Wartime mission to be recalled at Skitten memorial rededication ceremony
A bold but ill-fated wartime mission aimed at destroying the Nazis’ bid to develop an atomic bomb will be recalled at a ceremony in Caithness next month.
The Skitten airfield memorial, honouring the men who lost their lives in Operation Freshman in 1942 and the resistance fighters who tried to help them, is to be formally rededicated.
The Wick, Canisbay and Latheron branch of the Royal British Legion Scotland arranged for the restoration of the monument alongside the B876 Wick/Castletown road.
The memorial was installed by the local Legion branch more than 40 years ago. Original plaques have been replaced, allowing one or two names to be corrected after errors came to light, and the surrounding walls have been reharled.
The rededication ceremony will take place on Saturday, April 12, starting at noon. The Lord-Lieutenant of Caithness, Lord Thurso, is expected to lay a wreath.
Members of the public are invited to attend and it is hoped parking will be available in an adjacent field.
The Caithness At War project has been assisting the Legion branch.
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At least 10 of the Freshman families will be represented at the ceremony. It is understood that one family will make the journey from Greece to be there.
Also attending will be Norway-based military historian Bruce Tocher, who will give an illustrated talk in Mackays Hotel, Wick, afterwards.
Dr Tocher has already given two presentations in Caithness about the Operation Freshman story and he took part in commemorations in Norway at the end of last year.
Originally from Forfar, Dr Tocher is a geologist who was a university lecturer and worked in the oil and gas industry. He moved to Norway in 1995.
Forty-one of the men who set off from RAF Skitten on the night of November 19, 1942, lost their lives – 23 of them murdered by the Gestapo.
The airborne assault on Nazi-occupied Norway involved sending sabotage troops to attack a hydroelectric plant at Vemork, with support from a Norwegian resistance group. The plant produced Europe’s only supply of deuterium oxide, or heavy water, a key component in atomic research.
Two Halifax bombers, both towing Horsa gliders containing commando-trained Royal Engineers, took off from Skitten but the mission failed and only one bomber crew made it back.
Legion branch chairman Alex Paterson said: “Skitten was a satellite of Wick and it was top secret.
“We don’t realise how important this operation was. They deserved a medal for going in those gliders.”
Follow-up attacks by the Norwegian resistance, backed by Britain’s Special Operations Executive, did succeed and these inspired the 1965 Hollywood action movie The Heroes of Telemark.
Mr Paterson praised Wick firm John Hood & Son for making “an excellent job” of the memorial restoration.
Speaking ahead of a previous wreath-laying ceremony at the Skitten memorial, marking the 80th anniversary of Operation Freshman in 2022, Mr Paterson pointed out: “If Hitler had got the atomic bomb we’d have been finished. The Germans were quite well advanced in nuclear research in those days.”