COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Norway's prime minister says World War II saboteur Joachim Roenneberg, who headed the four-man team that blew up a plant producing heavy water which Nazi Germany could have used to produce nuclear weapons, is dead at 99.
Prime Minister Erna Solberg says Roenneberg was "one of our finest resistance fighters" whose "courage contributed to what has been referred to as the most successful sabotage campaign" in Norway.
Roenneberg, then 23, was tapped by the SOE — Britain's war-time intelligence gathering and sabotage unit — to destroy key parts of the heavily guarded plant in southern Norway in February 1943.
The operation — during which not a single shot was fired — has been recounted in books, documentaries, films and TV series.
Solberg wrote Sunday on Facebook hours after Roenneberg's death.
Disclaimer: This is unedited, unformatted feed from the Associated Press (AP) wire.
