Good post! Let's add another famous raid (or series of raids) that was also very important to the WWII effort; the sabotage of the heavy water plant in Norway:
Wiki article (I will assume this is relatively accurate, if fits with what I have previously read about this famous raid(s))
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegi...water_sabotage
From above link:
The Norwegian heavy water sabotage was a series of actions undertaken by Norwegian saboteurs during World War II to prevent the German nuclear energy project from acquiring heavy water (deuterium oxide), which could be used to produce nuclear weapons. In 1934, at Vemork, Norsk Hydro built the first commercial plant capable of producing heavy water as a byproduct of fertilizer production. It had a capacity of 12 t (13 short tons) per year. During World War II, the Allies decided to remove the heavy water supply and destroy the heavy water plant in order to inhibit the Nazi development of nuclear weapons. Raids were aimed at the 60-MW Vemork power station at the Rjukan waterfall in Telemark, Norway.
Prior to the German invasion of Norway on 9 April 1940, the Deuxième Bureau (French military intelligence) removed 185 kg (408 lb) of heavy water from the plant in Vemork in then-neutral Norway. The plant′s managing director, Aubert, agreed to loan the heavy water to France for the duration of the war. The French transported it secretly to Oslo, to Perth, Scotland, and then to France. The plant remained capable of producing heavy water.
The Allies remained concerned that the occupation forces would use the facility to produce more heavy water for their weapons programme. Between 1940 and 1944, a sequence of sabotage actions, by the Norwegian resistance movement—as well as Allied bombing—ensured the destruction of the plant and the loss of the heavy water produced. These operations—codenamed "Grouse," "Freshman," and "Gunnerside"—finally managed to knock the plant out of production in early 1943.
In Operation Grouse, the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) successfully placed four Norwegian nationals as an advance team in the region of the Hardanger Plateau above the plant. Later in 1942 the unsuccessful Operation Freshman was mounted by British paratroopers; they were to rendezvous with the Norwegians of Operation Grouse and proceed to Vemork. This attempt failed when the military gliders crashed short of their destination, as did one of the tugs, a Halifax bomber. The other Halifax returned to base, but all the other participants were killed in the crashes or captured, interrogated, and executed by the Gestapo.
In 1943, a team of SOE-trained Norwegian commandos succeeded in destroying the production facility with a second attempt, Operation Gunnerside. Operation Gunnerside was later evaluated by SOE as the most successful act of sabotage in all of World War II.
These actions were followed by Allied bombing raids. The Germans elected to cease operation and remove the remaining heavy water to Germany. Norwegian resistance forces sank the ferry, SF Hydro, on Lake Tinnsjø, preventing the heavy water from being removed.
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-Zeno
http://english.turkcebilgi.com/Operation+Gunnerside
From above link:
Operation Gunnerside
British authorities were aware of the "success" of the Grouse team, and decided to mount another operation in concert with them. By this time the original Grouse team were being referred to as Swallow. On the night of 16th February 1943, in Operation Gunnerside (named after a village and the moor where the Hambro Family and Sir Charles Hambro, the head of SOE, used to shoot grouse), an additional six Norwegian commandos were dropped by parachute by a Halifax bomber of 138 Squadron from RAF Tempsford. They were successful in landing, and encountered the Swallow team after a few days of searching. The combined team made final preparations for their assault, which was to take place on the night of 27 February.
Supplies required by the commandos were dropped with them in special CLE containers. (One of these was buried in the snow by a Norwegian patriot to hide it from the Germans; he later recovered it and in August 1976 handed it over to an officer of the (British) Army Air Corps, who were exercising in the area. The container was brought back to England and is now on display at the Airborne Museum at Aldershot.)
Following the failed Freshman attempt, mines, floodlights and additional guards were set around the plant. Whilst the mines and lights remained in place, security of the actual plant had slackened somewhat over the winter months. However, the single 75-metre bridge spanning the deep ravine, 200 metres above the River Maan, was fully guarded.
The force elected to descend into the ravine, ford the icy river and climb the steep hill on the far side. The winter river level was very low, and on the far side, where the ground leveled, they followed a single railway track straight into the plant area without encountering any guards. Even before Grouse landed in Norway, SOE had a Norwegian agent within the plant who supplied detailed plans and schedule information. The demolition party used this information to enter the main basement by a cable tunnel and through a window. Inside the plant the only person they came across was the Norwegian caretaker (Johansen), who was very willing to cooperate with them.
The saboteurs then placed explosive charges on the heavy water electrolysis chambers, and attached a fuse allowing sufficient time for their escape. A British submachine gun was purposely left behind to indicate that this was the work of British forces and not of the local resistance, in order to alleviate reprisals. A surreal episode ensued when fuses were about to be lit: The caretaker was worried about his spectacles which were lying somewhere in the room (during the war new glasses were nearly impossible to acquire). A frantic search for the caretaker's spectacles ensued, they were found - and the fuses lit! The explosive charges detonated, destroying the electrolysis chambers.
All ten commandos made good their escape whereafter six of them skied 400 kilometres to Sweden and four remained in Norway for further work with the resistance. The Vemork plant was restored by April and SOE concluded that a repeat raid would be extremely difficult, as German security now was very considerable. In November the plant was attacked by a massed daylight bombing raid of 143 B-17 bombers dropping 711 bombs, of which at least 600 missed the plant. The damage, however, was quite extensive; the reason for the original ground assault a year earlier was that the available alternative of night bombing was considered unrealistic at that time.
^^^^
Last edited by Zeno; 04-04-2012 at 07:52 PM.
Reason: added info
); i misremembered a few details but got the gist of it right. It's really more of an entertaining anecdote rather than an exact recount though, especially concerning what i called the punchline (and your objection, obviously).
