Seventy-five years ago today a team of 36 hand-picked commandos boarded a flight of Horsa gliders, to assault a mystery target deep in enemy held territory.
So secretive was their mission they didn’t even know what country they were flying into.
All they had been told was that their actions might change the course of the war.
Their mission – codenamed FRESHMAN – was launched on the orders of Winston Churchill who, together with US president Roosevelt, feared that Nazi Germany was two years ahead in the race to build the atom bomb.
In June 1942 Churchill had risked flying across the Atlantic in a giant Boeing flying-boat, to meet with Roosevelt. The Allies’ fortunes in the war were at their very nadir, but it wasn’t that which most worried the two world leaders.
Foremost on their minds was the terrifying prospect that Nazi Germany might win the race to build the bomb.
The Germans had stolen a march on the Allies in the nuclear field. In 1938, German scientists were the first to split the uranium atom; that same year Nazi Germany had annexed much of Czechoslovakia, seizing Europe’s only uranium mine, in the mountainous Joachimsthal region.
Having invaded Norway in May 1940, Nazi Germany seized the world’s only supply of ‘heavy water’- deuterium oxide – the moderator, or matrix, within which uranium breeds the material for a bomb, in a nuclear reactor.
The following month Hitler had struck a further blow, as his blitzkrieg forces overran the headquarters of the Belgium company that mined the world’s richest source of uranium, in the Belgium Congo.
Some 2,000 tonnes of high-purity uranium ore had been shipped by rail to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, in Berlin, where the uranverein – Nazi Germany’s uranium club - were busy building an experimental reactor, the uranmaschine .
Faced with the terrifying proposition of Hitler winning the nuclear race, Churchill and Roosevelt decided on two key priorities: first, they would pool scientific and technical resources in the Manhattan Project, to build an Allied bomb; second, they had to sabotage Hitler’s nuclear programme.
At only one place did it appear remotely vulnerable: the heavy water plant, situated at Vemork, on the remote and snowbound Hardanger plateau, in central Norway.
Weeks before the Special Operations Executive (SOE) – Churchill’s Ministry for Ungentlemanly Warfare – had parachuted a four-man team, codenamed GROUSE, into the region, to keep watch on the massive plant.
Upon Churchill’s return to Britain, he ordered it be destroyed. There was no time to lose.
Britain’s nuclear experts – working under the cover name of Tube Alloys - had warned of the seemingly impossible. Britain should prepare for an attack by Nazi Germany using “fission products”; the by-products of a working nuclear reactor engineered into a crude radiation bomb.
“Precautions should be taken to avoid a surprise attack. This could be done by the regular operation of suitable methods of detection … routine tests should be carried out in large towns … Special precautions to preserve secrecy have to be taken.”
In short, Britain was preparing for the unthinkable - a nuclear attack on its cities. The SOE and Combined Operations had to act.
Mountbatten, Chief of Combined Operations, wrote to Churchill, laying out his plans for Freshman. “Thirty-six all ranks of the Airborne Division will be flown in two gliders to destroy the Power Station, electrical plant and stocks of “heavy water” … When they [the Nazis] have 5 tons they will be able to start production of a new form of explosive a thousand times more potent than any in use today ...”
Churchill replied: “Approved … W.S.C.”
Freshman involved a pair of wooden-hulled Horsa gliders being town by Halifax bombers the 700-odd miles to their target. On the ground the four men of team Grouse would guide the commandos in, using signal lights and Rebecca-Eureka radio homing beacons.
The chosen landing ground was the frozen Skoland Marshes on the shores of Lak Mos, eight miles from the Vemork plant. The gliders would carry folding bicycles. Upon landing the raiders would mount up and peddle hell-for-leather, their packs stuffed with enough explosives to decimate the massive, eight story concrete structure, having first fought their way through its fearsome defences.
Being a glider pilot was one of the most dangerous roles in the entire British military, but this mission was truly off the scale. Combined Operations ran the Freshman plan past Major John ‘Skinner’ Wilson, the outspoken former scoutmaster who ran the SOE’s Scandinavian Section.
Wilson had sent the Grouse team into Norway, and typically his response to Freshman didn’t pull any punches.
“Of all countries, Norway is the least suitable for glider operations,” he wrote. “Its landing grounds are few; its mountains thickly clustered, precipitous and angry … The plateau is noted for sudden up-and-down air currents powerful enough to make a bucking bronco of a Horsa glider.”
“The landing-site would be difficult to identify if clouds obscured the moon … The night landing of a fragile craft in an area known for its fissures and ridges, huge boulders and outcrops of rock would be extremely hazardous.”
The fact that Operation Freshman got the green light regardless, reflected how desperate the Allies were to strike back at the Nazi’s nuclear programme. Vemork had to be destroyed at all costs.
Overall command of Freshman fell to Lieutenant Colonel Henneker, of the Royal Engineers Airborne Division. In recruiting a team for the forthcoming raid he faced a seemingly impossible task. He had to ask for volunteers for a mission no details of which he could reveal, not even the target country.
Henneker - his craggy face hardened by his experiences fighting the Germans, in France - told the men that while they were all ‘keen as mustard’ to see some action, the forthcoming mission was extremely dangerous.
Its outcome might determine the fortunes of the war. If they failed, the Germans might seize victory within six months. In short, the stakes could not be higher.
It says much for the calibre of his men that all stepped forward. The oldest at thirty-one was Ernest Bailey, just back from leave in his native Hampshire. The youngest was Gerland Williams, of Doncaster, who’d just celebrated his eighteenth birthday. Then there was Bill Bray, a former truck driver whose wife was due to give birth in three months.
Wallis Jackson was a well-built twenty-one-year old, with three sisters back in his native Leeds. A natural at handling explosives, Jackson had a surprisingly soft side to his character. He was in the habit of penning letters to his mother, full of affection and hope for the fortunes of the war.
There was nothing that Jackson could write home about the forthcoming mission. All were forbidden from breathing a word, and in any case he - like his brother warriors - knew nothing.
An agreed cover story had to be provided, to explain why they would disappear for weeks of punishing commando training. They were to say they were taking part in ‘The Washington Competition’, an endurance contest held against their American sister unit.
The plan for Freshman gave a sense of the scale of the task. Of the Vemork plant, it stated: ‘This, the world’s largest, is housed in an eight-story building … The building is of ferro concrete, 45 metres high and strengthened internally with ferro concrete beams and supporting pillars.”
The raiders had to be capable of fighting their way into the plant, and setting the explosives to tear it to ruins. After which they were somehow supposed to escape across 200 miles of snowbound wilderness, to neutral Sweden.
The specialists at MI9 - the secret wartime escape and evasion agency - didn’t rate their chances. Major de Bruyne, one of MI9’s escape experts, pointed out that fighting a running battle over such an extent of hostile terrain was basically a non-starter.
He feared none would make it.
Even so, key Norwegian phrases were taught to the Freshman volunteers, including: ‘Jeg har vert u tog Kopt lit proviant til Mor’ - I’ve just been out buying stores for mother; and ‘Unskyld men jeg ma hurtigst til tannlegern’ - Sorry, but I must get to the dentist as quickly as possible.
MI9 advised that second phrase was, “to be spoken with stone or cork in mouth”.
Wilson wasn’t convinced. How were the raiders supposed to cross hundreds of miles of wilderness in the midst of winter, hounded by the enemy? They were sending in a “suicide squad”, he objected, with little prospect of any getting out alive.
To make matters worse the weather in Norway was proving atrocious that winter. The gliders might take off in perfect conditions in Britain, only to fly into a hellish storm over the target.
But Freshman went ahead, regardless.
Dawn on 19 November 1942 proved grey, drizzly and drear at RAF Skitten, in the far north of Scotland. Team Grouse had radioed in a relatively up-beat weather report, so Freshman was ruled a go.
Shortly before zero hour Colonel Henneker gathered his men for a final briefing. They were commanded by lieutenants Alexander Allen and David Mehtven. Each officer knew that should the other party not make it, he was to lead his own to execute the attack.
‘Whatever happens,’ Henneker stressed, ‘someone must arrive at the objective to do the job. Detection is no excuse for halting.’
His briefing done Henneker wished his men good luck.
They gathered their kit and weaponry - each carried a Sten - and stepped out into the dusk. They’d been issued with silk ‘escape maps’, which were in fact a ruse. They showed a false route dotted in blue; they were to be scattered around the scene of the attack, in the hope of throwing off their pursuers.
Two lines of men - fresh-faced; most in their late teens and early twenties - boarded the Horsas. The ground-crew closed the hinged tail-entries of the gliders, and the raiders were boxed into their wooden coffins.
At 6.45pm the Halifax bombers clawed into the dark and soggy overcast, each with its four radial engines straining to drag the 7,045-kilo deadweight of the glider, on its 360-foot tow-line.
RAF Skitten’s radio room sent a short message to both SOE and Combined Operations headquarters: Freshman was in the air. Now, the wait.
The lead Halifax – A for Apple - laboured ever higher, eventually breaking free of the cloud. Tug and glider turned toward the northeast and set a course for Norway.
Some three hours later A for Apple’s navigator had by skilful dead reckoning brought them to the exact point at which they had planned to cross the Norwegian coast - no small feat of navigation, after traversing hundreds of miles of the North Sea.
All eyes scoured the ground. It was a truly beautiful night. The moon was bright, the clouds light and fluffy, visibility very good. In fact, these were near-perfect conditions for such a mission.
Having cleared the first mountain range, A for Apple set a course for Vemork, following a distinctive chain of lakes which should lead directly to the release point. But as the Halifax thundered onwards the mood in the cockpit darkened.
Smoke fingered up from a spool of electrical wiring. Second later it burned out: their Rebecca homing device had just gone kaput. With only their maps to guide them now the crew of the lead tug - with glider in tow - zigzagged across the hostile skies.
Below them the dark valleys were mercifully clear of fog. But still the frozen silhouette of Lake Mos - like a squiggly ‘Y’ lying on its side - eluded them. They kept searching, twisting this way and that through the dark heavens.
To their rear, B for Baker was faring little better: their Eureka had also malfunctioned.
Finally, A for Apple’s crew got a fix on their position: they were within twenty miles of the landing zone. Seven sets of eyes scoured the Hardanger plateau. But where was the welcome that the ground party had promised?
In the darkness below not a twinkle of light was to be seen.
In truth, team Grouse had set the markers exactly as agreed: a set of lights, arranged in an ‘L’ - L-for-London – with their team leader at the apex, flashing a torch into the night sky.
Team Grouse heard the lead Halifax droning in the heavens. It approached, but passed overhead, apparently having missed them. Their long wait in the snowbound wilderness - and tonight’s labour on the Skoland Marshes – would go unrewarded.
No gliders came.
High above them A for Apple had detected no telltale lights. Thin cloud had blown in. Maybe that had obscured them. Either way, the Halifax was forced to turn for home.
Low on fuel, the pilot steered the most direct course for Scotland. They should be able to tow the glider to within 30 miles of the Scottish coast, at which point they’d ditch in the sea.
A dense bank of cloud loomed ahead, rising to 12,000 feet. Towing such a heavy load, the Halifax had to go to full take-off revs to climb, which burned up the fuel.
Gradually, A for Apple - and the Horsa behind her - gained altitude. She topped 10,000 feet. At 11,000 she hit the first clouds. By the time she lumbered out of the cloud-tops at 12,000 she’d been airborne for over four hours.
In climbing the aircraft had collected ice. It was glistening on the propellers, and spinning off in the moonlight like shards of broken glass.
More worryingly, the glider - plus its towrope - felt like a dead-weight. The Horsa was icing up too. The tug and its tow were fighting a losing battle. A for Apple went to full throttle, but with a sickening sense of inevitability she started to drift back into the freezing mass.
Below them lurked jagged-edged peaks, some rearing as high as 6,000 feet. The pair of iced-up aircraft sunk into the clouds. All lights were switched on, as those in the Halifax strained their eyes for any obstructions looming out of the murk.
At 7,000 feet A for Apple drifted into the thickest cloud. The Halifax hit heavy turbulence and seemed to shudder end-to-end. She careered into a second air-pocket. As she hit a third, bucking like a wild pony, the ice-encrusted rope linking tow to glider snapped in two.
The Horsa had broken loose and was spinning into the dark storm.
The heavy glider was thrown about like a toy in a giant’s hands. The grooves in the Horsa’s corrugated metal floor were there to prevent vomit from making it slippery underfoot. But as the Horsa bucked and twisted, so the ashen-faced raiders turned sick with fear.
In the cockpit, the glider’s pilots, seated side by side, wrestled with all their strength at the controls. To their rear the raiders gripped their fold-down seats for the hellish bare-knuckle ride.
From all sides the mountain winds cried out in shrieks and howls. The thin wooden fuselage answered, creaking and groaning horribly as it threatened to tear itself to pieces.
The raiders might be strapped in, but not all their equipment was. It tumbled about, cannoning off the plywood ribs of the hold, and beating out a terrible funeral rhythm.
As the cloud thickened, so the pilots tried to steer blind for where the ground had to be. At 2,000 feet they tore out of the base of the cloud, and got a glimpse of their surroundings. Snow, rock and ice flashed past the cockpit at a dizzying speed.
‘DITCHING STATIONS!’ they cried.
The fifteen raiders and their officer just had time to link arms, before the glider ploughed into the mountainside. The glass nosecone crumpled like tinfoil, the pilots being killed instantly.
As the Horsa careered onwards, gouging itself to pieces on rocks and boulders, so the wings were torn asunder. When the wreck of the aircraft finally came to a halt, the fuselage had been ripped open in several places, a trail of equipment and weaponry being vomited across the frozen mountainside.
The miracle was that some of the raiders had even survived.
If anything, B for Baker suffered a blacker fate. Likewise, tug and glider had been forced to turn for home, and into the same freezing cloud mass as had claimed the first glider. In terrible visibility and icing-up, B for Baker had been forced to descend.
Just as B for Baker had crossed the Norwegian coastline, she had clipped the peak of a hidden obstruction - the 1,700 foot Haestad Mountain. The Halifax smashed herself to fiery ruin on the far side. None of the aircrew survived.
To their rear the Horsa broke free and swooped across a thickly-wooded valley, before the topmost boughs smashed into the cockpit, killing both pilots instantly.
The Horsa came to rest with its nose sheared off and its fuselage badly mangled, but the brave actions of the pilots had at least saved the lives of many in the rear. There had been terrible injuries, but most had survived.
As the wind shook the wreckage, and thick flurries of snow blasted through the Horsa’s shattered entrails, their commander, Lieutenant Allen, wondered where on earth they had come to rest, and what in the name of God he was supposed to do.
It was the occupiers of Norway who would answer Allen’s question, and that of his fellow officer, at the other crash site. First on the scene were German soldiers, who’d heard reports of crash-landings.
But under his recently-issued ‘Commando Order’, Hitler had decreed: ‘Henceforth all enemy troops encountered by German troops during so-called commando operations … are to be exterminated to the last man … If such men appear to be about to surrender, no quarter should be given to them ...’
Unbeknown to them, the Freshman survivors could expect little mercy. All who had survived the crash-landings were captured. Within forty-eight hours they had been subjected to terrible torture – in an effort to force them to talk – after which they were executed to the last man.
Including aircrew, 41 had died. They had set out with pure hearts and with the bravest of intentions - volunteers all. Through no fault of their own they had been deprived of even the barest chance of hitting their target.
In short, Freshman had been a gallant and brave – but suicidal - undertaking.
In London, Major Wilson heard the terrible news and contemplated the worst: the Germans now had to know for sure that the Allies were aware of Vemork’s crucial role in the race for nuclear supremacy, and were determined to destroy it.
The raiders had even carried maps with the target circled in blue pencil. Defences at Vemork would be tripled, Wilson feared, the enemy’s vigilance redoubled.
It would take two subsequent SOE operations - codenamed Swallow and Gunnerside, and masterminded by Wilson – to deal a knockout blow to the heavy water plant.
By February 1943 Nazi Germany’s ability to produce and utilize heavy water was all but at an end, and by war’s end the Allies had thankfully won the race for nuclear supremacy.
