Fun fact 2: The commandos allowed one of the Norwegian civilian workers at the plant to go back in to retrieve his spectacles because they would have been very difficult to replace if they had been destroyed by the explosions.
So true. Me mum lost her eyeglasses at a nursing home. The fact was THEY lost her only set of prescription glasses. After, she could not see who she was talking too, she could not read, nor watch the TV while she spent long, dull weeks waiting for replacement eyeglasses. If you wear glasses, you are powerless without them. Such is the advantage of good vision over poor.
I have read in a book, that data pertaining to this plant Norsk Hydro was stollen from an insurance company by the British Intel. This had the whole map of the plant in detail describing the area which if destroyed could cause the maximum damage.
An amazing story relating to this is that of the scout team named 'grouse'' which landed ahead of freshman to mark the landing sites for the gliders. After the failure of Freshman they stayed in the area undetected for months. They are the 4 commando's Indy references at 4:38. The 4 men, lead by Jens Anton Poulsson, survived by hiding in a cabin and eating reindeer. The reindeer themselves live of a diet of moss that they dig up from under the snow. The 4 commando's of team Grouse would cut open the digestive tract of the reindeer to eat the half digested moss for some vitamins and fibers, the human body can't digest moss all by itself. After the war Paulsson would become a famed arctic warfare instructor and personal hunting guide and friend of a Norwegian king (although i can't remember or find which one). Near the plant you can hike a part of the trail the commando's used. And the Norwegian industrial workers museum in Rjukan which is housed in the facility has some excellent information and is a very good 'bad weather activity' when on holiday in the region. same as the Hardangervidda National park center, which has excellent films about the operation as well as reindeer.
@@Mr10johnny10 There was an excellent documentary about it on RUclips and they even interviewed the veterans. Search for something like "formation/beginning of the SOE" - this was one of their first successful missions.
I notice a number of people were mentioning the excellent movie made about this raid and the subsequent attack on the ferry. The movie was called "The Heroes of Telemark" and starred Kirk Douglas, Richard Harris, Ulla Jacobsson and Michael Redgrave.
The movie you mention is heavy Hollwoodised, i would rather recommend the norwegian tv-series "Kampen om tungtvannet", or The Heavy Water War in english.
that actual agents who did this amazing raid have zero time for this film. There are far better Norwegian films that provide a much more accurate account
Anybody else notice the Rambo homage: Trautman : You don't seem to want to accept the fact you're dealing with an expert in guerrilla warfare, with a man who's the best, with guns, with knives, with his bare hands. A man who's been trained to ignore pain, ignore weather, to live off the land
US heavy water was processed at the army depot in Newport Indiana by pumping huge amounts of water available in the aquifer along the wabash river. All evidence of the process were removed with only 15 high capacity water wells remaining.
Joachim Rønneberg, the leader of the Swallow/Gunnerside team, lived near my family after the war. He worked as a journalist and came in contact with lots of people. My parents told me that he was always modest and respectful towards everybody, despite being a well known and celebrated war hero. "I just did my job, and I had the necessary luck", he said. Tough as steel and still treating everybody with respect - that says something about a man's character.
Somehow, I feel like I'm getting a war update every day now. It's almost "nice" to have one about the past that we can learn from instead of the present to prove that we didn't learn much. This was a happy episode! Thank you.
One Joakim Rønneberg that where one of the commandos in this operation later had Ålesund center square and the street right in front of Ålesund Rådhus named arter him. He also got a statuette in front of the Ålesund Rådhus. He died in 2018.
Another great episode. I understand that mentioning this would have detracted from the tension of the episode, and you are no doubt aware already: heavy water or no, the Germans were NEVER close to getting the Atomic Bomb... per Richard Rhode's book, "postwar intelligence showed that the Germans in 1945 were farther away from the bomb than the Allies had been... in 1941... ". Also interesting to note, the allied program relied on a graphite moderator for its first atomic pile, which the Germans had evidently abandoned due to calculation errors (thus the need for heavy water). Reportedly, Speer ended the formal German atomic weapons program in 1942/43, after realizing that the realization of functioning atomic weapons wouldn't happen on any timescale relevant for the Germans in WW2.
It doesn't diminish the commandos accomplishments as one of the finest sabotage operations in history, but yes, in the grand scheme the Germans would never have gotten their atomic bomb even if they had had all the heavy water in the world. But of course the Allies didn't know that at the time.
@@scotttracy9333 I don't really disagree and understand the Allies need to "take no chances"-- especially considering the (relatively) small commitment of men/resources for a commando operation like "Operation Gunnerside". That said, let me throw out a related, ancillary topic here RE: "atomic intelligence" during WW2: Consider that the allies had reconnaissance aircraft roaming largely at will all over Europe; the allies detected German development of rockets, jet aircraft, etc., relatively easily; we'd broken their codes ("Ultra")-- in some cases, even before WW2; the allies knew size of sites being used by the Manhattan project (e.g., 35,000 acres at Oak Ridge; ~580 mi^2 at Hanford, etc... would be hard to miss); the vast commitment of wartime industrial resources necessary to move the project forward (e.g., an estimated 1% of the entire U.S. civilian labor force at its peak). Etc. My point--> allied intelligence/civilian leaders/industrial planners MUST have known that there was NO practical way the Axis would ever sniff an atomic weapon, let alone deliver one militarily [e.g. fat man/little boy were around 10,000 lbs each, far beyond the payload of a V2 and even most Axis aircraft]. So I've always wondered, did elements of the industrial establishment overplay the Axis threat, to drive funding? It seems like a plausible scenario, but I've never been able to find a book or other source that would come straight out and say this... but I do wonder... [kind of like Russian competition was used to drive the space program ~20 yrs later... ]
When I was younger we went to the Hardanger Plateau to try to ski across it ending up around Vemork, I was reading a book about this raid as we tried to get across and it really added something to the experience. In early February it was cold enough in modern equipment I can't imagine it in 1940's gear. We also got to sleep in the huts up on the plateau which felt like the Ritz after sleeping in a snow hole the first night, so I can't imagine having to do that for weeks on end. We ended up not making and had to bug out half way as a storm rolled in and dropped the most snow they had seen in decades.
You should follow up with the sabotage and sinking of the ferry Hydro at Tinnsjø once they had a batch of heavywater shipped from Rjukan towards Germany
@@scotttracy9333 : That's later in the war, mid-1943, after the 8th Air Force tried twice in quick succession to bomb the place flat. I'm sure Indy will get around to it.
Interesting episode, well done! Note to the editors: Indy is talking about the Manhattan Project episode when he points to the air over his shoulder (11:06), but the popup is for the higgens boat special episode.
Join the TimeGhost Army: bit.ly/SPECIAL_082_PI The TimeGhost Army asked for it, and we delivered it. We read all of your comments, as in we literally we have software that lets us keep track of which comments are and aren't read. We don't always respond but any feedback or requests you make do reach us. Keep letting us know what kind of content you would like to see in the future! Read our community guidelines before commenting: community.timeghost.tv/t/rules-of-conduct/4518
Called in to serve And they knew what to do They were the heroes of the cold Warrior soul, they signed a book of history They played a leading role to win the 2nd war Glad to see more coverage of one of my fav Sabaton songs
Sadly, much heavy water had been produced, and then the Germans decided to get it out of Norway. The sad part is on a ferry with a lot of other civilians, so when the Norwegian resistance decided to sink the ferry, many were killed. I believe i read that the Italians had another hydro-electric plant at the time that could produce a teeny bit of the heavy water, but i have not been able to confirm that.
many of the sabutures where from Rjukan (where the heavy water was produces as a side effect from the hydro electric dam) and some of them actually had familie on board the ship, but they where given the order to not tell a living soul about it since then the germans would maybe catch onto that something where up. the ship is still at the bottom of the fjord too this day. edit: writing error
@@66kbm reread the op “the Italians had another hydro-electric plant at the time that could produce a teeny bit of heavy water” that plant, if it existed, was an irrelevance. The Germans needed several tonnes of D2O not a few ml or a kg or 2. The only facility producing D2O on that scale was in Norway.
Oh nice, it is a video quite a fair number of us have requested for. I believe the Battlefield V Nordlys mission was loosely based on this special operation. Thank you for covering this World War Two team!
Loosely doesn't even come close. That "mission" was a mockery of real events. That sub that surfaces at the end of the mission? Yeah, that is a fresh water lake.
There is an American movie from the sixties starring Kirk Douglas, as well as a Norwegian language movie from 1948, as well as the TV series already mentioned. :)
Enriko Fermi used gaphite as moderator instead and succesfuly built the first nuclear reactor under a football stadium in Chicago. Heisenberg had tried graphite but didn't have any succes, the graphite had to be very pure for this to work, so he gave up on graphite. Luckily Heisenberg never realised his error.
Fun Fact: The Norwegians before exiting the plant willingly left behind a machine gun so as to convince the Germans that this was a commando raid and not an act of sabotage by the Resistance. Which turned out to be a good thing. Because thousands of Norwegian civilians were rounded up by the Germans only to be released later because the German commanding general saw the machine gun and became convinced that it was a commando raid.
One of the four commandos of Operation Grouse was Knut Haugland, who later took part in the Kon-Tiki expedition with Thor Heyerdahl. (And as such, I imagine many have heard of him before.)
The funny part of the story is missing, where one of the workers could have sounded the alarm, but instead asks for his glasses, because it's war time, it is difficult to get new glasses.
A huge thank you to those brave men on that mission. Without their success that night, the war and ultimately the world could have turned out very differently.
Great story, been to Rjukan a couple of times, in the winter for iceclimbing and tourskiing, I've also visited the former site at Vermork. For more about the operation, I can recommand the Norwegian television serie, Kampen om tungtvannet (Heavy Water war) from 2015, and a Norwegian movie made in 1948, also called Kampen om tungtvannet, but the commandos played their own roles in the movie.
There is a documentary where they took some modern day commandos and put them through the survival paces the Telemark guys did and in the end they met some of the survivors of the raid.
at 2:45 you say heavy water is "artificially created" by electrolysis. This is not correct, you cannot convert hydrogen to deuterium this way. Instead you can enrich the levels of heavy water in normal water by electrolysis. This takes a lot of power and a lot of water to start with. Thus the hydroelectric plant operated by Norsk Hydro was an ideal place to do this enrichment
I really like you channel. And I cannot resist bringing in the Swedish chef (close enough to Norwegian for these purposes). "Atomicy bombee, Vemork mork mork!"
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As someone who discovered this channel through the Sabaton History channel, part of me wishes the related Sabaton video was mentioned. I can think of several reasons why it isn't and really shouldn't be, but I guess my fandom for swedish history metal is a bit out of control. XD Thanks for the video, I loved it as always. 😊
Winston Churchill suggested to Franklin Roosevelt to put together a volunteer commando mission like this, using both the American and Canadian military. It was called "Project Plough" The mission was given to the First Special Service Force, or the Devil's Brigade. But it was cancelled. My uncle, Sgt. George Robinson was a Canadian volunteer.
There's a historical novel written by Atakan Büyükdağ called "Hesaplaşma" ("The Reckoning"), Which covers the nuclear arms race between the Western Allies and Nazi Germany. It's a good read, I highly recommend it.
I highly recommend The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes. It gives some good detail on the German and Japanese atomic programs. It's a heavy read, but pretty comprehensive.
Gosh, someone should make a movie about this. Oh, wait... In all seriousness, I miss epic WWII adventure flicks like they made back in the day. Isn't it time for those to be hip again?
I was already familiar with this story, but your retelling was still tense and exciting and made me appreciate those Norwegian ninjas even more. I bet when one of the commandos spied the German sentries, he probably hissed under his breath, "Nazis! I hate those guys!"
Note that Americans built their first reactor with graphite bricks; as well as subsequent "breeder reactors". The Nazis had been wavering between heavy water or graphite. The allies in showering value on the heavy water caused German research to ignore graphite.
Another fun fact: The commandos spent Christmas Eve (celebrated as "Christmas" in Norway, instead of Christmas day) on the Hardanger Vidda (plateau) feasting on reindeer brain. :)
I think the threat of a german nuclear bomb is slightly over hyped, given the effort it took the US to make their own. They had a budget literally 1000x bigger than the German program.
There's an extremely good PBS show on this subject called tales of the dead which is a series. This one is called nazi secrets. In it they show actual colored footage of operation ALSOS. it is totally fascinating. They show the US army and the Russian army converging on the V2 plant at nordhausen at the same time and it shows them both hauling away V2s. It also shows actual footage of alsos agents arriving at werner heisenbergs house at lake Walchen see. Its color footage of heisenbergs son in front of the chalet and then shows him 60 years later standing in the same spot. An absolutely superb film record of alsos with captain eric brown making a cameo.
It was a impressive mission indeed!.I have always held the impression that the story heard of Heisenberg, was the real genius of the Atomic Bomb bust for Germany .His boyhood frriendship with Himmler and their ''lunches '' talking about boyhood tales and Himmler held in amazement of Heisenberg's dialogue ,made him always not able to figure out that the problems addressed by Heisenberg kept the inevitability of a Bomb farther and farther down the road and it was not to be . The matter of fact is that Hitler was not to ''keen'' on it anyway , he couldn't understand boats ,and even more Physics ? likewise Himmler product of a farmer background.
I haven't seen it in a long time, but seems like the movie Where Eagles Dare might've been based on this. Btw, you guys do a fantastic job on these shows.
They have done two or three movies on this! One was the Heroes of Telemark and the other was a most recent a more recent one! One of the Norwegian commandos got saver Frost bite and left his little toe behind for the Germans to find! But these guys you would have called the Pros from Dover!! Which they were!!! Love the Rambo reference to....😁
Hey Indy, in your Sabaton histories video on the same subject you mentioned that the Germans had built their own Heavy Water plant in Bavaria, can you provide any further information on that?
![Noob To Max With DRAGON REWORK In Blox Fruits [FULL MOVIE]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/LnBMOinoOvA/mqdefault.jpg)
Fun fact 2: The commandos allowed one of the Norwegian civilian workers at the plant to go back in to retrieve his spectacles because they would have been very difficult to replace if they had been destroyed by the explosions.
Think about British patience and humot
So true. Me mum lost her eyeglasses at a nursing home. The fact was THEY lost her only set of prescription glasses. After, she could not see who she was talking too, she could not read, nor watch the TV while she spent long, dull weeks waiting for replacement eyeglasses.
If you wear glasses, you are powerless without them. Such is the advantage of good vision over poor.
Reminds me of that one Twilight Zone episode.
I have read in a book, that data pertaining to this plant Norsk Hydro was stollen from an insurance company by the British Intel. This had the whole map of the plant in detail describing the area which if destroyed could cause the maximum damage.
What do you mean? They were norwegian soldiers.@@muneebnajam6020
An amazing story relating to this is that of the scout team named 'grouse'' which landed ahead of freshman to mark the landing sites for the gliders. After the failure of Freshman they stayed in the area undetected for months. They are the 4 commando's Indy references at 4:38. The 4 men, lead by Jens Anton Poulsson, survived by hiding in a cabin and eating reindeer. The reindeer themselves live of a diet of moss that they dig up from under the snow. The 4 commando's of team Grouse would cut open the digestive tract of the reindeer to eat the half digested moss for some vitamins and fibers, the human body can't digest moss all by itself. After the war Paulsson would become a famed arctic warfare instructor and personal hunting guide and friend of a Norwegian king (although i can't remember or find which one). Near the plant you can hike a part of the trail the commando's used. And the Norwegian industrial workers museum in Rjukan which is housed in the facility has some excellent information and is a very good 'bad weather activity' when on holiday in the region. same as the Hardangervidda National park center, which has excellent films about the operation as well as reindeer.
Thanks for sharing this. Anywhere I could go to learn/read about this?
Another member, Knut Haugland, did the Kon Tiki expedition after the war
There was a documentary about these men and their exploits, I was staggered by their resilience. Physically tough yes but mentally hard as nails.
@@Mr10johnny10 There was an excellent documentary about it on RUclips and they even interviewed the veterans. Search for something like "formation/beginning of the SOE" - this was one of their first successful missions.
@@dtaylor10chuckufarle Also British survival expert did a show on this too called The Real Heroes of Telemark. You might find clips on YT.
I notice a number of people were mentioning the excellent movie made about this raid and the subsequent attack on the ferry. The movie was called "The Heroes of Telemark" and starred Kirk Douglas, Richard Harris, Ulla Jacobsson and Michael Redgrave.
The movie you mention is heavy Hollwoodised, i would rather recommend the norwegian tv-series "Kampen om tungtvannet", or The Heavy Water War in english.
Watched it with my father in the 60s on Saturday Night at the Movies...
One of my very first war movies.
@@t.j.payeur5331 Elwy Yost was great that way.
that actual agents who did this amazing raid have zero time for this film. There are far better Norwegian films that provide a much more accurate account
Fun fact: It was the only operation during ww2 where all the soldiers involved in the sabotage were decorated.
And by Winston Churchill himself!
Anybody else notice the Rambo homage: Trautman : You don't seem to want to accept the fact you're dealing with an expert in guerrilla warfare, with a man who's the best, with guns, with knives, with his bare hands. A man who's been trained to ignore pain, ignore weather, to live off the land
I loved that little reference
Indeed I did. In fact I had to stop watching to look in the comments and see if anyone else noticed!
US heavy water was processed at the army depot in Newport Indiana by pumping huge amounts of water available in the aquifer along the wabash river. All evidence of the process were removed with only 15 high capacity water wells remaining.
Joachim Rønneberg, the leader of the Swallow/Gunnerside team, lived near my family after the war. He worked as a journalist and came in contact with lots of people. My parents told me that he was always modest and respectful towards everybody, despite being a well known and celebrated war hero. "I just did my job, and I had the necessary luck", he said. Tough as steel and still treating everybody with respect - that says something about a man's character.
Somehow, I feel like I'm getting a war update every day now. It's almost "nice" to have one about the past that we can learn from instead of the present to prove that we didn't learn much. This was a happy episode! Thank you.
@Hannah Skipper Thanks for joining us again, nice to see you in the comments every week. Best wishes
One Joakim Rønneberg that where one of the commandos in this operation later had Ålesund center square and the street right in front of Ålesund Rådhus named arter him. He also got a statuette in front of the Ålesund Rådhus. He died in 2018.
Another great episode. I understand that mentioning this would have detracted from the tension of the episode, and you are no doubt aware already: heavy water or no, the Germans were NEVER close to getting the Atomic Bomb... per Richard Rhode's book, "postwar intelligence showed that the Germans in 1945 were farther away from the bomb than the Allies had been... in 1941... ".
Also interesting to note, the allied program relied on a graphite moderator for its first atomic pile, which the Germans had evidently abandoned due to calculation errors (thus the need for heavy water). Reportedly, Speer ended the formal German atomic weapons program in 1942/43, after realizing that the realization of functioning atomic weapons wouldn't happen on any timescale relevant for the Germans in WW2.
It doesn't diminish the commandos accomplishments as one of the finest sabotage operations in history, but yes, in the grand scheme the Germans would never have gotten their atomic bomb even if they had had all the heavy water in the world. But of course the Allies didn't know that at the time.
@shadowdoc31 Thank you for watching, and thanks for the added info.
Correct, but the allies didn't know that, and thus took no chances and went ahead with the operation.
As they say hindsight is 20-20
It's been noted that Nazi ideology is what killed their bomb effort. They discarded what they knew about physics because it was too "Jewish".
@@scotttracy9333 I don't really disagree and understand the Allies need to "take no chances"-- especially considering the (relatively) small commitment of men/resources for a commando operation like "Operation Gunnerside". That said, let me throw out a related, ancillary topic here RE: "atomic intelligence" during WW2:
Consider that the allies had reconnaissance aircraft roaming largely at will all over Europe; the allies detected German development of rockets, jet aircraft, etc., relatively easily; we'd broken their codes ("Ultra")-- in some cases, even before WW2; the allies knew size of sites being used by the Manhattan project (e.g., 35,000 acres at Oak Ridge; ~580 mi^2 at Hanford, etc... would be hard to miss); the vast commitment of wartime industrial resources necessary to move the project forward (e.g., an estimated 1% of the entire U.S. civilian labor force at its peak). Etc.
My point--> allied intelligence/civilian leaders/industrial planners MUST have known that there was NO practical way the Axis would ever sniff an atomic weapon, let alone deliver one militarily [e.g. fat man/little boy were around 10,000 lbs each, far beyond the payload of a V2 and even most Axis aircraft]. So I've always wondered, did elements of the industrial establishment overplay the Axis threat, to drive funding? It seems like a plausible scenario, but I've never been able to find a book or other source that would come straight out and say this... but I do wonder... [kind of like Russian competition was used to drive the space program ~20 yrs later... ]
When I was younger we went to the Hardanger Plateau to try to ski across it ending up around Vemork, I was reading a book about this raid as we tried to get across and it really added something to the experience. In early February it was cold enough in modern equipment I can't imagine it in 1940's gear. We also got to sleep in the huts up on the plateau which felt like the Ritz after sleeping in a snow hole the first night, so I can't imagine having to do that for weeks on end. We ended up not making and had to bug out half way as a storm rolled in and dropped the most snow they had seen in decades.
Might the book have been Assault in Norway by Thomas Gallagher - sounds like a fun experience.
You should follow up with the sabotage and sinking of the ferry Hydro at Tinnsjø once they had a batch of heavywater shipped from Rjukan towards Germany
Exactly, I was expecting that to be part of this episode.
Story is only half finished
@@scotttracy9333 : That's later in the war, mid-1943, after the 8th Air Force tried twice in quick succession to bomb the place flat. I'm sure Indy will get around to it.
And operation Grouse offcourse
The british commando raids in WW2 are incredible.
There was a documentary about this. They retrieved some of the drums from the lakebed, and they still contained heavy water.
Interesting episode, well done!
Note to the editors: Indy is talking about the Manhattan Project episode when he points to the air over his shoulder (11:06), but the popup is for the higgens boat special episode.
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Your team done well.
Very interesting.
5:04 parachute landing trainer.
Known at Fort Benning as the Slam Dunk Machine.
Called in to serve
And they knew what to do
They were the heroes of the cold
Warrior soul, they signed a book of history
They played a leading role to win the 2nd war
Glad to see more coverage of one of my fav Sabaton songs
Sadly, much heavy water had been produced, and then the Germans decided to get it out of Norway. The sad part is on a ferry with a lot of other civilians, so when the Norwegian resistance decided to sink the ferry, many were killed.
I believe i read that the Italians had another hydro-electric plant at the time that could produce a teeny bit of the heavy water, but i have not been able to confirm that.
Yyyyyyyyyyyyyyy yum yy
To use heavy water as a reactor moderator you will need many tons of material “a teeny bit” isn’t going to help.
many of the sabutures where from Rjukan (where the heavy water was produces as a side effect from the hydro electric dam) and some of them actually had familie on board the ship, but they where given the order to not tell a living soul about it since then the germans would maybe catch onto that something where up. the ship is still at the bottom of the fjord too this day.
edit: writing error
@@davidwright7193 tommy14 did not say that. Look as the info and posts and be constructive and informative.
@@66kbm reread the op “the Italians had another hydro-electric plant at the time that could produce a teeny bit of heavy water” that plant, if it existed, was an irrelevance. The Germans needed several tonnes of D2O not a few ml or a kg or 2. The only facility producing D2O on that scale was in Norway.
Another great episode, many thanks for all your team's efforts.
@Mike Price Thank you for watching!
Oh nice, it is a video quite a fair number of us have requested for. I believe the Battlefield V Nordlys mission was loosely based on this special operation. Thank you for covering this World War Two team!
very, very, very, VERRRRRRRRRRRRY loosely . . .
It's very loosely inspired by it(it's action, not stealth for one), and AFAIK it was supposed to be an Alt-Hist prequel to Gunnerside.
Loosely doesn't even come close. That "mission" was a mockery of real events.
That sub that surfaces at the end of the mission? Yeah, that is a fresh water lake.
I love every episode, but I dunno...this one was the most riveting, eyes glued and ears open episode yet. Good work, gang.
@jesuispain Thank you for watching
Germany: We will turn Norway into Fortress.
England: Let's go full Commando.
I literally don't understand how there isn't a movie on the Norwegian Commando raid on the Heavy Water Factory. It plays out crazier than fiction.
Check out the Norwegian tv series: the heavy water war
@@WorldWarTwo I will do that! Thanks
There is an American movie from the sixties starring Kirk Douglas, as well as a Norwegian language movie from 1948, as well as the TV series already mentioned. :)
It was a mission in the video game Hidden and Dangerous 2 I think
There is. The movie is called "The Heroes of Telemark". As I recall, it is quite accurate in its portrayal of the raid.
Enriko Fermi used gaphite as moderator instead and succesfuly built the first nuclear reactor under a football stadium in Chicago. Heisenberg had tried graphite but didn't have any succes, the graphite had to be very pure for this to work, so he gave up on graphite. Luckily Heisenberg never realised his error.
This and the rest of the North Eastern areas of the war (Finland, Norway, etc) is what got me to follow this channel.
@W. C. Glad to have you with us
Fun Fact: The Norwegians before exiting the plant willingly left behind a machine gun so as to convince the Germans that this was a commando raid and not an act of sabotage by the Resistance. Which turned out to be a good thing. Because thousands of Norwegian civilians were rounded up by the Germans only to be released later because the German commanding general saw the machine gun and became convinced that it was a commando raid.
That is a fun fact.
Specifically, if memory serves, a Sten.
@@richardlinter4111 I'd heard it was a Thompson.
@@KarlB591 {Looks it up} You are absolutely correct.
One of the four commandos of Operation Grouse was Knut Haugland, who later took part in the Kon-Tiki expedition with Thor Heyerdahl. (And as such, I imagine many have heard of him before.)
The funny part of the story is missing, where one of the workers could have sounded the alarm, but instead asks for his glasses, because it's war time, it is difficult to get new glasses.
I've read about this mission and even watched the National Geographic video on it. This presentation still taught me a thing or two I didn't know.
A wonderful story well told. It was nice finally learning some of the details of the raid.
@wm baumgartner Thanks very much for watching
The extreme conditions that the Norwegian Commandos had to Endure and their Eventual Attack is the stuff of Military Legend and Human Endurance
Indy that was some amazing storytelling. I watched breathlessly and this felt like a total movie script
@Tom Thank you very much for watching
The bravery of people like this is really humbling.
Really like this channel. It has grown on me keep up that good work guys.
Great presentation. I've read the account of the mission, but you made it come more alive.
@Tim L.B. Thanks for watching!
Hi Indy
Wow.. Amazing incident..
Never knew before of this daring mission in details.. Just knew about operation gunnerside..
Thanks for the video.
Thanks!
@Gregory Miller You're welcome, and thank you for watching!
A huge thank you to those brave men on that mission. Without their success that night, the war and ultimately the world could have turned out very differently.
The book the Winter Fortress by Neal Bascomb is about this mission. Definitely recommend reading that!
RUclips needs to have a "love" button for episodes like this one!
Left to right in the photo at 3:23: Harold C. Urey, Ernest O. Lawrence, James B. Conan, Lyman J. Briggs, E. V. Muphree, Arthur Compton
@Professor Sogol Thank you
Great story, been to Rjukan a couple of times, in the winter for iceclimbing and tourskiing, I've also visited the former site at Vermork. For more about the operation, I can recommand the Norwegian television serie, Kampen om tungtvannet (Heavy Water war) from 2015, and a Norwegian movie made in 1948, also called Kampen om tungtvannet, but the commandos played their own roles in the movie.
This is truly one of my favorite stories of the war. Hollywood couldn't do it any better than these true bad ass men did.
There is a documentary where they took some modern day commandos and put them through the survival paces the Telemark guys did and in the end they met some of the survivors of the raid.
Man should have a movies about this epic operation !!!! Very nice narration Indy
Thank you for watching, glad you enjoyed it!
Really enjoyed that one guys. Real life James Bond scenario. Keep up the good work!
@Fly HighSun Thank you for watching
@@WorldWarTwo always! Let's finish this war!
at 2:45 you say heavy water is "artificially created" by electrolysis. This is not correct, you cannot convert hydrogen to deuterium this way. Instead you can enrich the levels of heavy water in normal water by electrolysis. This takes a lot of power and a lot of water to start with. Thus the hydroelectric plant operated by Norsk Hydro was an ideal place to do this enrichment
Being a nuclear engineer, I was going to criticize this but good to see you did already. Not sure Indie or the others read this though.
Great intro, love when Indy gets into it
I'm surprised that the Sabaton History episode called "Saboteurs" was not mentioned. It covers the same topic and is also hosted by Indy
I really like you channel. And I cannot resist bringing in the Swedish chef (close enough to Norwegian for these purposes). "Atomicy bombee, Vemork mork mork!"
Thank you for watching, David
Exciting and captivating storytelling!
More specials, please! This was great!
@bit flip Every episode is a great investment of research, time, and money. We do our best to cover the action of this war every single week and to bring you special episodes regularly, but we can't do it without your support! Join the TimeGhost Army on Patreon and help us to make more of those specials! www.patreon.com/join/timeghosthistory
@@WorldWarTwo I'm a proud Patreon supported since WW2 Day 1. Keep up the good work, you guys are the best!
"In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule"
- Friedrich Nietzsche
As someone who discovered this channel through the Sabaton History channel, part of me wishes the related Sabaton video was mentioned. I can think of several reasons why it isn't and really shouldn't be, but I guess my fandom for swedish history metal is a bit out of control. XD
Thanks for the video, I loved it as always. 😊
@theMagicRabbit Thanks for watching
Winston Churchill suggested to Franklin Roosevelt to put together a volunteer commando mission like this, using both the American and Canadian military. It was called "Project Plough" The mission was given to the First Special Service Force, or the Devil's Brigade. But it was cancelled. My uncle, Sgt. George Robinson was a Canadian volunteer.
You forgot about the factory caretaker who accidentally encountered the commandos but decided to help them in their destruction.
There's a historical novel written by Atakan Büyükdağ called "Hesaplaşma" ("The Reckoning"), Which covers the nuclear arms race between the Western Allies and Nazi Germany. It's a good read, I highly recommend it.
I highly recommend The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes. It gives some good detail on the German and Japanese atomic programs. It's a heavy read, but pretty comprehensive.
OMG this was nail bitingly exciting!!! is there a movie about this???? I need to see a movie about this.
Exciting story, very well told by Indy. Excellent.
@Simon Gleaden Thank you for watching
8:46 what happened to the employees when the explosions went off? Where they outside?
One thing you failed to mention was that they were also trained to eat things that’d make a Billy goat puke.
2:12 JESSE GET THE HEAVY WATER WE GOTTA COOK UP SOME A-BOMBS
"A man who's been trained to ignore pain, ignore weather, to live off the land, to eat things that would make a billy goat puke" Trautman 😄
I loved the Telemark map in Battlefield 1942: Special Weapons of WW2. Of course, it was not a stealth game at all...
There is always good information from your team.
@I am No Legend Thank you for joining us
Gosh, someone should make a movie about this. Oh, wait...
In all seriousness, I miss epic WWII adventure flicks like they made back in the day. Isn't it time for those to be hip again?
I was already familiar with this story, but your retelling was still tense and exciting and made me appreciate those Norwegian ninjas even more. I bet when one of the commandos spied the German sentries, he probably hissed under his breath, "Nazis! I hate those guys!"
Indy’s voice really expresses the tension. The writing is great too.
Note that Americans built their first reactor with graphite bricks; as well as subsequent "breeder reactors". The Nazis had been wavering between heavy water or graphite. The allies in showering value on the heavy water caused German research to ignore graphite.
This was a great episode. Thanks Indie.
@boomslangCA Thank you for watching!
What a great story by a seasoned storyteller! Better than the movie.
Im starting to think Germany may not win this one🤔🤔🤔
The first ussr bomb was designed by d'Ardenne = German
4 years too late to help Germany
Nah, Steiner's counterattack will save Germany
i actually learned about this part of history, for the first time, playing a game called Blazing Angels.
Heroes of the Telemark carrying Viking blood in veins!
Great video. However, the link at the end to the beginning of the Manhattan Project is actually a link to the Higgins boat video.
Another fun fact: The commandos spent Christmas Eve (celebrated as "Christmas" in Norway, instead of Christmas day) on the Hardanger Vidda (plateau) feasting on reindeer brain. :)
I think the threat of a german nuclear bomb is slightly over hyped, given the effort it took the US to make their own. They had a budget literally 1000x bigger than the German program.
5:14 Colonel Trautmann's speech to sheriff Teasle in "First Blood."
There's an extremely good PBS show on this subject called tales of the dead which is a series. This one is called nazi secrets. In it they show actual colored footage of operation ALSOS. it is totally fascinating. They show the US army and the Russian army converging on the V2 plant at nordhausen at the same time and it shows them both hauling away V2s. It also shows actual footage of alsos agents arriving at werner heisenbergs house at lake Walchen see. Its color footage of heisenbergs son in front of the chalet and then shows him 60 years later standing in the same spot. An absolutely superb film record of alsos with captain eric brown making a cameo.
Enjoyed your video and I gave it a Thumbs Up as a support
Holy shit, what an amazing story! How is there not a movie about this yet?
A movie is needed to be made on this
The film Heros of Telemark (1965) about this
It was a impressive mission indeed!.I have always held the impression that the story heard of Heisenberg, was the real genius of the Atomic Bomb bust for Germany .His boyhood frriendship with Himmler and their ''lunches '' talking about boyhood tales and Himmler held in amazement of Heisenberg's dialogue ,made him always not able to figure out that the problems addressed by Heisenberg kept the inevitability of a Bomb farther and farther down the road and it was not to be . The matter of fact is that Hitler was not to ''keen'' on it anyway , he couldn't understand boats ,and even more Physics ? likewise Himmler product of a farmer background.
This operation is well known but there were others not so well known. I hope you can do a video on them too.
" Crew expendable "
That cod4 mission name makes sense now.
I haven't seen it in a long time, but seems like the movie Where Eagles Dare might've been based on this.
Btw, you guys do a fantastic job on these shows.
The movie "The Heroes of Telemark" was very good, and fairly accurate.
Warrior Soul!
They signed a book of history!
I got notified that Indy had a new video when I was watching Indy's new video. Good job You Tube.
Ohhh excellent storytelling !!
@Reversal89 Thank you for watching
I am curious to know what was the temperature on the southern part of the eastern front 79 years ago excepting the Kuban one with no reason.
The film Heros of Telemark (1965) about this👍
I love the stories of daring-do from the war, especially those sponsored by the British. Theirs seems to be the daring-est of the daring-do.
Thank you for another excellent and informative video.
@George Williams Thank you for watching
Excellent tie today
Wonderful episode
Thank you!
As shown in the 1965 movie "The Heroes of Telemark"
They have done two or three movies on this! One was the Heroes of Telemark and the other was a most recent a more recent one! One of the Norwegian commandos got saver Frost bite and left his little toe behind for the Germans to find! But these guys you would have called the Pros from Dover!! Which they were!!! Love the Rambo reference to....😁
Good style
Well presented
Hey Indy, in your Sabaton histories video on the same subject you mentioned that the Germans had built their own Heavy Water plant in Bavaria, can you provide any further information on that?
My brain: “Don’t mention Battlefield V, don’t mention Battlefield V…”
Great video !!
@David Snow Thank you for watching