| Peenemünde Army Research Center | |
|---|---|
| Peenemünde, Germany | |
 1943 RAF photo-recon ofTest Stand VII at the Peenemünde Army Research Center | |
| Location | |
 | |
| Coordinates | 54°09′N13°48′E / 54.15°N 13.80°E /54.15; 13.80 |
| Site history | |
| Built | 1937 |
| In use | World War II |
| Battles/wars | Operation Crossbow (Bombing of Peenemünde in World War II) |
ThePeenemünde Army Research Center (German:Heeresversuchsanstalt Peenemünde,[a] HVP) was founded in 1937 as one of five militaryproving grounds under theGerman Army Weapons Office (Heereswaffenamt).[3]: 85 SeveralGerman guided missiles and rockets of World War II were developed by the HVP, including theV-2 rocket. The works were attacked by the British inOperation Crossbow from August 1943, before falling to the Soviets in May 1945.
On April 2, 1936, theaviation ministry paid 750,000 reichsmarks to the town ofWolgast[3]: 41 for the whole Northern peninsula of the Baltic island ofUsedom.[4]: 17 By the middle of 1938, the Army facility had been separated from the Luftwaffe facility and was nearly complete, with personnel moved fromKummersdorf.[5] The Army Research Center (Peenemünde Ost)[1] consisted ofWerk Ost andWerk Süd, whileWerk West (Peenemünde West) was theLuftwaffe Test Site (Erprobungsstelle der Luftwaffe),[6]: 55 one of the four test and research facilities of the Luftwaffe, with its headquarters facility atErprobungsstelle Rechlin.
Major-GeneralWalter 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
TheMeasurements 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 atTest Stand VII, andEberhard Rees managed V-2 rocket fabrication and assembly.
SeveralGerman guided missiles and rockets of World War II were developed by the HVP, including theV-2 rocket (A-4) (seetest launches), and theWasserfall (35 Peenemünde trial firings),[11]Schmetterling,Rheintochter,Taifun, andEnzian 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 firstclosed-circuit television system in the world, installed atTest Stand VII to track the launching rockets.
According toWalter Dornberger, "Rockets worked under water." In the summer of 1942, led byErnst 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]
Thesupersonic wind tunnel at Peenemünde's "Aerodynamic Institute" eventually had nozzles for speeds up to the record speed ofMach 4.4 (in 1942 or 1943), as well as an innovativedesiccant system to reduce the condensation clouding caused by the use ofliquid oxygen, in 1940. Led by Rudolph Hermann, who arrived in April 1937 from theUniversity of Aachen, the number of technical staff members reached two hundred in 1943, and it also included Hermann Kurzweg of theUniversity of Leipzig andWalter 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 ofanti-aircraft rockets. ThechemistMagnus von Braun, the youngest brother of Wernher von Braun, was employed in the attempted development at Peenemünde ofanti-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 theU.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 atWerke Süd were made,[15] but after the end of July 1943 when the enormous hangarFertigungshalle 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 withHans Kammler, Dornberger, Gerhard Degenkolb, and Karl Otto Saur to negotiate the move of A-4 main production to an underground factory in theHarz 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 theMittelwerk, 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 forKohnstein mountain.[17]
Two Polish janitors[19]: 52 of Peenemünde's Camp Trassenheide in early 1943[19]: 52 provided maps,[20] sketches and reports toPolish 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 theV-1 andV-2 rockets and the production sites from the Austrian resistance group around the priestHeinrich Maier. The group later discovered by the Gestapo was in contact withAllen 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 BritishCrossbow operations against German rocket weapons, theOperation 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 theMittelwerk, 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 inAlbert 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 nameZement (cement) for it in December,[29] and work to blast a cavern into a cliff inEbensee nearLake Traunsee commenced in January 1944.[2]: 109 To build the tunnels, aconcentration camp (a sub unit ofMauthausen-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 AustrianAlps (code nameSalamander), with target areas planned for theTatra Mountains, theArlberg range, and the area of theOrtler mountain.[31] Other evacuation locations included:
For people being relocated from Peenemünde, the new organization was to be designatedEntwicklungsgemeinschaft Mittelbau (English:Mittelbau Development Company)[1]: 291 and Kammler's order to relocate toThuringia 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 andTaifun development (1455), support and administration (760).[1]: 289 The first train departed on February 17 with 525 people en route to Thuringia (includingBleicherode,Sangerhausen (district), andBad Sachsa) and the evacuation was complete in mid-March.[3]: 247
Another reaction to theaerial bombing was the creation of a back-up research test range, theBlizna V-2 missile launch site in southeastern Poland. Carefully camouflaged, this secret facility was built by 2000 prisoners from the concentration camp at theSS-Truppenübungsplatz Heidelager.[34][page needed] The Polish resistanceHome Army (Armia Krajowa) captured an intact V2 rocket here in 1943. It had been launched but didn't explode and was laterretrieved intact from theBug 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 Soviet2nd Belorussian Front under GeneralKonstantin Rokossovsky captured the seaport ofSwinemünde and all of Usedom Island. Soviet infantrymen under the command ofMajor 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 inOberammergau whileWernher von Braun,Walter Dornberger and several others surrendered inReutte on May 2, 1945. As part ofOperation Paperclip, a group of 127 engineers was eventually contracted for the continuation of the work at theWhite Sands Proving Grounds in the USA.[37][38]: p. 202-221 Only a few members of the previous HVP staff, such asHelmut Gröttrup andErich Apel, signed a contract with the Soviets and were forcibly transferred to the USSR as part ofOperation Osoaviakhim in October 1946.[38]: p. 222-253
Although rumors spread that theSoviet 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 toZinnowitz remained functional. The gas plant for the production ofliquid oxygen still lies in ruins at the entrance to Peenemünde. Very little remains of most of the other Nazi German facilities there.
ThePeenemünde Historical Technical Museum opened in 1992 in the shelter control room and the area of the formerpower station and is an anchor point of ERIH, theEuropean Route of Industrial Heritage.
The main turbine hall of thePeenemünde plant has been used a concert venue, including a 2022 performance by the New York Philharmonic orchestra and theBaltic Sea Philharmonic as part of theUsedom Classical Music Festival.[40]
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)| International | |
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