Talk:Norwegian heavy water sabotage

	Norwegian heavy water sabotage was a good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
Article milestones Date Process Result October 24, 2006 Good article nominee Not listed
	A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on August 9, 2004. The text of the entry was: Did you know ...that the Norwegian heavy water sabotage was a key part of Allied efforts to prevent Nazi Germany from developing nuclear weapons?
	Facts from this article were featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "On this day..." column on February 16, 2014, February 16, 2017, and February 16, 2018.

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Any one know why ?

Any one know why they had a heavy water plant at all which was built as I understand it before the war? What was the point if no one was actively building a bomb when the plant was first built? Was it just a by prodcut of producing hydrogen for other purposes? Dave

Book reference (I haven't read it, but I saw the documentary):

• Ray Mears, The Real Heroes of Telemark, Hodder & Stoughton, London 2003. --Robert Merkel 13:27, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

It was a byproduct. The primary product of the plant was something else like a fertilizer.

Cheap available hydroelectric power & water -> water electrolysis -> hydrogen & oxygen.

air -> nitrogen.

hydrogen & nitrogen -> ammonia

Water remaining in hydrolisis tubs is enriched in heavy water because it hydrolises slower than water.

Jclerman 15:12, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Great - that explains everything!! DaveEngineman (talk) 16:06, 4 June 2008 (UTC) Ohh - apparenlty not!!!!Engineman (talk) 06:42, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Electrolysis

The Hydro plant was built before the war to utilize the relatively simple process known as electrolysis to split the water molecule into highly acidic hydrogen ions and highly basic hydroxide ions. They used the hydrogen to make fertilizer, and had no idea until the Germans showed interest in the plant that their biproduct could be useful in beginning a chain reaction wherein a stable uranium atom becomes plutonium, necessary for making nuclear weapons. Does that help at all? Lily Grace 07:44, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

apparenlty scienties were playing with heavy water even in 1934

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/ops/vemork.htm

"Norsk Hydro supplied the world's scientific community with heavy water only as a sideline."

a correction:

The book ${\displaystyle E=mc^{2}}$, the biography of a formula also mentions that the hydro plant produced fertilizer, and that heavy water was a by-product. I don't think so - chemically, heavy water isn't very different from ordinary water, and I'd say that it can just as well be used to make fertilizer.

• Deuterated water has, in fact, rather different properties from normal water. That's why it was a byproduct of the electrolysis reaction which preferred the lighter chemical species. And, just in case, please do not drink it. Jclerman 18:57, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

However, I can imagine that electrolysis was the first stage in the production. On top of that, you'll have to treat tons of water because the heavy ions are rather rare. A big factory (next to a powerful electricity generator) will be an asset in that case. --J c stuifbergen 17:28, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

---

I wonder whether there is any truth to my father's understanding that random hostages were taken from among the populace after the raid on Vermork.

I seem to recall that such tactics were used by the Nazis in many territories in WWII (resistance movements, as a rule, aren't above some rather nasty actions towards "collaborators" themselves), and I think the Hollywood movie implied this (though, as stated, it never let the facts get in the way of a good story). Somebody needs to do some book research to find out. --Robert Merkel 05:42, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

---

I've just discovered that there is another page, Operation Gunnerside, which covers this material. The two pages should be merged. --Robert Merkel 07:37, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

---

Moved these old notes from Talk:Operation Gunnerside to Talk:Norwegian_heavy_water_sabotage (nice merge by the way).

Some notes on the Grouse team to add to an article sometime:

Jens Anton Paulsson wrote in his report that in 1942 the snow was sticking to their skis and there was surface water on the ice so that each day their feet were soaking wet.

The Grouse team's task was to transport batteries, radio and equipment some 100 kilometres from lake Sona (spelling?) in 30 days, and then radio the glider team waiting in the UK to make the attack on the plant.

However, after 10 days the Grouse team had covered less than a third of the way, and were on low rations of around 2500 calories per day, doing work that required 6000 per day.

Because the equipment to move was so heavy, it had to shuttled in 30 kilogram portions, with each team member skiing some 10 km dropping the stuff, and returning back to the previous drop point. This meant they had to travel 3 times the actual distance they moved forward.

During this whole time they could not make any radio contact so noone back in the UK knew of their problems.

After some (10+ ?) days the team left the frozen lake and moved the stuff on sledges.

Claus Helberg said something (I didn't quite catch what he said) about discovering or jury-rigging a sledge which eased moving the equipment.

Jens Anton Paulsson once fell through thin ice over a frozen lake but was recovered by his team members.

(TV programme shows the technique for surviving falling in ice cold water: keep hold of ski poles, use them to swim back to where you fell in, and use the pole-points to drag yourself out, get to a heated tent, and/or remove all wet clothes, and put on clothes from your ditch-kit, packed for this eventuality. Otherwise you freeze to death)

When the team reached a point near to the plant they rigged an aeriel and used Morse code to radio Bletchley park, England.

17 Nov 1942 Knut Haugland sent radio msg about good conditions for gliders: clear sky, -5C, strong N wind has died down. Set up landing lights in snow and wait. Plan was 2 gliders with soldiers air-towed across over the N,Sea, land, debark, fight way into plant, and sabotage it.

But the tow ropes on the towing aircraft iced up, 3 aircraft crashed...

-Wikibob | Talk 23:14, 2004 Apr 7 (UTC)

Knut Haugland/Haukelid

Are these the same person, spelled differently because of translation? Joyous 02:05, Apr 28, 2005 (UTC)

No.

See, for example, the photo of the memorial at http://www.stephen-stratford.co.uk/freshman.htm Gene Nygaard 02:22, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

To be specific, they are Knut M. Haugland and Knut A. Haukelid, respectively. Haugland (radio operator) was a member of the Grouse/Swallow group, who parachuted over the Hardangervidda on the night of 18/19 October 1942. Haukelid was a member of the Gunnerside group, who dropped down from the sky to join Swallow four months later on 17 February 1943. --Wernher 02:31, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thank you both. I linked to this article from Kon-Tiki, and then wasn't sure I had his identity straight. Joyous 02:55, Apr 28, 2005 (UTC)

Nazi A-bomb?

Among historians there is doubt that Germany was really working on a nuclear weapon. Of course, the Nazi's were interested in such a weapon, and were experimenting with nuclear fission. The allies were convinced that the Germans were building a bomb (one of the reasons for the Manhattan-project), but after the war little evidence for a bomb was found. There were experimental nuclear reactors found, but those weren't very effective and could not produce enough plutonium for a bomb. After the war it became apparent that the Nazi's decided the development of a nuclear weapon would take too long, cost too much and use too much resources.

- FB

FB, they certainly didn't attempt anything like what the Allies did with the Manhattan Project, but the experiments they were conducting could ultimately have led to plutonium production and a bomb design. With the benefit of hindsight it's clear that the Nazis would never have finished in time, but hindsight is always 20/20. --Robert Merkel 15:06, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Ironically, the fact that Nazi Germany despised/discarded "Jewish" physics led to many extremely talented physicists and engineers to emigrate, some to the United States, and were essential in the Manhattan Project, and this was detrimental to the Nazi pursuit of a nuclear weapon - I am trying to motivate myself to look through the various sources in my private history library of 300-plus volumes to find some good references on this for the article, but it is Sunday, and I am extremely lazy right now.  :-) HammerFilmFan (talk) 10:21, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

The tipping point for the Allies (actually, Britain) was the 1940 Frisch–Peierls memorandum that proved an atomic bomb was a feasible proposition, this led to fears that Germany might be working on a bomb and might get one first, and all responses were based on that (albeit mistaken) assumption. After the war it was discovered that Germany had not been anywhere near getting an atomic bomb but the Allies hadn't known that at the time. Getting this wrong would almost certainly have lost the Allies the war. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.149.173.13 (talk) 10:57, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Big missing part

Great narrative in this article, but it's missing the most important part: in the "Operation Gunnerside" section, what did the team do after entering the building? The narrative goes:

1. Approach attempt
2. Approach attempt 2
3. Get into the building
4. Sneak away from the building.

Did they perhaps set a bomb or two? Tempshill 20:14, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Good question. I don't know exactly how they sabotaged the heavy water production.--Robert Merkel 21:16, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

prematurely abandoned the idea of a graphite-moderated reactor

Recent edit states: "Having prematurely abandoned the idea of a graphite-moderated reactor for plutonium production due to initial failure to examine ultrapure graphite, the Germans instead settled on a heavy-water-based design (in the U.S., this mistake was prevented by the insight of Leo Szilard). A nuclear reactor could be used to do bomb research, and, ultimately, to breed plutonium from which a bomb could be constructed."

Come now, the heavy water concept was perfectly viable—one needs only consider the production reactors at Savannah River Site’s R-Reactor, P-Reactor, L-Reactor, K-Reactor, & C-Reactor or Mayak’s production reactors to see compelling proof that heavy water is more effective for plutonium production than graphite-moderated reactors. How is it that the abandonment of a graphite-moderated reactor was premature? Were the Germans to have the prescience that allowed them to see the Norwegians would sabotage their approach?

Williamborg 01:55, 29 April 2006 (UTC)