Joachim Ronneberg, the Norwegian resistance fighter who sabotaged Nazi Germany's nuclear weapons ambitions during World War Two, has died aged 99.

In 1943, he led a top-secret raid on a heavily-guarded plant in Norway's southern region - an operation which was immortalised in the 1965 Hollywood film Heroes of Telemark, starring Kirk Douglas.

Joachim Ronneberg fled Norway after the Nazis invaded in 1940 and escaped with eight friends by boat to Scotland, but was determined to return and fight.

Germany at the time needed so-called heavy water - with an extra atomic particle in its hydrogen nucleus - in its race against the Allies to produce an atomic bomb. Large amounts of heavy water, or deuterium oxide, at that time was only made at the Norsk Hydro facility in Rjukan, Telemark. This made the largest hydroelectric plant of its type a target for the resistance.

Ronneberg chose a team of five other commandos in an Allied operation codenamed Gunnerside. The men parachuted on to a plateau, skied across country, descended into a ravine and crossed an icy river before using the railway line to get into the plant and set their explosives. Ronneberg was reluctant to talk about his experience despite numerous books, documentaries and TV series retelling the story.

An extraordinary man and an extraordinary team .....