Courage of Telemark’s quiet hero
DURING February, 1943, a sixman team of Norwegian commandos sabotaged a Nazi “heavy water” facility, thwarting Hitler's plan to devise a nuclear bomb. Leading that team was 23-year-old resistance fighter Joachim Rønneberg, who months earlier had been given the plans for Operation Gunnerside.
The aim of the mission was to disrupt the heavily guarded Norsk Hydro hydroelectric plant in the remote Norwegian settlement of Vemork.
Britain had learnt that the Nazis were racing the Allies to produce the first atomic bomb but direct bombing was ruled out because of the mass scale of civilian casualties that would result.
Instead, led by Rønneberg, a team of men clambered down a gorge, crossed a frozen river and scrambled up the rock face on the other side to enter the nuclear plant. Once in, they set their explosives and fled.
“The fuses were about two minutes long,” recalled Rønneberg. “I cut them down to 30 seconds and lit them.”
Once the guards realised what had happened, thousands of Nazi soldiers descended on the region to track down Rønneberg and his team. But they skiied 200 miles across the region of Telemark and within two days were back in London.
The top-secret raid was a triumph, putting the factory out of action for months and would go on to be considered one of the most important sabotage missions of the Second World War. The group were hailed “the heroes of Telemark”.
Reflecting on the mission in later life, Rønneberg said: “We just did a job. We got lucky. Certainly luck but also very good intelligence about the target.”
Joachim Rønneberg was one of three sons born into a prominent merchant family in Ålesund. After finishing school he applied for Oslo University but preferred being outdoors, mountain climbing.
When the Germans invaded in April 1940, Rønneberg was working at a fishing company and waiting for summer conscription into the navy.
Within the year, Rønneberg and eight friends had taken the 24-hour “Shetland Bus”, a small fishing boat to Scotland. He did not tell anyone of his whereabouts, only leaving a farewell note for his parents.
After travelling to London he met Norwegian actor Martin Linge who was also leader of No.1 Norwegian Independent Company, a British special operations group designed to perform commando raids against the Nazis in Norway.
Rønneberg rose to become an instructor in explosive demolitions and in December 1942 he was given command of Operation Gunnerside, as the Telemark raid was known.
Rønneberg received the DSO from the British for his role, as well as Norway's highest decoration for military bravery and the mission was later turned into a 1965 Hollywood movie, The Heroes Of Telemark, starring Kirk Douglas. Continuing work in operations after Gunnerside, he succeeded in blowing up a bridge which halted German railway traffic to another part of Norway for three years. After the war he returned to Ålesund where he found work as a radio journalist eventually rising to become editorial director of a radio and TV station. He retired in 1987. Rønneberg was reluctant to speak about his experiences but in 2013 said he only realised the importance of the mission after atomic bombs were dropped on Japan's Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Rønneberg married Liv Foldal in 1949 who died in 2015. He is survived by their three children.