What’s rather chilling is that both the Allied bomb raid on Vemork/Rjukan and the sinking of FS Hydro, which both brought significant civilian casualties - these days known as “collateral damage”, could have been avoided if the Allies were aware that the Nazi research into nuclear power was for energy, not for making a bomb. Oh, well.
Berg took a small amount of clandestine film of the Tokyo skyline. According to Moe Berg: Athlete, Scholar, Spy he wore a kimono to a hospital where an ambassador’s daughter was staying, asking for a visit. Once there he went to the roof and took off the camera he had strapped onto his body. He never saw the daughter and sneaked out.
He wasn’t very good at filming and accounts differ at whether it was of any use. That book says the government used it after Pearl Harbor. Nevertheless, he probably was asked to spy before he left on the trip and he definitely spied while he was there.
I’m willing to bet that the Allies would have destroyed that plant anyway, just to be sure the Nazis could never build an atomic bomb in case a scientist had a bright idea one day.
I agree. Especially since they wouldn’t have wanted to take the risk that any such intelligence about it being wrong, and the fact that they were trying to cripple German industry anyway. Under the circumstances of total war, “destroy it” was always going to be the default.
Even if the Nazis had the Science and the technology to build a bomb, they needed raw materials, and the US had control of the biggest source of Uranium at the time:
