Agent who sabotaged Nazi atomic program honoured in London
A Norwegian resistance fighter who led a daring raid to sabotage Nazi Germany's atomic bomb program during World War II has been honoured at a London ceremony. - Joachim Rønneberg led a six-man team for Operation Gunnerside, an attack on the Norsk Hydro heavy water production plant in Vermok, Norway. The operation, in early 1943, destroyed the plant's supplies of heavy water, which the Nazis hoped to use to produce nuclear weapons. An earlier unsuccessful raid involving British paratroopers resulted in heavy casualties when the gliders carrying the men crashed and the survivors were captured, tortured and executed by the Gestapo. The Operation Gunnerside raid was dramatised in the Franco-Norwegian film Operation Swallow: The Battle for Heavy Water in 1948, and the later US movie The Heroes of Telemark, starring Kirk Douglas.
norway.org.uk: Hero From World War II Joachim Rønneberg in London
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Today's Zaman: Heavy Water and Israel [11.08.2005]