Peenemünde Army Research Center | |
---|---|
Peenemünde, Germany | |
![]() 1943 RAF photo-recon of Test Stand VII at the Peenemünde Army Research Center | |
Coordinates | 54°08′35″N13°47′38″E / 54.143°N 13.794°E |
Site history | |
Built | 1937 |
In use | World War II |
Battles/wars | Operation Crossbow (Bombing of Peenemünde in World War II) |
The Peenemünde Army Research Center (German : Heeresversuchsanstalt Peenemünde, [lower-alpha 1] HVP) was founded in 1937 as one of five military proving grounds under the German Army Weapons Office (Heereswaffenamt). [3] : 85 Several German guided missiles and rockets of World War II were developed by the HVP, including the V-2 rocket. The works were attacked by the British in Operation Crossbow from August 1943, before falling to the Soviets in May 1945.
On April 2, 1936, the aviation ministry paid 750,000 reichsmarks to the town of Wolgast [3] : 41 for the whole Northern peninsula of the Baltic island of Usedom. [4] : 17 By the middle of 1938, the Army facility had been separated from the Luftwaffe facility and was nearly complete, with personnel moved from Kummersdorf. [5] The Army Research Center (Peenemünde Ost) [1] consisted of Werk Ost and Werk Süd, while Werk West (Peenemünde West) was the Luftwaffe Test Site (Erprobungsstelle der Luftwaffe), [6] : 55 one of the four test and research facilities of the Luftwaffe, with its headquarters facility at Erprobungsstelle Rechlin.
Major-General Walter Dornberger was the military leader of the V-2 rocket programme and other projects.
Wernher von Braun was the HVP technical director (Dr. Walter Thiel was deputy director until 1943) and there were nine major departments: [1] : 38
The Measurements Group (Gerhard Reisig) was part of the BSM, [9] and additional departments included the Production Planning Directorate (Detmar Stahlknecht), [6] : 161 the Personnel Office (Richard Sundermeyer), and the Drawings Change Service. [10] Erich Apel was head of a development department, Konrad Dannenberg was Walter Riedel's deputy, Kurt H. Debus was engineer in charge at Test Stand VII, and Eberhard Rees managed V-2 rocket fabrication and assembly.
Several German guided missiles and rockets of World War II were developed by the HVP, including the V-2 rocket (A-4) (see test launches), and the Wasserfall (35 Peenemünde trial firings), [11] Schmetterling, Rheintochter, Taifun, and Enzian missiles. The HVP also performed preliminary design work on very-long-range missiles for use against the United States. That project was sometimes called "V-3" and its existence is well documented.[ where? ] The Peenemünde establishment also developed other technologies such as the first closed-circuit television system in the world, installed at Test Stand VII to track the launching rockets.
According to Walter Dornberger, "Rockets worked under water." In the summer of 1942, led by Ernst Steinhoff, Pennemünde worked on sea launches, either from launching racks on the deck of a submerged submarine, or from towed floats. Dornberger summarized the launches from a depth of 30 to 50 feet (9 to 15 metres), "A staggering sight it was when those twenty heavy powder rockets suddenly rose, with a rush and a roar, from the calm waters of the Baltic." [12]
The supersonic wind tunnel at Peenemünde's "Aerodynamic Institute" eventually had nozzles for speeds up to the record speed of Mach 4.4 (in 1942 or 1943), as well as an innovative desiccant system to reduce the condensation clouding caused by the use of liquid oxygen, in 1940. Led by Rudolph Hermann, who arrived in April 1937 from the University of Aachen, the number of technical staff members reached two hundred in 1943, and it also included Hermann Kurzweg of the (University of Leipzig) and Walter Haeussermann. [13]
Initially set up under the HVP as a rocket training battery (Number 444), [2] Heimat-Artillerie-Park 11 Karlshagen/Pomerania [2] : 125 (HAP 11) also contained the A-A Research Command North [2] : 65 for the testing of anti-aircraft rockets. The chemist Magnus von Braun, the youngest brother of Wernher von Braun, was employed in the attempted development at Peenemünde of anti-aircraft rockets. [2] : 66 These were never very successful as weapons during World War II. Their development as practical weapons took another decade of development in the United States and in the U.S.S.R.
In November 1938, Walther von Brauchitsch ordered construction of an A-4 production plant at Peenemünde, and in January 1939, Walter Dornberger created a subsection of Wa Pruf 11 for planning the Peenemünde Production Plant project, headed by G. Schubert, a senior Army civil servant. [14] By midsummer 1943, the first trial runs of the assembly-line in the Production Works at Werke Süd were made, [15] but after the end of July 1943 when the enormous hangar Fertigungshalle 1 (F-1, "Mass Production Plant No. 1") was just about to go into operation, Operation Hydra bombed Peenemünde. On August 26, 1943, Albert Speer called a meeting with Hans Kammler, Dornberger, Gerhard Degenkolb, and Karl Otto Saur to negotiate the move of A-4 main production to an underground factory in the Harz mountains. [4] : 123 [16] In early September, Peenemünde machinery and personnel for production (including Alban Sawatzki, Arthur Rudolph, and about ten engineers) [1] : 79 were moved to the Mittelwerk, which also received machinery and personnel from the two other planned A-4 assembly sites. [17] On October 13, 1943, the Peenemünde prisoners from the small F-1 concentration camp [18] boarded rail cars bound for Kohnstein mountain. [17]
Two Polish janitors [19] : 52 of Peenemünde's Camp Trassenheide in early 1943 [19] : 52 provided maps, [20] sketches and reports to Polish Home Army Intelligence, and in June 1943 British intelligence had received two such reports which identified the "rocket assembly hall", "experimental pit", and "launching tower". [4] : 139 The Allies also received information about the V-1 and V-2 rockets and the production sites from the Austrian resistance group around the priest Heinrich Maier. The group later discovered by the Gestapo was in contact with Allen Dulles, the head of the US secret service OSS in Switzerland, and informed him about the research in Peenemünde. [21] [22] [23]
As the opening attack of the British Crossbow operations against German rocket weapons, the Operation Hydra bombing raid attacked the HVP's "Sleeping & Living Quarters" (to specifically target scientists), then the "Factory Workshops", and finally the "Experimental Station" [24] on the night of August 17/18, 1943. [25] The Polish janitors were given advance warning of the attack, but the workers could not leave due to SS security and the facility had no air raid shelters for the prisoners. [19] : 82 Fifteen British and Canadian airmen who were killed on the raid were buried by the Germans in unmarked graves within the secure perimeter. Their recovery at the end of the war was prevented by the Russians authorities and the bodies remain there to this day. [26] [ page needed ]
A year later on July 18, [27] August 4, [7] : 111 and August 25, [4] : 273 the U.S. Eighth Air Force [1] : 141 conducted three additional Peenemünde raids to counter suspected hydrogen peroxide production. [28]
As with the move of the V-2 Production Works to the Mittelwerk, the complete withdrawal of the development of guided missiles was approved by the Army and SS in October 1943. [29] On August 26, 1943, at a meeting in Albert Speer's office, Hans Kammler suggested moving the A-4 Development Works to a proposed underground site in Austria. [30] After a site survey in September by Papa Riedel and Schubert, Kammler chose the code name Zement (cement) for it in December, [29] and work to blast a cavern into a cliff in Ebensee near Lake Traunsee commenced in January 1944. [2] : 109 To build the tunnels, a concentration camp (a sub unit of Mauthausen-Gusen) was erected in the vicinity of the planned production sites. In early 1944, construction work started for the test stands and launching pads in the Austrian Alps (code name Salamander), with target areas planned for the Tatra Mountains, the Arlberg range, and the area of the Ortler mountain. [31] Other evacuation locations included:
For people being relocated from Peenemünde, the new organization was to be designated Entwicklungsgemeinschaft Mittelbau (English: Mittelbau Development Company) [1] : 291 and Kammler's order to relocate to Thuringia arrived by teleprinter on January 31, 1945. [1] : 288 On February 3, 1945, at the last meeting at Peenemünde held regarding the relocation, the HVP consisted of A-4 development/ modification (1940 people), A-4b development (27), Wasserfall and Taifun development (1455), support and administration (760). [1] : 289 The first train departed on February 17 with 525 people en route to Thuringia (including Bleicherode, Sangerhausen (district), and Bad Sachsa) and the evacuation was complete in mid-March. [3] : 247
Another reaction to the aerial bombing was the creation of a back-up research test range, the Blizna V-2 missile launch site in southeastern Poland. Carefully camouflaged, this secret facility was built by 2000 prisoners from the concentration camp at the SS-Truppenübungsplatz Heidelager. [34] [ page needed ] The Polish resistance Home Army (Armia Krajowa) captured an intact V2 rocket here in 1943. It had been launched but didn't explode and was later retrieved intact from the Bug River and transferred secretly to London. [35]
The last V-2 launch at Peenemünde happened in February 1945, and on May 5, 1945, the soldiers of the Soviet 2nd Belorussian Front under General Konstantin Rokossovsky captured the seaport of Swinemünde and all of Usedom Island. Soviet infantrymen under the command of Major Anatole Vavilov stormed the installations at Peenemünde and found "75 percent wreckage". All of the research buildings and rocket test stands had been demolished. [36]
End of April 1945, a group of more than 450 important rocket scientists from Peenemünde were captured by the U.S. Army in Oberammergau while Wernher von Braun, Walter Dornberger and several others surrendered in Reutte on May 2, 1945. As part of Operation Paperclip, a group of 127 engineers was eventually contracted for the continuation of the work at the White Sands Proving Grounds in the USA. [37] [38] : p. 202-221 Only a few members of the previous HVP staff, such as Helmut Gröttrup and Erich Apel, signed a contract with the Soviets and were forcibly transferred to the USSR as part of Operation Osoaviakhim in October 1946. [38] : p. 222-253
Although rumors spread that the Soviet space program revived Peenemünde as a test range, [39] more destruction of the technical facilities of Peenemünde took place between 1948 and 1961. Only the power station, the airport, and the railroad link to Zinnowitz remained functional. The gas plant for the production of liquid oxygen still lies in ruins at the entrance to Peenemünde. Very little remains of most of the other Nazi German facilities there.
The Peenemünde Historical Technical Museum opened in 1992 in the shelter control room and the area of the former power station and is an anchor point of ERIH, the European Route of Industrial Heritage.
The V2, with the technical name Aggregat 4 (A4), was the world's first long-range guided ballistic missile. The missile, powered by a liquid-propellant rocket engine, was developed during the Second World War in Nazi Germany as a "vengeance weapon" and assigned to attack Allied cities as retaliation for the Allied bombings of German cities. The V2 rocket also became the first artificial object to travel into space by crossing the Kármán line with the vertical launch of MW 18014 on 20 June 1944.
The Wasserfall Ferngelenkte FlaRakete was a German guided supersonic surface-to-air missile project of World War II. Development was not completed before the end of the war and it was not used operationally.
Major-General Dr. Walter Robert Dornberger was a German Army artillery officer whose career spanned World War I and World War II. He was a leader of Nazi Germany's V-2 rocket programme and other projects at the Peenemünde Army Research Centre. After the war, the US Nazi scientist recruitment programme Operation Paperclip saw him move to the US, largely avoiding punishment for involvement in war crimes, to work for some decades in high positions in aerospace, including for Bell Aircraft and Boeing.
Hans Kammler was an SS-Obergruppenführer responsible for Nazi civil engineering projects and its top secret V-weapons program. He oversaw the construction of various Nazi concentration camps before being put in charge of the V-2 rocket and Emergency Fighter Programs towards the end of World War II. Kammler disappeared in May 1945 during the final days of the war. There has been much conjecture regarding his fate.
Klaus Riedel was a German rocket pioneer. He was involved in many early liquid-fuelled rocket experiments, and eventually worked on the V-2 missile programme at Peenemünde Army Research Center.
Walter Thiel was a German rocket scientist.
Arthur Louis Hugo Rudolph was a German rocket engineer who was a leader of the effort to develop the V-2 rocket for Nazi Germany. After World War II, the United States government's Office of Strategic Services (OSS) brought him to the U.S. as part of the clandestine Operation Paperclip, where he became one of the main developers of the U.S. space program. He worked within the U.S. Army and NASA, where he managed the development of several systems, including the Pershing missile and the Saturn V Moon rocket. In 1984, the U.S. government investigated him for war crimes, and he agreed to renounce his United States citizenship and leave the U.S. in return for not being prosecuted.
Kummersdorf is the name of an estate near Luckenwalde, around 25 km south of Berlin, in the Brandenburg region of Germany. Until 1945 Kummersdorf hosted the weapon office of the German Army which ran a development centre for future weapons as well as an artillery range.
The Aggregat series was a set of ballistic missile designs developed in 1933–1945 by a research program of Nazi Germany's Army (Heer). Its greatest success was the A4, more commonly known as the V2.
The Rocket U-boat was a series of military projects undertaken by Nazi Germany during the Second World War. The projects, which were undertaken at Peenemünde Army Research Center, aimed to develop submarine-launched rockets, flying bombs and missiles. The Kriegsmarine did not use submarine-launched rockets or missiles from U-boats against targets at sea or ashore. These projects never reached combat readiness before the war ended.
Peenemünde Airfield is an airfield on the Baltic Sea coast, north of Peenemünde, Germany. Today, round trips in light aircraft are available from Peenemünde Airfield. There are also bus tours which visit the former shelters of the East German National People's Army (NVA) and the remnants of the V-1 flying bomb facilities. Because of its long runway, the airfield is also a location for flight schools.
Operation Hydra was an attack by RAF Bomber Command on a German scientific research centre at Peenemünde on the night of 17/18 August 1943. Group Captain John Searby, commanding officer of No. 83 Squadron RAF, commanded the operation, the first time that Bomber Command used a master bomber to direct the attack of the main force. Hydra was the first operation against the German V-weapon programme, a campaign later known as "Crossbow". The British lost 40 bombers and 215 aircrew, and several hundred enslaved workers in the nearby Trassenheide forced labour camp were killed. The Luftwaffe lost twelve night-fighters and about 170 German civilian personnel were killed, including two V-2 rocket scientists. Assessments of the raids effectiveness vary; the United States Strategic Bombing Survey (1945) called the raid "not effective", while in 1943, Joseph Goebbels wrote of a delay in the programme of six to eight weeks.
Magnus "Mac" Freiherr von Braun was a German chemical engineer, Luftwaffe aviator, rocket scientist and business executive. In his 20s, he worked on Nazi Germany’s guided missile development and production at the Peenemünde Army Research Center and the Mittelwerk from 1943-1945.
The Regener barrel was the name of a scientific payload for the World War II V-2 rocket.
Walter J H "Papa" Riedel was a German engineer who was the head of the Design Office of the Army Research Centre Peenemünde and the chief designer of the A4 (V-2) ballistic rocket. The crater Riedel on the Moon was co-named for him and the German rocket pioneer Klaus Riedel.
Karl Heinrich Emil Becker was a German weapons engineer and artillery general. He advocated and implemented close ties of the military to science for purposes of advanced weapons development. He was the head of the Army Ordnance Office, Senator of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, first president of the Reich Research Council, the first general officer to be a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences, as well as being a professor at both the University of Berlin and Technische Universität Berlin.
V-2 rocket facilities were military installations associated with Nazi Germany's V-2 SRBM ballistic missile, including bunkers and small launch pads which were never operationally used.
The Redl-Zipf V-2 rocket facility located in central Austria between Vöcklabruck and Vöcklamarkt and established in September 1943 began operation for V-2 rocket motor testing after Raxwerke test equipment had been moved from Friedrichshafen.
The Blizna V-2 missile launch site was the site of a World War II German V-2 missile firing range. Today there is a small museum located in the Park Historyczny Blizna in Blizna, Poland. After the RAF strategic bombing of the V-2 rocket launch site in Peenemünde, Germany, in August 1943, some of the test and launch facilities were relocated to Blizna in November 1943. The first of 139 V-2 launches was carried out from the Blizna launch site on 5 November 1943.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)