Read somewhere that the Danish Underground were closely tied with SOE, with "routine" air travel to Britain via very chilly trips in Mosquito bomb bays, all sorts of supply, mostly by boat by way of Sweden, etc.
The Gestapo were closing in, had picked up way too many people who knew way, way too much. The Danes held prisoner in the Shell House were smuggling out notes with pretty good detail, and some going in. Probably notes written on cigarette papers. The Danes had people inside the building besides the prisoners, naturally.
The Danes and the SOE (sorry - SOE is Special Operations Executive, a wartime bunch of truly wild folks. Men and women would parachute in, knowing that the Gestapo had turned their networks, knowing that it was the Gestapo on the ground waiting for them, to try to save their people. Routinely folks would rear guard when it was their turn, or make a diversion, or lead Gestapo pursuit astray, knowing that the result was death. Most carried cyanide pills. The really tough made the Gestapo kill them, after the Gestapo had paid the price. Hand grenades were a popular accessory. Bunch of stories from those days, but for some reason I haven't found much but fragments published. Could be they simply did not live to tell their stories.)
Anyway, the Danes and the SOE were desperate to get their people out. The first choice was a commando style attack, which couldn't be made feasible because you would have to fight upward floor to floor against a couple hundred enemies, win, and get out before the big Wehrmacht reinforcements arrived. Run your own numbers, mine say it couldn't be done. If the force was powerful enough you couldn't hide it after the raid, and extraction under fire looked very costly if possible. No SEALS in those days, remember!! All sorts of plans were planned out in the military sense, times, distances, possible enemy responses, logistics, personnel, etc., and nothing could be made to work. The prisoners, the Danes held in the Shell House, then asked for cyanide pills for each of them delivered by the same route the messages were traveling. Nobody liked this one. There were lots of the very best people brainstorming this problem, and as I recollect it was Squadron Leader Sismore, the fellow who did the perfect navigation for the raid, who came up with the answer.
The bombs were fuzed with a slight delay, enough for the bomb to go from the roof all the way to the lowest basement. The cells were on the top floor, interrogation on the fifth (good detail there, SAM, didn't know this 5th floor stuff - and the photos of the rescue work are great!) and the Gestapo records were in the basement. Worked pretty good too.
Now comes the human nature part. Sismore wanted as I recall five Mosquitos, not twenty. Sismore thought that five could get the job done nicely, and more would not increase the likelihood of success. Sismore's war record is of the highest quality and his abilities, coolness, intelligence, honor and luck were held in very high esteem by his peers. As I recollect he was twenty two years old, but don't hold me to that. Some higher up figured that if the fellow who knew what he was doing wanted five Mosquitos then twenty would be better.
My understanding that the Catholic girls school was bombed because the Shell House was obscured by flying debris from the earlier hits and the bombs went long.
Thanks, SAM, for the opportunity to tell this story. I never tire of it.
You know this dumb spell checker doesn't know the word "fuze"? Kicks back "fuse"!! Good grief!!
Good morning Sam.
I didn't know anything about this story. I'm sure it was a difficult decision for the resistance movement to ask for an attack but a necessary one. Unfortunate about the school children but an understandable mistake in the heat of war.
Thanks for the interesting read.
