Editing First Special Service Force (section)

===Background===
[[Geoffrey Pyke]] was an English [[journalist]], [[educationalist]], and later an [[inventor]] whose clever, but [[wikt:unorthodox|unorthodox]], ideas could be difficult to implement. In lifestyle and appearance, he fit the common [[stereotype]] of a scientist-engineer-inventor: in British slang, a "[[boffin]]". This was part of the British approach to encouraging innovative warfare methods and weapons during World War II, which was personally backed by Prime Minister [[Winston Churchill]]. [[Hobart's Funnies]] are another example.

While working for the British [[Combined Operations|Combined Operations Command]], Pyke devised a plan for the creation of a small, elite force capable of fighting behind enemy lines in [[Arctic warfare|winter conditions]]. This was to have been a [[commando]] unit that could be landed, by sea or air, in occupied [[Norway]], Romania, or the [[Italian Alps]] for sabotage missions against [[hydroelectric plant]]s  and [[oil field]]s.

In Norway, the chief industrial threat was the production of the [[heavy water]] used in the German atomic weapon research at [[Rjukan]]. Furthermore, attacks on 14 designated Norwegian hydroelectrical power stations, those which would be vulnerable to special force snow vehicles, which supplied the country with 49% of its total power, might drive the Axis powers out of the country and give the Allies a direct link to the USSR.<ref>{{cite book|last=Nadler|first=John|title=A Perfect Hell|year=2005|publisher=Anchor Canada|location=Canada|isbn=978-0-385-66141-6|page=28}}</ref> In Romania, there were the strategically important [[Ploiești]] oil fields that met one quarter of German consumption, and Italian hydroelectric plants powered most of south German industry. Pyke requested that a tracked vehicle be developed especially for the Norwegian operations, capable of carrying men and their equipment at high speed across snow-covered terrain.<ref name=werner>{{cite book | last = Werner | first = Bret |author2=Michael Welply | title = First Special Service Force 1942–44 | publisher=Osprey Publishing | year = 2006 | isbn = 1-84176-968-1}}</ref>