[tallyhooldboy]

Hi all,

I don’t think any of us really know how close Germany was to having “The A Bomb. “ They certainly had 2 effective means of delivery, V1 & 2. The atom bomb in the hands of the German's could have turned the course of the war in Hitler's favour, and history might have taken a completely different path; Germany could have become the master of the world.

However, this new weapon was not completed before the Nazis were defeated, and we owe great thanks to those men who risked their lives to carry out sabotage missions who were more daring and audacious than anything ever undertaken before. One major raid that comes to mind was Operation Freshman.

At the beginning of 1942 the allied intelligence services received reports indicating that the German's had ordered a three-fold increase in the production of heavy water. Heavy water was an important ingredient in the production of the atom bomb, and the German's main production site was the Norsk Hydro Plant, at Vemork, Rjukan in Norway.

From what I understand it became extremely important for the Allies to destroy the Germans heavy water production capacity thus, Operation Freshman or the raid on Telemark, 19/20 November 1942 took place. I personally believe this one raid went a long way toward slowing down, if not completely halting altogether, Germany’s hope of a 1944 A bomb.

PS. most of you would know of this raid from the 1965 movie “The Heroes of Telemark” with Kirk Douglas.