Joachim Roenneberg, Who Sabotaged Nazis' Nuclear Hopes, Dies At 99
Roenneberg was just 23 when his team of resistance fighters parachuted into a mountain range in Norway. They skied to a plant making heavy water and blew Hitler's atomic plans off-schedule.
Joachim Roenneberg, who led a small team that sabotaged the Nazis' nuclear hopes during World War II, has died at the age of 99. Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg announced Roenneberg's death on Sunday, calling him a hero.
In 1943, a then-23-year-old Roenneberg and a team of other resistance fighters parachuted into a snowy mountain range in Norway, skied to the Vemork hydroelectric power plant and bombed its cache of heavy water (deuterium oxide) — a rare fluid the Germans hoped to use in the process of building an atomic bomb.
