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SOE's Balls of Steel
Operation Rubble, 147 Willing Volunteers and 25,000 Tons of Ball Bearings
By Sophie Jackson The History Press
Copyright © 2013 Sophie Jackson
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7524-9422-7
CHAPTER 1
THROUGH SNOW AND ICE
The Swedish coast in winter can be a barren and bitterly cold place. It was January 1941 and the Bro Fjord, just off the Skagerrak strait, was thick with 6 inches of ice. The skies had been particularly clear and the scene was almost picturesque as crewmen from the various ships anchored in the fjord took the opportunity to stroll across the ice to neighbouring ships or to shore. If only the Nazi presence had not been such a constant worry in Swedish minds it could have been a peaceful situation.
The arrival of dozens of Norwegian merchant sailors in Sweden over the last few months had been an unpleasant reminder that Hitler was not opposed to invading a neutral country. Norway had been in Nazi clutches for under a year, but its people looked harassed and nervous, their morale broken. Few civilians onshore paid much heed to the sight of the depressed-looking Norwegians moving about the cargo ships, nor to the loading of those same vessels. Any curiosity they showed fell instead on the British crews who milled among the Swedish and Norwegian sailors. For many months now there had been an embargo on allowing any ship bound for Britain to leave the fjord. Hitler was anxious his enemies did not receive the vital iron cargo they had bought from Swedish mines and factories. It was intended for use in the manufacture of weapons and armaments to fight the Nazi war machine. Sweden, caught in an unhappy position between the Allies it favoured and the Nazis it feared, had banned the export of the iron despite it already being paid for by British coin. Not wishing to use force on the British, the Swedish authorities had spun a web of legal complications as to why the cargo ships could not leave. A web Britain was busily trying to unravel.
All seemed quiet and usual as it began to snow at Bro Fjord. The restrictions were still – apparently – soundly in place. The few Swedes outdoors hurried home in the dark and cold, looking forward to their warm fires. A stillness fell over the port.
A short time before 3 p.m. an engine rumbled into life. The snow was falling heavily now and no one was watching as the slow and heavy cargo ship Ranja manoeuvred her way carefully out of the ice and slowly inched into the Skagerrak. Even if she had been noticed ashore few would have been concerned; Ranja was carrying only salt water ballast.
A few minutes later more engines were rumbling into life. The cargo ship John Bakke pulled free from the ice and followed the Ranja; then the Taurus, piloted by her First Officer Carl Jensen, joined the convoy. Next was the Elisabeth Bakke, pulling from her icy berth to join the grand departure, and last to come was the Tai Shan commanded by her enthusiastic Swedish First Mate, H.A. Fallberg, who had been left in charge while her master was away. All were Norwegian vessels, but the Swedes would have been worried to know that three of them were being sailed by British captains, their Norwegian captains having been roughly removed for being 'uncooperative'.
They would have been even more disturbed to know that aboard the Tai Shan stood the representative to Sweden of the UK Ministry of Supply (Iron and Steel Control), Mr George Binney. Binney had been working tirelessly behind the scenes to convince the Swedish authorities to release the valuable iron cargo due for Britain. His presence on a Norwegian ship mysteriously vanishing into the gloom of a wintry afternoon would have raised warning flags for any Swedish authority who noticed him.
Binney had been working for months trying to find a way to secretly remove the embargoed iron from under the Swedish and, ultimately, German noses. Political, legal and even moral arguments had been presented both for and against the operation in British circles, but finally the pressing need for the supplies and the dogmatic refusal of help from the Swedish Government tipped the scales in Binney's favour. The 40-year-old Royal Naval Reserve commander and former Arctic explorer was only too elated to finally get some action. Diplomacy had been tiresome and unproductive; now Binney was heading an expedition to release what rightfully belonged to the British.
He knew the backlash from the Swedes and, even worse, from the Nazis would be dreadful. The possible reprisals had been weighed in the balance during the planning process and ultimately the gains had been considered to outrank the potential risks. Yet as Binney stood on deck of the Tai Shan, freshly shaved and wearing a clean shirt and his best blue suit, he knew that slipping out of the Bro Fjord was the easiest part of his operation. Soon they would be in the open Skagerrak strait and the Germans would endeavour to stop them.
OPERATION RUBBLE
At 5.45 p.m. the Tai Shan dropped off her pilot and Chief of the Gothenburg Harbour Police, Captain Ivar Blücker, at Lysekil. Blücker had been instrumental in the scheme and had earned Binney's respect and trust. Operating under his instructions from the Swedish Government to ensure their waters remained truly neutral, he had kept a close eye on proceedings and ensured no attempts at sabotage were made while the five Norwegian vessels were being loaded.
Blücker was painfully aware that every move Binney was making was being monitored by German agents and that the scale of the operation would prevent it ever being truly secret. Even so, he was determined to help the British as much as he could, volunteering to travel on the Tai Shan through Swedish waters to ensure she was not hampered by any opposition. When he stepped off at Lysekil it was dusk and visibility was barely 1½ miles. He watched the Tai Shan vanish into a new shower of snow, wondering if her crew and his new friend Binney would survive the coming German blockade.
The Nazis were inherently suspicious of Swedish neutrality and with good cause; they knew they were not terribly popular among the Scandinavian nations. Norway had already proved itself faulty when it came to honouring its neutrality equally among the warring nations – an excuse Hitler had used for invasion. Sweden was a slightly different prospect. Overrunning Sweden, like Hitler had done in Denmark and Norway, was never really on the cards after the invasion of France and Hitler's expansions across Europe had stretched Nazi manpower. But there were still the worries over Britain's iron supplies. Sweden was so far honouring its embargo, but there was nothing those dastardly British wouldn't try to get what they wanted. As an extra line of defence the Germans had created a blockade just outside neutral Swedish waters and regularly patrolled it to prevent just the sort of escapade Binney was masterminding.
Aboard the Tai Shan visibility had reduced to just ½ mile. The other ships in the flotilla from Bro Fjord were impossible to sight and, without any wireless communication, Binney could only assume they had left the Swedish coast successfully. Everyone (aside from the engineers on watch) was wearing life-jackets, anticipating the worst. If the Germans made a successful attack on them they had orders to scuttle the ship rather than let her cargo fall into Nazi hands. The night was dark and no one could sleep; instead, those who weren't needed below decks stood on deck scanning the waters for potential signs of danger. The night was perfect for German motor torpedo boats (MTBs) and at any moment it was expected the ships would come under attack.
There had been endless problems finding loyal crews for the five blockade-running vessels. Many of their original men had refused to sail due to German pressures and a general attitude among some of the Norwegians that it wasn't worth their while to help the British – this was a left-over grudge from the seeming lack of help the British had given during the Nazi invasion of Norway. Almost as fast as Binney and the few Norwegians loyal to him recruited crewmen they would leave and refuse to work on the ships. In desperation Binney had put together a reserve crew of British sailors who had been trapped in Sweden when the embargo was dropped and the Germans began the blockade. The ultimate result was that the engineers operating the Tai Shan's engines were unfamiliar with the craft, and her Norwegian captain, Einar Isachsen, made the decision that there was no point trying to force extra speed from her when the men below were so unprepared. Instead they crept along at 13½ knots (Tai Shan's top speed was 14 knots). In a short time the Tai Shan passed close enough to the John Bakke and Ranja to sight them through the darkness and snow, but they were unobserved. The Scandinavian night was so thick that it was impossible to see anyone until they were almost upon them. Just such a night had been chosen on purpose for the advantage it gave the British as they tried to evade the German blockade undetected, but it also meant a Nazi MTB could approach them without being spotted until it was too late.
As the night began to fade away the weather lifted, and by 4 a.m. the flash of two Norwegian lighthouses could be observed indicating, as the crews of the ships had hoped, that they were on course to sail down the Norwegian coastline. They were 28 miles south of the coast and awaiting the arrival of the aircraft of British Coastal Command to provide them with an escort for their daytime journey. But with each passing minute, with no planes in sight, it became clearer and clearer that an airborne escort was not coming. Captain Isachsen found Binney on deck and complained bitterly about the missing aircraft. Using all his guile, Binney laughed off the matter. He told him: 'They [are] doubtless overhead, but at such a height as to be both invisible and inaudible, and ... British submarines [are] probably in our vicinity keeping guard over us, though we [can]not see them.' Isachsen was, unsurprisingly, rather unimpressed. Binney only later learned that snow storms over England had prevented Coastal Command from launching its planes. Similar snow storms inland over Norway were also hampering German air operations. Fate does tend to have a sense of humour.
It was now full daylight and it was possible to see for 30 miles across the icy waters. The loss of darkness and the clearing of the weather meant the small convoy was a prime target for any watchful Germans. The lack of an air escort made Binney anxious. The five rugged little ships were no match for the Luftwaffe or a German patrol craft and there was still around 55 miles to sail before the convoy could meet up with their naval escort.
On the stern horizon Binney could see one of the slower ships in the group silhouetted against the bright sky. Perhaps it was the Ranja or John Bakke. Several miles ahead he could make out the Taurus ploughing through the waters. They were now so obvious in the bright sunlight that Binney anticipated a serious attack from the Luftwaffe at any moment. Without the aircraft of Coastal Command to ward them off, the little ships would be easy prey. 'It was Mediterranean weather with blue sky and clear seas,' Binney later reported. 'Our salvation lay in the fact that it was snowing on the Norwegian coast and that no air patrols were active.'
The last leg of their journey before rendezvous with the Royal Navy put them in constant range of the Nazi-occupied airfields at Egersund or Stavanger. That no Luftwaffe challenged them at that moment – when the weather was so clear they could be seen for miles and there was no hope of being defended by the distant Navy escort – was due more to luck than anything else.
That wasn't to mean that there would be no Luftwaffe activity at all. Late in the morning a solitary German aircraft appeared in the sky. Everyone braced themselves for the worst, but it was over the John Bakke that the aircraft hovered. The John Bakke was flying her Norwegian flags, as were all the ships in the tiny fleet. As they waited in horror for the ship to be struck, nothing happened. The German plane maintained its position above the John Bakke for another 2 hours, acting as an escort. Binney could only suppose that the pilot had wrongly assumed that the cargo ships were in fact operating in the service of the Nazi occupiers of Norway. As the fleet was currently on a north-westerly course along the coast of Norway this was a logical assumption, but Binney knew it would not last. Eventually the ships had to turn westwards to cross the North Sea and it was then that the Luftwaffe pilot realised his mistake. He turned his attention on the slow Ranja as his best target. xxx The Ranja's fate had always been precarious. The slowest vessel in the fleet, she had the unenviable role of being a decoy for the other ships. As she slogged along at her trembling 11½ knots at the back of the convoy her crew realised it was only a matter of time before the Luftwaffe picked on her as the weakest member of the group. From the start the Ranja had been deemed expendable: filled only with salt water ballast it would not matter if she sank to the bottom and her demise would buy valuable time for the remaining vessels carrying genuine war supplies. But that was cold comfort to her civilian crew who now saw the German plane circling above them.
The Luftwaffe aircraft dropped its bombs, but they proved wildly inaccurate – not uncommon in aerial attacks against shipping – and they appeared to fall harmlessly into the sea. Resorting to his machine guns the German pilot began strafing the Ranja with a deadly hail of bullets. Against the unarmed Ranja it was a horrific attack. Bullets pierced the flimsy hull and there was nowhere for the crew to hide. On the bridge First Officer Nils Rydberg, a Swede from Gothenburg, was trying to keep the Ranja on course when fragments from a bomb that exploded away from the actual ship flew through the walls of the cabin and caught him in the abdomen. He collapsed in agony, his blood rapidly pooling on the floor.
Thankfully at that moment some British planes finally arrived, the weather having cleared enough for Coastal Command to restart its operations. Outnumbered, the Luftwaffe craft was driven away, shamefaced at the dramatic error it had made over the identity of the ships, knowing that the British were endeavouring to make a daring escape.
Binney felt he could relax. Unaware of the dying Rydberg, it seemed at first sight that the mission had been an unprecedented success. Around noon he followed Captain Isachsen below decks for some food. They had barely begun their meal when a crewman scrambled down to them.
'A man o'war in sight!'
Binney could have laughed with delight. He was certain, so near were they to the rendezvous point, that this had to be one of the British escort. Isachsen rushed on deck but Binney continued eating his meal, content that he had outrun the Nazi threat and was close to victory. It was 12.20 p.m. when the British destroyer challenged the Tai Shan. Captain Isachsen hastily flew their identification flags, a startling white sheet with the big letters 'GB' emblazoned on it. As Binney later pointed out, these could have stood for many things, but he chose to believe they stood for George Binney. This was his proudest moment; from being trapped at the start of the war in a fruitless desk job he had jumped to being commander of his own little fleet and defying the Germans. As several more of the escort vessels sent by the Navy hove into sight he couldn't help but contemplate that this was his fleet joining with his country's fleet: 'It became apparent to us how thoroughly the Royal Navy were redeeming their promise to protect us once we were out of the Skagerrak.'
The worst seemed over; the tense voyage unescorted through Nazi territory had passed uneventfully and now they were in open waters and surrounded by an impressive escort of Navy vessels. But the apparent negligence of the Germans in stopping the escaping convoy would not last forever. Only moments after the Tai Shan crept into the sheltered protection of the British destroyers and cruisers a submarine alert was sounded. One of the cruisers was under attack and retaliated with its own heavy fire: '... it was grand to see all its guns blazing off simultaneously, their flames belching red and orange through clouds of smoke. I do not know the result, but the cruiser was not hit.'
(Continues...)
Excerpted from SOE's Balls of Steel by Sophie Jackson. Copyright © 2013 Sophie Jackson. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
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