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."

Comments

Mentioned in "Between Silk and Cyanide"

[Ted Stoner]

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.

skip bomb dam! coolest weapon

[goombah99]

The reason the heavy water plants were in norway and not back in the reich-land was they were co-located near easy access to electric power--hydro power. this was needed to product the heavy water.

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/

Pretty Inconsequential

[gz718]

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.

Nazi heavy water artifacts are on display.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.