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Joachim Roenneberg, serving behind enemy lines in his native Norway during the German occupation, in 1943 blew up a plant producing heavy water, or D2O, a hydrogen-rich substance that was key to the later development of atomic bombs.
Picked by Britain's war-time Special Operations Executive to lead the raid when he was only 23 years old, Roenneberg was the youngest member of Operation Gunnerside, which penetrated and destroyed key parts of the heavily guarded Norsk Hydro plant.
The subject of books and documentaries as well as movies and a TV drama series, the attack took place without a single shot fired.
https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/operation-gunnerside
At the very least, Operation Gunnerside should be recognized as one of the most successful SOE missions during World War II. For a mission that Rønneberg and his squad frequently imagined as a one-way trip, the operation experienced no casualties and succeeded in temporarily destroying the Germans' single source of heavy water at the time. During wartime, time is of the essence and any kind of setback has disadvantages. Rønneberg later commented that London could have suffered a different fate and ended up 'looking like Hiroshima' if his team had failed.
(Score: 2) by LaminatorX on Wednesday October 24 2018, @01:29PM
We know now that the German nuclear program was barking up the wrong tree by trying to leapfrog straight to deuterium weapons without having a fission device to ignite them.
However, that was not at all obvious at the time.