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.