Hugo Munthe-Kaas

Hugo Conrad Munthe-Kaas DSM (3 February 1922 – 19 March 2012) was a Norwegian intelligence agent and resistance fighter during World War II.

He received most decorations in Norway for his war service.

Throughout the spring of 1940, at the age of 18, he fought against the German invasion.

After armed resistance was crushed and the German occupation of Norway was established, he went to England, where he became trained and served as a secret agent of the British Intelligence Service.

His service lasted until the Norwegian mainland capitulation on 10 June 1940.

After the surrender of mainland Norway, Munthe-Kaas was demobilized and he continued secondary school in Tromsø in early 1941.

In April that year he was recruited into the Norwegian resistance movement owing to the efforts of the journalist Sverre Larsen from the Tromsø newspaper.

In mid 1941 he went on to Trondheim to study at Trondheim Commerce School.

In Trondheim he was again involved with the resistance and, among other things, he did intelligence work covering the German U-boat base in the city, which allowed British planes to bomb the major transformer station at the port in early 1942.

In April of the same year he came over to Britain with the fishing boat Siglaos, skippered by Leif Andreas Larsen.

In the United Kingdom, Munthe-Kaas joined the exiled Norwegian forces.

He was soon recruited by the British Secret Intelligence Service for special assignments in Norway.

He underwent training as a radio operator and a commando soldier.

Based in the United Kingdom, through the war years he carried out several operations in occupied Norway, arriving both by air and submarine.

For the British the need for intelligence information from Norway increased after the larger German ships was transferred to Norwegian waters.

They realized that the threat to the convoy route to and from the Soviet Union was growing, and were particularly concerned with the threat that the German battleship Tirpitz posed after the ship moved north.

It became important for the British to establish a network of stations from northern Nordland to Troms, so that intelligence information about German ship movements could be sent to the UK.

Munthe-Kaas was assigned such a mission, contributing to the creation of a network of agents with radios in July 1942.

During the night of 15 July 1942 he was delivered to Langøya in Vesterålen by a Norwegian PBY Catalina.

He established the radio station LIBRA and in the summer of 1942 worked to organize the intelligence network that monitored the movements of the Tirpitz in northern Norwegian waters.

After the first successful operation in Norway, Munthe-Kaas, together with his father, who had been arrested, (but made sure Munthe-Kaas was transferred to the hospital ), went to neutral Sweden and then traveled back to Britain.

He was later followed by his father, who eventually became the Norwegian military attache in Washington, DC.

In October 1942 Munthe-Kaas was involved in Operation Upsilon, and in mid-November he was together with other Norwegian soldiers and 60 tons of equipment, brought over to Mefjorden on Senja by the French submarine Junon.

On his return to Britain, he began work at the Norwegian Military Academy in London in December 1942, where he continued until early 1943.

In 1943, King Haakon VII decorated the 21-year-old Munthe-Kaas with the War Cross with Sword, Norway's highest medal for exceptional contribution in war.

Great Britain honored him with their Distinguished Service Medal (DSM), the highest medal given to non-commissioned officers, and France presented him with their Legion of Honor and the War Cross.

Munthe-Kaas was the son of Otto H. Munthe-Kaas and younger brother of Otto Ulrik Munthe-Kaas, both military officers.

Munthe-Kaas was sent to Norway once more in March 1943, again with the Junon, during Upsilon III.

The objective of the operation was to deliver a further 60 tons of supplies, and bring out two French and two Norwegian soldiers who had been left in Mefjorden during the previous raid.

These four had managed to remain hidden with the help of residents in Mefjordvær.

The rescue of the four was considered a significant achievement and resulted in that Munthe-Kaas was rewarded a distinction, both from Norway, France and the United Kingdom.

The repeated missions in occupied Norway posed a risk both for himself and for the intelligence service.

As a result, Munthe-Kaas was transferred to another service in 1943.

From the 1970s he was active in the Progress Party, where he was a city council member in Oslo and deputy MP.

He was an honorary party member.

Hugo Munthe-Kaas was a Norwegian intelligence agent and resistance fighter during World War II.

His father was, before World War II, head of the military camp at Setermoen, and was head of the II Field Battalion in the 16th Infantry Regiment during the German invasion of Norway.

Hugo Munthe-Kaas had before the outbreak of the war, volunteered for the guard company in Tromsø, where he served during the German attack.

He then joined the war commissary in Tromsø and was accepted for service in the 16th Infantry Regiment, despite being two years too young for conscription.

Munthe-Kaas served during the campaign in Northern Norway as an orderly in the courier service and as a sniper in the Battles of Narvik.