Transfer to the Norwegian Army

Heroes Remember

Transfer to the Norwegian Army

Transcript

I was transferred to the Norwegian Army almost immediately after landing in Britain in the very early days of 1944. The reason I was attached to the Norwegian Army is that I had, always had a strong interest in Scandinavia and Scandinavian countries and so they could see that from what I had been doing and working at and so on and so forth. Well I was primarily involved with the heavy water plant in Norway. It was built in the mountains northwest of Oslo. I was attached to the Norwegian Army during the first half of 1944 and my primary, I was primarily involved with the German heavy water plant, in other words that was one of their main, main goals in Norway, getting the heavy water plant and developing it. That’s all their research work was based on, on that cooling system, ahead of their research work in, on a nuclear side, of scouting the Norwegian heavy water plant work and it was almost impossible to bomb it out. Every effort had been made in that direction of business, it was such a solid rock, mountain. And it was just one of many, so that aircraft could not fly in low and attack it from the sides you might say. It had to be strictly from above. And that was very, very difficult because of the nature of the country, and the mountain. And that particular plant, it was built well into the base of the mountain and you could never be certain as to how effective bombings were. So our job was to do that.

Description

Mr. Heward explains his transfer from the Canadian Army to the Norwegian Army and his duties surveying the German heavy water plant in Norway.

Richard Heward

Mr. Heward was born on March 18, 1922 in Montréal, Québec. As a child he dreamed of becoming a pilot or navigator. Upon graduation from high school, he had hoped to go to England to study aeronautical engineering, but the outbreak of war changed those plans. Mr. Heward tried to join the air force, but his impatience with the long delays led him to join the army. After the D-Day invasion, he was transferred to the Norwegian Army to survey the heavy water plant in Norway that had been used by the Germans to assist in their nuclear research.

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