.


"Hydro" sinks to bottom of the Tinnsjø lake
A couple of months later, SOE intelligence agents in Rjukan discovered that the Germans planned to ship all the semi-finished products from Vemork to research centres in Germany. The Allied forces were still concerned that the Germans possibly could use heavy water to develop nuclear weapons, although this was seen as unlikely.
Orders came by radio from London to destroy the cargo during transport. The weakest link was the journey by the train ferry "Hydro" over the Tinnsjø lake. The heavy water cargo was closely guarded at all times, but the boat that was to transport the shipment stood unwatched the night before. One of the three SOE saboteurs had experimented with a timer and detonating mechanism, and he tried to set the explosion to go off when it would be easiest to rescue passengers.

The ferry's departure was Sunday morning, 20 February 1944. Fortunately there were never many passengers on Sundays. The cargo was 53 passengers, some trucks including two trucks with 600 kilos of heavy water. The explosion came at 11 AM, when the ferry was at the deepest area of the lake. The bow was torn off and the ferry sank in a matter of minutes. 14 Norwegian civilians and 4 German soldiers died. The explosion on the Tinnsjø lake ended the last chapter in the story of heavy water sabotage in Norway during the war.

For pictures:
http://www.uio.no/studier/emner/jus/jus/JUR5730/h07/undervisningsmateriale/The%20Heavy%20Water%20Sabotage%20.doc

RAM

 

And so it begins....just like at "another" forum..Firefoxy,you have 178 posts of what? since Nov 9/08 here and you call out Liberator??.......

 

I have the same feeling...
Looks like a forum buster to me...

RAM

 

let us proceed now. The best support and respect we could show Liberator is to not highjack this thread that is 99% existing thanks to his contributions.

 

Sir.......Call out Liberator? I was not trying to do that to him, i was just curious at his post, but i worded it the wrong way.
I can see that he's got really good knowleagde of ww2,and i did not think it would of hurt his felling's. If i had of realized it would of upset him, i would not of posted that comment.
I feel bad for upsetting him,no intenions of hurting him.

 

Sir, why would i attack someone for.
I was not intented to attack him,i never wanted him to stop. I was just curious at his posts.
I can see that his posts are very useful for everyone but my curiousity got the better of me.
I think i word it a bit badly,iv'e got poor jugement on this kind of things.

 

when in doubt young lady, please send a private message ............ saves quite a bit of grief in the long run.

stop, think, observe, plan before you make a posting

v/r

Erich

 

Yes , i will start P/M AND not reck this thread.
Can this thread get back on track now, Please.
I learnt my lesson

 

Normal service is resumed.

November 17, 1887

Monty is born

On this day in 1887, Bernard Law Montgomery, British general and one of the most formidable Allied commanders of the war, as well as one of the most disliked, is born in London.

A graduate of the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, Montgomery fought in World War I with distinction, leading an infantry platoon in an attack at Ypres, Belgium, the site of three major battles and many British casualties. Between wars, Montgomery stayed in the army as an instructor, rising in reputation as a tough-minded leader.

During the Second World War, Montgomery took command of the 3rd Army Division as part of the British Expeditionary forces in France, but had to be evacuated at Dunkirk. Two years later, in August 1942, Prime Minister Winston Churchill gave Montgomery command of the British 8th Army, which had been pushed across North Africa into Egypt by German General Erwin Rommel. Needless to say, British morale was low-but not for long. "We will stand and fight here. If we can't stay here alive, then let us stay here dead," Monty declared in his typical braggadocio style, and proceeded to push Rommel into retreat at the Battle of el-Alamein--all the way to Tunisia. Rommel was finally recalled to Europe, and the Germans surrendered their position in North Africa altogether in May 1943.

It was during preparations for Operation Overlord, the D-Day invasion of France, that Montgomery's prickly personality ran straight into Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, supreme commander of the operation. Montgomery and his 21st Army Group performed admirably in France, keeping the Germans turned in one direction as American forces attacked from the other. But Eisenhower often rejected many of Monty's strategic proposals, deeming them overly cautious (he was unwilling to move until all the resources and men necessary for optimum results were in place). Ike also thought Montgomery unable and unwilling to strain every last bit of advantage from every strategic gain.

Monty, for his part, did little to hide a haughty disdain for Eisenhower-not to mention his desire to take complete control of land forces. After receiving the surrender of the German northern armies in 1945, Monty held a press conference in which he all but took credit for salvaging a disintegrating American-led operation. He was almost removed from his command for this outrageous, and groundless, contention. By war's end, virtually no American commanding officer, including Generals Omar Bradley and George Patton, was speaking to Montgomery.

After the war, Monty was made a viscount and a knight of the garter. Among the offices he held was deputy commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Supreme Headquarters, Allied Powers in Europe. He also went on to write a number of treatises on warfare, as well as his Memoirs (1958). He died in 1976 at the age of 88. He would be remembered as one of the most gifted British commanders of the war-but more by his troops than by his American counterparts.

 

November 18, 1940

Hitler furious over Italy's debacle in Greece
On this day in 1940, Adolf Hitler meets with Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano over Mussolini's disastrous invasion of Greece.

Mussolini surprised everyone with a move against Greece; his ally, Hitler, was caught off guard, especially since the Duce had led Hitler to believe he had no such intention. Even Mussolini's own chief of army staff found out about the invasion only after the fact!

Despite being warned off an invasion of Greece by his own generals, despite the lack of preparedness on the part of his military, despite that it would mean getting bogged down in a mountainous country during the rainy season against an army willing to fight tooth and nail to defend its autonomy, Mussolini moved ahead out of sheer hubris, convinced he could defeat the inferior Greeks in a matter of days. He also knew a secret, that millions of lire had been put aside to bribe Greek politicians and generals not to resist the Italian invasion. Whether the money ever made it past the Italian fascist agents delegated with the responsibility is unclear; if it did, it clearly made no difference whatsoever-the Greeks succeeded in pushing the Italian invaders back into Albania after just one week. The Axis power spent the next three months fighting for its life in a defensive battle. To make matters worse, virtually half the Italian fleet at Taranto had been crippled by a British ca!

rrier-based attack.

At their meeting in Obersalzberg, Hitler excoriated Ciano for opening an opportunity for the British to enter Greece and establish an airbase in Athens, putting the Brits within striking distance of valuable oil reserves in Romania, which Hitler relied upon for his war machine. It also meant that Hitler would have to divert forces from North Africa, a high strategic priority, to Greece in order to bail Mussolini out. Hitler considered leaving the Italians to fight their own way out of this debacle-possibly even making peace with the Greeks as a way of forestalling an Allied intervention. But Germany would eventually invade, in April 1941, adding Greece to its list of conquests.

 

November 19, 1940

Hitler urges Spain to grab Gibraltar
On this day in 1940, Adolf Hitler tells Spanish Foreign Minister Serano Suner to make good on an agreement for Spain to attack Gibraltar, a British-controlled region. This would seal off the Mediterranean and trap British troops in North Africa.

Spain had just emerged from a three-year (1936-39) civil war, leaving Gen. Francisco Franco in dictatorial control of the nation. Although Franco had accepted aid for his Nationalist forces from the fascist governments of Germany and Italy during his war against the left-wing Republicans, he had maintained a posture of "neutrality" once the Second World War broke out. Two factors led the Caudillo, or chief of state, to reconsider this stance: (1) the fact that early Italian victories in Africa and German victories in Europe made a fascist victory more than just a possibility, and (2) his own desire to regain control of Gibraltar, a tiny peninsula south of Spain and a British colony. Toward this end, Franco began manipulating his own people to the point of exercising frenzied mobs to demand war against England to retake Gibraltar, which Spain lost during the War of Spanish Succession in 1704.

Gibraltar was a key strategic region, the only point of access to the Mediterranean Sea from the Atlantic Ocean and long a significant air and naval base for the United Kingdom. If Spain could occupy Gibraltar, it would cut Britain off from its own troops in North Africa and frustrate plans to drive back Rommel and his Afrika Korps, as well as stop any British plans to invade Italy. Hitler was keen on pushing Spain in this direction. But when the Fuhrer emphasized the need to move quickly, the Spanish foreign minister, on orders from Franco, insisted that Spain would need 400,000 tons of grain before it could wage war against Britain. Hitler knew this was merely a delaying tactic; Franco did not want to commit his country to the war, even as he allowed German subs to refuel in Spanish ports and German spies to keep tabs on British naval forces in Gibraltar.

But as the war began to turn against the Axis powers, so did Franco, who saw a future of negotiating trade deals with the Western democracies. The Caudillo began to cooperate with the Allies in a variety of ways, including allowing Free French forces to cross Spain from Vichy France to Resistance bases in North Africa. But the Allies saw Franco as a mere opportunist, and Spain was not allowed into the United Nations until 1955.

 

November 20, 1945

Nuremberg war-crimes trials begin
On this day in 1945, a series of trials of accused Nazi war criminals, conducted by a U.S., French, and Soviet military tribunal based in Nuremberg, Germany, begins. Twenty-four former Nazi officials were tried, and when it was all over, one year later, half would be sentenced to death by hanging.

These trials of accused war criminals were authorized by the London Agreement, signed in August 1945 by the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the provisional government of France. It was agreed at that time that those Axis officials whose war crimes extended beyond a particular geographic area would be tried by an international war tribunal (a trial for accused Japanese war criminals would be held in Tokyo). Nineteen other nations would eventually sign on to the provisions of the agreement.

The charges against the 24 accused at Nuremberg were as follows: (1) crimes against peace, that is, the planning and waging of wars that violated international treaties; (2) crimes against humanity, that is, the deportation, extermination, and genocide of various populations; (3) war crimes, that is, those activities that violated the "rules" of war that had been laid down in light of the First World War and later international agreements; and (4) conspiracy to commit any and all of the crimes listed in the first three counts.

The tribunal had the authority to find both individuals and organizations criminal; in the event of the latter, individual members of that organization could then be tried. Each of the four original signatories of the London Agreement picked one member and an alternate to sit on the tribunal. The chief prosecutor was U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, who was asked by President Harry S. Truman to create a structure for the proceedings. The defendants were arrayed in two rows of seats; each of the indicted listened to a simultaneous translation of the arguments through a headset.

There were 216 court sessions. On October 1, 1946, verdicts on 22 of the 24 defendants were handed down (two were not present; one had committed suicide in his prison cell, another was ultimately deemed mentally unfit): 12 of the defendants were sentenced to be hanged, including Julius Streicher (propagandist), Alfred Rosenberg (anti-Semitic ideologue and minister of the occupied eastern territories), Joachim von Ribbentrop (foreign affairs minister), Martin Bormann (Nazi Party secretary), and Herman Goering (Luftwaffe commander and Gestapo head). Ten of the 12 were hanged on October 16. Bormann was tried and sentenced in absentia (he was thought to have died trying to escape Hitler's bunker at the close of the war, but was only declared officially dead in 1973). Goering committed suicide before he could be hanged. The rest of the defendants received prison sentences ranging from 10 years to life. All of the defenses offered by the accused were rejected, including the notion that only a state, not an individual, could commit a war crime proper.

 

November 21, 1941

Nazi chief architect requests POWs to labor for a new Berlin
On this day in 1941, Albert Speer, Adolf Hitler's chief architect and minister for armaments and war production, asks for 30,000 Soviet prisoners of war to use as slave laborers to begin a massive Berlin building program.

Speer was born March 19, 1905, in Mannheim, Germany. At the age of 22, he received his architectural license, having studied at three German technical schools. He became an ardent Nazi after hearing Hitler orate at a rally in late 1930, and joined the party in January 1931. Hitler, always impressed by academic credentials and any kind of artistic or technical talent, made Speer his personal architect. Among the projects with which the Fuhrer entrusted Speer was the design of the parade grounds for the Nuremberg Party Congress in 1934, which Leni Riefienstahl made famous in her famous propaganda film Triumph of the Will.

As minister of armaments and munitions, Speer's job description expanded to include not only armament production and transportation, but also the direction of raw material use and finally the conscription of slave labor, culled from concentration camps, for war material production. These slave laborers would come in handy for Hitler's "new" Berlin. Speer wanted to begin construction even as the war waged. Despite the drain on resources Hitler agreed. Speer beguiled the Fuhrer with models of a Great Hall for the Chancellery and a grand office for Goering.

But as the war turned against Nazi Germany, the rebuilding plans were scrapped. When the war was over, Hitler was dead, and Speer was tried as a war criminal at Nuremberg, the site of his grand parade, and sentenced to 20 years in Spandau prison in Berlin.

 

November 22, 1942

Soviets encircle Germans at Stalingrad
On this day in 1942, a Soviet counteroffensive against the German armies pays off as the Red Army traps about a quarter-million German soldiers south of Kalach, on the Don River, within Stalingrad. As the Soviets' circle tightened, German General Friedrich Paulus requested permission from Berlin to withdraw.

The Battle of Stalingrad began in the summer of 1942, as German forces assaulted the city, a major industrial center and a prize strategic coup, if it could be occupied. But despite repeated attempts, the German 6th Army, under Paulus, and part of the 4th Panzer Army, under Ewald von Kleist, could not break past the adamantine defense by the Soviet 62nd Army, commanded by Gen. Vasily I. Chuikov, despite having pushed the Soviets almost to the Volga River in mid-October and encircling Stalingrad.

Diminishing resources, partisan guerilla attacks, and the cruelty of the Russian winter began to take their toll on the Germans. On November 19, the Soviets made their move, launching a counteroffensive that began with a massive artillery bombardment of the German position. The Soviets then assaulted the weakest link in the German force-inexperienced Romanian troops; 65,000 were ultimately taken prisoner by the Soviets.

The Soviets then made a bold strategic move, encircling the enemy, launching pincer movements from north and south simultaneously, even as the Germans encircled Stalingrad. The Germans should have withdrawn, but Hitler wouldn't allow it. He wanted his armies to hold out until they could be reinforced. By the time those fresh troops arrived in December, it was too late. The Soviet position was too strong, and the Germans were exhausted. It was then only a matter of time before the Germans would be forced to surrender.

 

November 25, 1941

A "war warning" is sent to commanders in the Pacific
On this day in 1941, Adm. Harold R. Stark, U.S. chief of naval operations, tells Adm. Husband E. Kimmel, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, that both President Roosevelt and Secretary of State Cordell Hull think a Japanese surprise attack is a distinct possibility.

"We are likely to be attacked next Monday, for the Japs are notorious for attacking without warning," Roosevelt had informed his Cabinet. "We must all prepare for trouble, possibly soon," he telegraphed British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

Kimmel's command was specifically at the mid-Pacific base at Oahu, which comprised, in part, Pearl Harbor. At the time he received the "warning" from Stark, he was negotiating with Army Lt. Gen. Walter C. Short, commander of all U.S. forces at Pearl Harbor, about sending U.S. warships out from Pearl Harbor in order to reinforce Wake and Midway Islands, which, along with the Philippines, were possible Japanese targets. But the Army had no antiaircraft artillery to spare.

War worries had struck because of an intercepted Japanese diplomatic message, which gave November 25 as a deadline of sorts. If Japanese diplomacy had failed to convince the Americans to revoke the economic sanctions against Japan, "things will automatically begin to happen," the message related. Those "things" were becoming obvious, in the form of Japanese troop movements off Formosa (Taiwan) apparently toward Malaya. In fact, they were headed for Pearl Harbor, as was the Japanese First Air Fleet.

Despite the fact that so many in positions of command anticipated a Japanese attack, especially given the failure of diplomacy (Japan refused U.S. demands to withdraw from both the Axis pact and occupied territories in China and Indochina), no one expected Hawaii as the target.