Thamshavn Line sabotage

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The Thamshavn Line sabotage was a series of

pyrites that were being extracted at the mine at Løkken Verk
.

Background

The

Orkla Group
) continue extraction, since most of the export had been going to Germany anyway. The company obliged, since they saw no advantage in disobeying, which would only have resulted in the German forces themselves taking over the operation of the mine.

The

bombing
both Løkken Verk and Thamshavn. The resistance protested, and felt that by using sabotage the civilian losses could be minimised. It was decided to attempt to stop the mining through targeted sabotage on key infrastructure along the railway.

Transformer station

The first target was the

explosives
. Luckily for the saboteurs the backpacks were not seized.

The night before 4 May 1942 the three men arrived at Orkdal where they targeted the transformer station. While they were installing the explosives German soldiers passed by, but failed their duty by not checking inside the station and thus were not able to stop the sabotage. The explosion went off at five in the morning. The commander in the area, Hauptmann Møbius, had been out drinking the evening before, and was not able to organise an efficient search or investigation. Unfortunately for Deinboll he had miscalculated the time before the explosion and was spotted by German troops and a chase was organised, but the troops failed to find him. He caught a ride with a fishing boat to Trondheim where he rendezvoused with Grong and Getz and they drove to Sweden via Meråker.[1]

Thamshavn

The second target for sabotage was the port at Thamshavn and was performed by Deinboll, Bjørn Pedersen and Olav Sættem. At first they lived at Deinboll's parents' home at Thamshavn, but later they moved to a

row boat to fasten explosives to the ship, timed to go off at 16:00 the next day. But the next day another ship arrived at the port and Nordfahrt was moved out into the fjord. Because of this the timing mechanism became inaccurate and just when the explosives attached to the ship blew, a tugboat came by and managed to haul the wreck to land. The three each travelled to Trondheim, with plans to go to Sweden via Steinkjer and Ogndal, but their contact in Steinkjer had been arrested and instead they had to travel via Selbu.[2]

Locomotives

Neither of the two first sabotages had resulted in especially large problems that could not be fixed, and the resistance decided that the third target was to be the

railway cars, thus prohibiting the transport of pyrites. This required seven men, again led by Deinboll. They were dropped by parachute
at Svorkdalskjølen and hid in cabins in the forest. But they were soon discovered, and chose to move to Skjenalddalen.

On 31 October 1943 the group planned to blow up one British Westinghouse locomotive and one rail car at Løkken and one ASEA at Orkanger and one rail car and two Westinghouse locomotives at Thamshavn. But not all the locomotives were located where the saboteurs thought they were and only four were blown up. This was not good enough for Deinboll, and it was decided that a new sabotage was to be performed at Klinghåmmår'n where they were to stop the train, chase the staff and blow up the train and track. But things went wrong, the explosives were miscalculated and Odd Nilsen was killed. At the same time an attempt to blow up a rail car at Løkken failed, again due to miscalculation in the explosive timing. After this the saboteurs left the area, but Paal Skjærpe was arrested in Hovin and tortured by Gestapo in Trondheim. But he did not talk, and was scheduled for execution on 17 May 1945, only days after peace came to Norway.[3]

Last attempt

The final attempt to close down the export came in 1944 when three men returned, via Sweden, to blow up the remaining locomotives. On 9 May they stopped a train at Hongslomælen, the crew was chased away and the train blown up. This was repeated on 31 May when they blew up the last rail car. But the Germans took countermeasures, and brought up

steam locomotives
from Germany to operate the line.

One of the great logistical problems of the Germans was that Thamshavnbanen operated on a 1,000 mm (3 ft 3+3⁄8 in)

Dovre Line
on the standard gauge track and the railway cars on the narrow gauge tracks. No standard gauge locomotives were acquired and the third track was removed after the war.

Aftermath

Halting the flow of

Nazi Wehrmacht was a key objective for the Norwegian resistance movement
. Sabotage was chosen in lieu of bombing in order to safeguard the civilian population. Yet the attacks on the mine created a complex conflict of interest, as the operation of the mine nominally remained in local hands.

After the 1942 attack on the railway transformer, Chief of Electrical Engineering at the mine, Petter Deinboll's own father, engineer Petter Blessing Deinboll, was assigned the task of restoring power. He eventually decided to flee with his family to Sweden, where he worked for the resistance. On his return at the end of the war, Chief Engineer Deinboll was refused reinstatement in his job, he and his family were blamed for the wartime destruction, his house was taken over by others, and his properties auctioned off.[4]

In 2003,

Orkla Group issued an apology for their treatment of Petter Deinboll's family, and a commemorative bronze sculpture of the wartime saboteur was unveiled in Orkdal
.

References

  1. ^ Thamshavnbanens Venner (1983). Thamshavnbanen. Orkanger: Kaare Grytten. p. 46.
  2. ^ Thamshavnbanens Venner (1983). Thamshavnbanen. Orkanger: Kaare Grytten. p. 48.
  3. ^ Thamshavnbanens Venner (1983). Thamshavnbanen. Orkanger: Kaare Grytten. p. 50.
  4. ISBN 82-7083-216-2
    .
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