When Sean Connery went to Norway and a saw a guerilla weapons cache
Number24
NorwayPosts: 21,793MI6 Agent
In 1974 Sean Connery was shooting the airplane hijack thriller "Ransom" in Norway. It was released as "the Terrorist" in the US. He played the anti-terror chief in the country "Scandinavia" and Ian McShane played the leader of the terrorists. Financing the movie had been difficult, but the Norwegian shipping magnate and business man Hans Otto Meyer (1925-2002) stepped in. At the time he had his own airplane company called Mey-Air and he could lend the production a Boeing 737. He also had a colourful past. He had been a navy officer working from London with covert operations during the war. In 1948 he joined the Military Inteligence ands became the leader of the Sixth Office there to build a Norwegian Stay Behind organisation.
During the production the main cast and crew of the movie were invited to Meyer's villa. After dinner everyone was shown downstairs for the "entertainment". To everyone's surprise Meyer moved a wardrobe cupboard away from the wall. He then pressed two hidden buttons triggering a microwave mechanism that made the wall slide away revealing a bunker with an armoured door. It was marked "Danger - High voltage!". The door was protected by a surveilance camera and a hidden submachinegun that would fire automaticaly if someone tried to open without pressing the buttons first. The guests stepped into the bunker and saw a large weapons storage. It contained weapons and ammunition enough for 100 men. Rifles, machine guns, SMG's, handguns, bazookas, granades, silenced guns and advanced communication equipment. According to McShane the shipping magnate told them: "We were caught napping in 1940 by the Germans. We won't be caught napping again! I have two tanks out in the country too..."
(he had several field guns on his private island, but tanks were never found.)
Here is a video of Ian McShane telling the story at AFI Life Achievement galla for Sean Connery in 2006:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtHYAgOTIwU
The trailer for Ransom:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-wMmnmwMLY
But that isn't the end of the story. Four years later, in 1978, the police suspected Meyer had an illegal moonshine factory under his villa. Water containers marked "Norwegian Water Company" (one of Meyer's companies) had been found containing illegal booze. It was later found that a handyman on his island made some moonshine, but there was no factory and Meyer knew nothing about it. In recent years it has been revealed that rumours had reached the police that there was a weapons cache on his property, but we don't know their source.
The police did find moonshine on Meyer's property and he was arrested. By phone the police asked him where the secret room in his cellar was and he chose to tell them, fearing they would set off the trap and get shot by the submachine gun.
He told them he was involved in the secret service and asked them to phone his contact in military inteligence.
The police tried to find the contact, but he was away on holliday. It was obvious to the police that what was in the bunker was linked to the secret services and /or the military, but The Inteligence Service of the Defence denied any knowledge. The reply was that Meyer wasn't working for them and they knew nothing about the weapons in his bunker. Meyer was arrested and the whole story blew up in the press.
Part of what was found in the bunker:
As a result of this scandal the existence of the Stay Behind network in Norway was revealed to the public. During the cold war NATO and CIA set up secret armies in all NATO member states and some neutral counties such as Sweden and Austria. They were ment to fill the same role as the resistence movements of WWII had in case of a Soviet occupation: Guerilla warfare, spying, sabotage, setting up networks to help pilots, governments, royal families escape to safety etc.
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stay-behind
When Norway joined NATO in 1949 and the CIA wanted to set up a Stay Behind network here, they were surprised to hear that we already had such an organisation. Hans Otto Meyer was recruited by the secret services after he returned from his studies at MIT. His ships were used to photograph harbours and the coast in Warsaw Pact nations. Meyer was also a Stay Behind member from 1955 to 1964. According to the government the weapons were simply not moved from his villa when he quit. It took the government many years to admit this and Meyer became a bitter and scandalized man.
Comments
Did you already know about Stay Behind? Have you seen Ransom?
900 years ago :v
I got that. But my impression is that many militias are still very preoccupied with what happened 150 years ago. Wasn't North Carolina one of the most affected areas during the civil war? Wars, and especially civil wars, tend to have an effect on the psyke of many even long after the war ended.
I have been in a few
We were warned that they would be booby trapped so just to report if we found them.
I get no feedback on Stay Behind in other countries. Does that mean you didn't know of them?