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War Hero Thwarted Nazi Heavy Water Production
Freshly Exhumed writes "Its doubtful you know the name of Einar Skinnarland, but his sabotage over several years repeatedly thwarted Nazi plans to exploit Norway's heavy water production capabilities for their atomic bomb research plans. Skinnerland recently passed away in Canada and his daring exploits are recounted here. Details of some of the raids on the production facilities can be found on pafko and Stephen's Study Room. So many 'what if?'s and suspicions have swirled around the Nazi atomic bomb program that this man's efforts seem crystal clear for a change."
Mr. Skinnarland was mentioned several times in Leo Marks book "Between Silk and Cyanide". One of the many heroes just recently getting their due.
He trained in England with the SOE, crossing paths with Mr Marks who trained operatives in the use of codes.
Marks died in the last year or two also.
He didn't let the phyiscists who remained use what he termed "Jewish Physics." Which, as it happens, was the *correct* physics.
It turns out, according to documents that only came to light about 10 years ago, the Japanese were probably actually much closer to building a bomb than Germany because, even though they started late and worked slowly, they were heading down the proper path to pull it off.
KFG
I've visited both places, it helps to get some perspective of what must have happened there. (It also helps to have Norwegian family who get taught about this in school to tell you about it) Norway doesn't have the most welcoming terrain. To most people Norway doesn't even factor into their thoughts of WW2 and this is sad, things could have been a whole lot worse if it wasn't for their resistance to occupation.
Don't blame me - this
A Man Called Intrepid by William Stevenson recounts the war from the aspect of the clandestine serivces in the US and UK. It shows how Churchill was consulting the Crown before he was technically back in power, but received permission to start working on means to defend England. It talks about Roosevelt's involvement in the defense of Britain from an early stage, before the public knew about it or would support such actions.
The book talks about the repeated raids on the heavy water factories, the code-breaking process, the creation of the OSS, the establishment of a backup British Government in NYC in case London fell, etc. There is also the appearance of such notables as Roald Dahl, Ian Fleming and Aldous Huxley, working in British Intelligence.
Some of the stories of radio operators dropped into Europe, captured, tortured and killed, could and should be made into movies or books in their own right.
Intrepid, by the way, was the code name of the man chosen by Churchill to be a liason with Roosevelt in the early stages (before lend-lease, before Pearl Harbor, etc)
Bombing a dam is damn hard. seen from the air they are very small targets. And they are concrete and over built. even if you hit the top you have not done much damage. to destroy the dam you have to hit is near the bottom where the water pressure is high. hence the need for a raid on the ground: to hard to hit.
Enter the skip bomb. the Skip bomb is a spinning cyllindric bomb dropped in the water above the dam. it skips, skips, skips and slams in to wall of the dam. but it does not explode. instead the back spin makes it claw its way down the side the dam where it detonates near the bottom.
there's lots on the web on this, including . http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/case_nazidams/
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I think this allusion is lost on the majority of Slashdot readers. One of Mussolini's "accomplishments" is that he "made the trains run on time." Whether or not this is true, it doesn't matter - it was a very effective work of propaganda.
A huge proportion of the GNP of the Third Reich, especially in its last years, that went towards the development and production of "terror weapons", mainly guided missiles (the V1 and V2).
The only military justification of this effort would be if the Nazis also had atomic bomb capability since one ton of payload wouldn't otherwise justify the cost of the missile.
After the war, investigation of internal memos of the ministry of technology written in 1938, dismissed the possibility of commiting resouces into development of atomic weaponry as "Jewish Science".
Thus the undoubtable engineering excellence of the Pienemunde group was (thankfully) rendered mostly harmless by the bigotry of their leaders.
I understand your sentiments, but don't forget that it has never been easy to stand up for your beliefs in the face of an indifferent or hostile majority. That's why we have so few examples of people of that caliber when compared to the total number of people that have come before. There just aren't that many; the urge to conform is very strong.
Only time will tell who rises to the challenge in contemporary times.
Yes, that's right. I get angry when people give too much credit to minor characters in the effort to disrupt German heavy water production. Of far more importance was Col. Robert Hogan, US Army Air Force and his team of saboteurs when they were able to destroy a secret shipment into Luft Stalag 13 in 1944. Yes, they were able to convince the camp kommandant, who happened to be a bumbler that the heavy water was in fact, water from the Fountain of Youth and could grow hair on his bald pate by drinking it which prevented the Germans from removing it right away. They were able to destroy this shipment which happened to be the purest that the dirty Nazi's could generate and single handedly prevented a nuclear catastrophe in Europe as well as saved the war for the Allies. Sorry, but when people give Skinnarland more press than Hogan and his heroes I get all mad and stuff.
(again, original AC posting)
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"...modern (american) tank crews barely know the meaning of fear, because the chances that those old rusty iraqi hulks will get a shot off before they do is slim to none
Sorry, but any (American, or otherwise) tank crewman, esp. in a combat area, knows that they can be zapped at any time in a combat zone - by landmine, sagger, air munition, chemical attack or even something as old-fashioned as a knife/bayonet in the dark whilst sleeping on their track's back deck or fender - entirely independent of the direct-fire & maneuver capability of an enemy in the field. This from personal experience.
"... My point was that technological prowess has mitigated human heroism..."
Nope, sorry, I will (forever) disagree. Regardless of from which side we are speaking, heroism will occur in battle (as well as in real life, both on and apart from the battlefield) independent of popular interest/observance - it is like the tree that falls in the forest with no-one to witness (aside from those immediately concerned).
"...My other point was that nations no longer wage war as a whole body - rather the military forces depart for some country whose name most people can't pronounce and everyone else pitches in by paying a couple more cents at the gas pump
Hopefully you are right with respect to the 'no longer' part - I personally (and no doubt many of the folks hailing from the neighborhood of Stalingrad) would agree. However, should things come to that point again (God/etc. forbid), don't doubt that you would see nation-states rise to the occasion once again.
The Germans weren't even close to making the bomb so the raid on the Norsk Hydroelectric plant and other destruction of heavy water didn't really make a difference.
First, heavy water is not the only moderator available to someone who wants to make a chain reaction (the first US pile used very pure carbon) and heavy water isn't used in an atomic weapon (although it is used in a thermonuclear weapon but you have to crawl before you can run.)
Second, the Germans didn't even have the explosive material to make a bomb. In an atomic bomb you can use either plutonium or enriched uranium. The Manhattan Project got it's plutonium from the residue of a self-sustaining chain reaction and the Germans hadn't even completed a self-sustaining chain reaction by the war's end, hell they weren't even close. Heisenberg kept insisting on creating these elaborate designs of natural uranium for the pile such as concentric spheres or huge disks which took a lot of time and labor to produce when the best configuration for a chain reaction is small cyclinders which was the only configuration the Manhattan Project ever used. Using enriched uranium was just out of the question for the overworked German war machine. America had the money and resources to build gaseous diffusion plants and centrifuges, but what with fighting two fronts Germany had better things to do with its money and Heisenberg was not really pushing for more resources since he couldn't convince himself let alone Hitler that they would be able to produce a bomb.
And then had they somehow had a chain reaction they would have to extract the plutonium (not easy), then they still have to construct the bomb (not easy), and figure out a way of delivering it (not easy.) For more information I highly recommend the Richard Rhodes book, Making of the Atomic Bomb.
I have seen the Nazi heavy water artifacts. (and other artifacts) For many years in the 1980's the University of Michigan had ampules of heavy water (double ended sealed glass vials) on display in the old chemistry building in central quad area on main floor toward the east. Lots of universities have interesting artifacts in display cases, including the worlds smallest MOVINGmotor at caltech and other exibits.
The nazi heavy water display was fascinating because the vial had pretty high quality white stickers with red swastika prominently on them. The display would not have been complete without the sticker obviously.
The german heavy water exhibit looked cool.
At that time the Univ of Michigan harbored Dr Mengeles lab book results (and luftwaffe freezing of human spine in artic temp brine, and decompression tests on humans) and was in the flack.
I noticed hundreds of rare Nazi books being stolen or defaced one by one from the MASSIVE collection (yes massive) grad student library at the Univ of Michigan . The book that I thought was the most fascinating was a german book of all uniforms for a particular year... I was shocked by the futuristic and overly high-tech look of the White winter SS officers uniform (formal version?). It looked like it hopped out of a start trek movie. It was a small book, but it too was stolen or removed many years later when I tried to take a glance at it and perhaps color photocopy it to prove to people how futuristic and out of place that uniform looked. All the books were in german , row upon row, and I did not know a word of german.
The librayy entrance of the library had a display on vigilante vandalism... jews and arabs were detroying each others books each week and leaving destoyed volumes (sometimes with graffitti) in the building itslef, but sometimes stealing them. I asked them why the religious zealots were desroying each others "indfidel books" and they told me THAT IS NOTHING COMPARED TO THE DESTRUCTION OF ATHIEST BOOKS BY CHRISTIANS. I replied "huh?"and they said, that christians steal, or check out and "lose" all the most provocative athiest books and that they REFUSE TO RESTOCK and REORDER THEM. They had so few it was an easy targert goal to work on I assume, as opposed to the muslim and jewiosh works.
I then asked a country librarian about censorship destruction of books by religious nuts, especially books in athiesm and they concurred that it is common.
Lots of closed minded people despise Germans and their Nazi era-engineering, as much as despise books on athiesm. People should learn from the past. Not celebrate acts ofsabotage for sabotage's sack. Trusted patrons in a Library, and trusted workers at a hydroelectric plant that extracts heavy water, should not be celebrated for treachery and sabotage. It is a form of dishonesty. And truly just people hate dishonesty
Reposted because the first one got modded -1 by an idiot.
Reading about the clandestine operations run by the Allies is always really fun. Operation XX (double-cross, get it) in particular was amazing. One man, code-named Garbo, got Hitler to believe that the entire Normandy invasion was an extensive feignt for an invasion at Calais. Hitler held back reinforcements for days.
Another squad put an abrasive in axle grease to effectively sabotage Nazi transportation.
And a radio operator was captured and forced to send Nazi messages. There was a fail-safe system in which all uncoerced messages contained a deliberate error, so that a perfect message would mean the sender was compromised. However, the people at base forgot about this protocol and kept on sending people to their deaths. Then the radio operator started to send "compromised" in parts at the end and beginning of messages but to no avail. When two POW escaped to friendly territory and warned them of the radio operator's fate, he was forced to send a message that they were in fact German spies. They were executed.
Really good reading.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
2 things about China:
1) China would never do anything to us. Without the dollars made from exports to the USA they would pretty much have no money.
2) China isn't a country that will wake up tomorrow and be a democracy. The process is going on right now (albiet, slowly).... unfortunately, human rights will be the last issue to be handled.... but rest assured China's future is built on Capatilism. I have to think that they are just waiting for the last of the old school Maoists to die off (no insult meant, just a fact)
Ever feel like you are driving the getaway car?
You have misunderstood the separation process they used. It turns out that electrolysis shows a very strong isotope effect: H comes off up to seven times faster than D at the negative electrode. They exploited this fact in a cascade of electrolytic cells.
Nowadays a different process is used, based on the shift with temperature of the equilibrium of the reaction H2O + HDS transforming to/from HDO + H2S. But this wasn't invented until after the war.
If the 'hydrogen economy' based on electrolytic production of hydrogen ever takes off, then anyone will be able to make heavy water at low marginal cost, which means nuclear proliferation will become much easier -- anyone will be able to build compact reactors using natural (unenriched) uranium as fuel.
The idea that the Japanese exploded a test atomic bomb is completely, utterly ludicrous. Their program was pathetic; they had very little resources devoted to it, and made little progress. Compare this to the US Manhattan project, which reached a size comparable to the US pre-war auto industry. Japan simply didn't have the industrial might to succeed.