The Heavy Water War: Stopping Hitler's Atomic Bomb (2015): Season 1, Episode 5 - Episode #1.5 - full transcript
The Nazis are building up again the Heavy water facility in record time after the bombing. Norsk Hydro company director is facing accusation of being a war collaborator. In England, the Americans decide to bomb Rjukan and Vemork.
Sir, the heroes from Telemark
will be here any minute now.
Thank you.
Tronstad.
There's a message just in.
Helberg is missing.
They didn't report him at the border.
Haugland and Skinnarland haven't
heard anything since the split
and there are unconfirmed reports
coming in of German troops,
professional marksmen.
Fuck.
Sorry.
Oh, no, no, no. Come on!
God, man. Mind the gap.
Very good to see you. Well done.
Congratulations, congratulations,
you did a wonderful job.
When we sent Freshman in,
we doubled the numbers, divided
the group into two.
Two planes to increase the chances.
They'd hardly tested the planes
and there was no planned retreat.
It was quite simply...
.. a one-way ticket.
So in comparison, Gunnerside's
a great success.
It's still a life.
You didn't seriously think we could
do this without any casualties?
He was my friend.
Then give yourself a break.
Hundreds of thousands
of people will die.
London was...
bombed every night for nine
months, 200 bombs a night.
43,381 dead so far.
50,856 people seriously injured.
1,150,000 homes destroyed,
just in London.
And now we're going
to bomb Germany again
and create a mayhem that no-one
in history has ever witnessed.
And even if I cheer every bomb we drop,
I'm still very aware of
all the people we kill.
And he ordered me to get down on
the floor in the back of the bus,
and I ended up sitting
next to the very same girl
that offended Talbovan and
she was very beautiful.
We got on quite well, actually.
I managed to work my
Helberg charm on her.
He didn't like that, so he ordered
me to swap places with him,
and suddenly I was standing
in front of the bus
and then I jumped out.
The bus was still driving.
It stopped a few hundred
metres away from me,
and I ran towards it rather
than away from it,
because that would, you know,
get them by surprise.
And they were shooting at me, but
they missed, they kept missing,
and then throwing grenades
at me and they kept missing.
One of them actually hit me between
my shoulder blades, but it...
It didn't explode immediately,
just fell down on the ground
and then exploded, and I escaped
into the forest. And here I am.
- Cheers to that.
- Cheers. - Cheers.
- Skal. - Skal.
- Skal.
Made it to Drammen on
foot with a broken arm.
Then to Oslo and over to Sweden.
Yeah. Best of the best.
- Cheers to that.
- Cheers.
And cheers to Mussolini.
You know they arrested him yesterday?
The Americans think there'll be a truce
with Italy by the end of the week.
Then we'll get the
Mediterranean back again.
- It's turning.
- Mmm.
Oh, you bet your arse it's turning!
Give us a year. Germany won't be
anything more than a pile of rubble.
What's your family doing?
Fine. Thank you.
Must be hard for them.
Not really.
My wife's got used to not missing me.
And I see them, you know,
every now and again.
I suppose I've been of little
importance in their lives.
Julie?
You're leaving?
Yes, I'm going home.
I've got two reports that have
to be done by the morning.
And they can't wait?
Well, unless you want to do them, no.
- I'll buy the next round.
- Er...
A double.
Thank you, but, erm...
That's very nice...
What was that?
Come on.
Let's go back in.
As delightful as...
.. that was...
.. and as much as I'd like to, I'm...
I'm going to say no.
Goodbye, Leif.
Take a look at this.
We had a plane over Rjukan two days ago.
These are the photographs
we took after the sabotage.
These are now, three months later.
There's something going on.
They're rebuilding it.
Look, you've already got two
failed missions to your name!
Flying in there takes
a lot of precision.
Are you trying to suggest that
my pilots won't hit the target,
or are you just worried
it'll make your operations
look small by comparison?
Sir...
Our last operation was
precise and successful.
The fast rebuilding of the plant
only proves how important
the heavy water is to the Germans,
so our aim hasn't changed.
If we bomb,
when I'm done, you won't even
know there was a factory there.
We're not talking about bombing it
so that they disable it for a while...
- And why wouldn't we have done that?
- We're going to take it out.
But no guarantee you'd penetrate down
through seven floors of concrete.
I can guarantee if you give us the time
and the men, we can go in and we can...
You've had two chances! You've
had two shots at it.
You've blown both of them!
Do you think we have an
unlimited amount of time?
We're running out of time!
They're going to produce heavy water,
they're going to get the bomb,
and that's going to be it!
You realise who these people are?
They're not going to play nice.
You think with what they did to London,
it's going to be a walk in the park
compared to what they're going to do
if they develop heavy water and
get a bomb, so think about that.
50 people?
500 million people will go.
The world will end as we know it.
And we're arguing about
a valley in Norway!
They arrested Henriksen.
Yes, in a Norwegian army uniform.
Ehrenschutz. Protecting his honour.
Wined and dined in
a low-security prison.
The man knows what he's doing.
He'll return a damn hero.
So the old head of Hydro is back.
Axel Aubert, 69 years
old, Uncle Axel by many,
engineering background,
from a very good family.
And we know he'll do almost
anything for the Germans.
911 bombs, and all they
could do was knock out
one of the generators
at the power station?
That will only take a week to fix!
21 people killed!
And all this for what?
Huh?
To bomb a bridge?
A few chemical factories and
some railway wagons and...
.. a bloody unused bus shelter!
Precision bombing?
Leif, we said what we thought.
We were overruled.
They're moving the factory.
What?
Where?
Germany.
Kaiser Wilhelm Institute must
have got tired of waiting.
Probably in the south, Munich.
Don't know.
We have an unconfirmed report
saying they've already stopped
production at Rjukan
and started dismantling.
How much time have we got?
According to our intelligence,
less than a week.
I've no idea how they're
going to move it all.
But you have to find out.
39 barrels on seven railway wagons.
They're leaving Friday,
9.45am from the factory.
The wagons will be attached to
a new train in the Rjukan which
then will take them to the
jetty at Mar the same evening.
We have five days to come
up with something clever.
Is it still possible
to get into the factory?
They've bricked up
all windows and doors.
And they've tripled the guard
and laid minefields along the
entire perimeter of the factory.
That's probably a no, then.
- Tronstad, let's take another
look at the railway. - Yeah.
Problem is the timing.
To hit when the cargo is just passing?
We can't be that precise.
What about the next section
of railway line, on the
bridges, on the way to Herre.
No, it has to hit before
the ferry reaches the port,
because after that we have
reason to believe that the
cargo is split into four
or five separate loads,
then we have four or five separate
targets instead of one.
What about the ferry?
No, that's a passenger ferry.
Well, it's an option.
How would we do it?
Explosives below deck to make the
ferry sink within a few minutes?
How deep is the lake?
It's one of the deepest lakes in Norway.
400 metres at its deepest point.
It's a passenger ferry.
will be here any minute now.
Thank you.
Tronstad.
There's a message just in.
Helberg is missing.
They didn't report him at the border.
Haugland and Skinnarland haven't
heard anything since the split
and there are unconfirmed reports
coming in of German troops,
professional marksmen.
Fuck.
Sorry.
Oh, no, no, no. Come on!
God, man. Mind the gap.
Very good to see you. Well done.
Congratulations, congratulations,
you did a wonderful job.
When we sent Freshman in,
we doubled the numbers, divided
the group into two.
Two planes to increase the chances.
They'd hardly tested the planes
and there was no planned retreat.
It was quite simply...
.. a one-way ticket.
So in comparison, Gunnerside's
a great success.
It's still a life.
You didn't seriously think we could
do this without any casualties?
He was my friend.
Then give yourself a break.
Hundreds of thousands
of people will die.
London was...
bombed every night for nine
months, 200 bombs a night.
43,381 dead so far.
50,856 people seriously injured.
1,150,000 homes destroyed,
just in London.
And now we're going
to bomb Germany again
and create a mayhem that no-one
in history has ever witnessed.
And even if I cheer every bomb we drop,
I'm still very aware of
all the people we kill.
And he ordered me to get down on
the floor in the back of the bus,
and I ended up sitting
next to the very same girl
that offended Talbovan and
she was very beautiful.
We got on quite well, actually.
I managed to work my
Helberg charm on her.
He didn't like that, so he ordered
me to swap places with him,
and suddenly I was standing
in front of the bus
and then I jumped out.
The bus was still driving.
It stopped a few hundred
metres away from me,
and I ran towards it rather
than away from it,
because that would, you know,
get them by surprise.
And they were shooting at me, but
they missed, they kept missing,
and then throwing grenades
at me and they kept missing.
One of them actually hit me between
my shoulder blades, but it...
It didn't explode immediately,
just fell down on the ground
and then exploded, and I escaped
into the forest. And here I am.
- Cheers to that.
- Cheers. - Cheers.
- Skal. - Skal.
- Skal.
Made it to Drammen on
foot with a broken arm.
Then to Oslo and over to Sweden.
Yeah. Best of the best.
- Cheers to that.
- Cheers.
And cheers to Mussolini.
You know they arrested him yesterday?
The Americans think there'll be a truce
with Italy by the end of the week.
Then we'll get the
Mediterranean back again.
- It's turning.
- Mmm.
Oh, you bet your arse it's turning!
Give us a year. Germany won't be
anything more than a pile of rubble.
What's your family doing?
Fine. Thank you.
Must be hard for them.
Not really.
My wife's got used to not missing me.
And I see them, you know,
every now and again.
I suppose I've been of little
importance in their lives.
Julie?
You're leaving?
Yes, I'm going home.
I've got two reports that have
to be done by the morning.
And they can't wait?
Well, unless you want to do them, no.
- I'll buy the next round.
- Er...
A double.
Thank you, but, erm...
That's very nice...
What was that?
Come on.
Let's go back in.
As delightful as...
.. that was...
.. and as much as I'd like to, I'm...
I'm going to say no.
Goodbye, Leif.
Take a look at this.
We had a plane over Rjukan two days ago.
These are the photographs
we took after the sabotage.
These are now, three months later.
There's something going on.
They're rebuilding it.
Look, you've already got two
failed missions to your name!
Flying in there takes
a lot of precision.
Are you trying to suggest that
my pilots won't hit the target,
or are you just worried
it'll make your operations
look small by comparison?
Sir...
Our last operation was
precise and successful.
The fast rebuilding of the plant
only proves how important
the heavy water is to the Germans,
so our aim hasn't changed.
If we bomb,
when I'm done, you won't even
know there was a factory there.
We're not talking about bombing it
so that they disable it for a while...
- And why wouldn't we have done that?
- We're going to take it out.
But no guarantee you'd penetrate down
through seven floors of concrete.
I can guarantee if you give us the time
and the men, we can go in and we can...
You've had two chances! You've
had two shots at it.
You've blown both of them!
Do you think we have an
unlimited amount of time?
We're running out of time!
They're going to produce heavy water,
they're going to get the bomb,
and that's going to be it!
You realise who these people are?
They're not going to play nice.
You think with what they did to London,
it's going to be a walk in the park
compared to what they're going to do
if they develop heavy water and
get a bomb, so think about that.
50 people?
500 million people will go.
The world will end as we know it.
And we're arguing about
a valley in Norway!
They arrested Henriksen.
Yes, in a Norwegian army uniform.
Ehrenschutz. Protecting his honour.
Wined and dined in
a low-security prison.
The man knows what he's doing.
He'll return a damn hero.
So the old head of Hydro is back.
Axel Aubert, 69 years
old, Uncle Axel by many,
engineering background,
from a very good family.
And we know he'll do almost
anything for the Germans.
911 bombs, and all they
could do was knock out
one of the generators
at the power station?
That will only take a week to fix!
21 people killed!
And all this for what?
Huh?
To bomb a bridge?
A few chemical factories and
some railway wagons and...
.. a bloody unused bus shelter!
Precision bombing?
Leif, we said what we thought.
We were overruled.
They're moving the factory.
What?
Where?
Germany.
Kaiser Wilhelm Institute must
have got tired of waiting.
Probably in the south, Munich.
Don't know.
We have an unconfirmed report
saying they've already stopped
production at Rjukan
and started dismantling.
How much time have we got?
According to our intelligence,
less than a week.
I've no idea how they're
going to move it all.
But you have to find out.
39 barrels on seven railway wagons.
They're leaving Friday,
9.45am from the factory.
The wagons will be attached to
a new train in the Rjukan which
then will take them to the
jetty at Mar the same evening.
We have five days to come
up with something clever.
Is it still possible
to get into the factory?
They've bricked up
all windows and doors.
And they've tripled the guard
and laid minefields along the
entire perimeter of the factory.
That's probably a no, then.
- Tronstad, let's take another
look at the railway. - Yeah.
Problem is the timing.
To hit when the cargo is just passing?
We can't be that precise.
What about the next section
of railway line, on the
bridges, on the way to Herre.
No, it has to hit before
the ferry reaches the port,
because after that we have
reason to believe that the
cargo is split into four
or five separate loads,
then we have four or five separate
targets instead of one.
What about the ferry?
No, that's a passenger ferry.
Well, it's an option.
How would we do it?
Explosives below deck to make the
ferry sink within a few minutes?
How deep is the lake?
It's one of the deepest lakes in Norway.
400 metres at its deepest point.
It's a passenger ferry.