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| Knut Haugland obituary One of the heroes of Telemark and the last survivor of the Kon-Tiki expeditionThe Norwegian adventurer Knut Haugland, who has died aged 92, played a leading role in one of the most daring resistance raids of the second world war, laming the Nazi nuclear programme, and was the last survivor of Thor Heyerdahl's epic Kon-Tiki expedition across the Pacific in 1947.The target of the raid, in February 1943, was the Vemork hydroelectric plant, near Rjukan in the Telemark mountains, some 80 miles west of Oslo. The plant, one of the biggest in the world, had been built to power a fertiliser factory using a new production process that needed a lot of hydrogen. A by-product of hydrogen production was deuterium, a hydrogen isotope found in "heavy water". This fluid, produced slowly and expensively by electrolysis, is used as a "moderator" to slow down the nuclear chain reaction in unenriched uranium-235.Allied fears that the Nazis were working on an atomic bomb, inspired by their own secret programmes and by warnings from Albert Einstein, turned into one of the greatest challenges ever faced by the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in its efforts to sabotage the German war effort.Nazi nuclear research was hamstrung by ideology, with particle science dismissed as "Jewish physics". In 1940 Hitler forbade any research that did not guarantee results within a year. A quarter of German physicists lost their jobs, or worse, for being Jewish, and indiscriminate conscription swept up scientific experts. Nuclear research was not considered to be of the highest priority and the German army turned its back on nuclear weapons, putting its money on the V2 ballistic missile. But nuclear energy, as distinct from weapons, greatly interested Albert Speer, Hitler's armaments and war-production minister, who financed a modest programme.Allied intelligence knew little of German atomic plans but was fully aware of Nazi interest in heavy water, with all that it implied. The SOE dropped Haugland and three other volunteers by parachute to reconnoitre the plant, unique in Europe, in October 1942. The next month, the SOE mounted operation Freshman for the assault on Vemork, but the raiders' aircraft crashed and the survivors were summarily shot.Within three months, a second attempt, operation Gunnerside, was planned. Haugland stayed on and waited for a second raiding party from Britain. His main role was to organise and sustain radio communications in difficult conditions. His scouting party nearly starved and froze to death in their three winter months of waiting, but managed to survive in a mountain hut.Finally, Haugland was one of the nine Norwegian commandos, led by Joachim Ronneberg, who attacked the plant on 28 February 1943. They escaped without firing a shot, undetected going in and undetected amid the pandemonium as they slipped away. Even the German general commanding in Norway described the raid as "the finest coup of the war".Haugland was twice awarded Norway's highest decoration, the War Cross with Sword, as well as the British Distinguished Service Order and Military Medal, and the French Croix de Guerre and appointment to the LГ©gion d'honneur.Haugland was born at Rjukan and after graduation, became a radio specialist in the Norwegian army. He saw action in the disastrous allied campaign in Norway in 1940 and when the Germans occupied his country, he took a quiet job in an Oslo radio factory while working in the resistance. Arrested in August 1941, he escaped and fled to Britain via neutral Sweden.After the war he stayed on in the army, serving in Germany. He transferred to the air force in 1952 and, as a major, took charge of the electronic intelligence-gathering operation in the narrow strip of northern Norway that bordered the Soviet Union, a key listening post for Nato. He left the service in 1963 to become director of the Norwegian Resistance Museum.He was also director of the Kon-Tiki museum until he retired in 1991. His obvious qualification for this job was his own participation in the Kon-Tiki expedition. He had met Heyerdahl in a wartime army camp in Britain and learned of his plan to sail across the Pacific on a balsa-wood raft. The adventure, in the finest tradition of Norwegian exploration, gripped the imagination of the world.Some saw it as engagingly naive. The six sailors, charting a course from Peru to the Tuamotu islands, intended to prove Heyerdahl's theory that early man could have crossed the ocean from South America to people Polynesia. This was taken by some as proof that they had actually done it, which is not quite the same thing, but it was a good story either way. Haugland was in charge of radio communications.He was also a keen supporter of the scouting movement. He played himself in a documentary film on Kon-Tiki in 1950; his wartime exploits were marked in the Hollywood epic The Heroes of Telemark (1965), starring Kirk Douglas and Richard Harris; and he appeared in 2003 in Ray Mears's BBC documentary The Real Heroes of Telemark.In 1951 Haugland married Ingeborg Prestholdt, who survives him, along with their three children.• Knut Magne Haugland, resistance fighter, military officer and adventurer, born 23 September 1917; died 25 December 2009. Dan van der VatSecond world warDan van der Vatguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
The Outdoor Room with Jamie Durie - Video GLOBAL TRAVEL SERVES AS INSPIRATION FOR DRAB BACKYARDS IN HGTV’S ‘THE OUTDOOR ROOM WITH JAMIE DURIE’ feedproxy.google.com |
Pope meets Christmas attack woman Pope Benedict XVI meets the mentally disturbed woman who assaulted him at Mass on Christmas Eve. news.bbc.co.uk |
More troops, aid go to Haiti, but hunger persists PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) -- Troops, doctors and aid workers flowed into Haiti on Monday even while victims of the quake that killed an estimated 200,000 people still struggled to find a cup of water or a handful of food.... hosted.ap.org |
'Oral sex' definition sees dictionary ban A parent's complaint over a 'sexually graphic' definition has seen dictionaries removed from southern Californian schoolsDictionaries have been removed from classrooms in southern California schools after a parent complained about a child reading the definition for "oral sex".Merriam Webster's 10th edition, which has been used for the past few years in fourth and fifth grade classrooms (for children aged nine to 10) in Menifee Union school district, has been pulled from shelves over fears that the "sexually graphic" entry is "just not age appropriate", according to the area's local paper.The dictionary's online definition of the term is "oral stimulation of the genitals". "It's hard to sit and read the dictionary, but we'll be looking to find other things of a graphic nature," district spokeswoman Betti Cadmus told the paper.While some parents have praised the move – "[it's] a prestigious dictionary that's used in the Riverside County spelling bee, but I also imagine there are words in there of concern," said Randy Freeman – others have raised concerns. "It is not such a bad thing for a kid to have the wherewithal to go and look up a word he may have even heard on the playground," father Jason Rogers told local press. "You have to draw the line somewhere. What are they going to do next, pull encyclopaedias because they list parts of the human anatomy like the penis and vagina?"A panel is now reviewing whether the Menifee ban will be made permanent. The Merriam Webster dictionary joins an illustrious set of books that have been banned or challenged in the US, including Nobel prize winner Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon, which last year was suspended from and then reinstated to the curriculum at a Michigan school after complaints from parents about its coverage of graphic sex and violence, and titles by Khaled Hosseini and Philip Pullman, included in the American Library Association's list of books that inspired most complaints last year.Reference and languagesUnited StatesAlison Floodguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |