Raxwerke or Rax-Werke was a facility of the

Wiener Neustädter Lokomotivfabrik The ''Wiener Neustädter Lokomotivfabrik'' (Wiener Neustadt locomotive factory) was the largest locomotive and engineering factory in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. During World War II the company produced armaments as part of Rax-Werk Ges.m ...

Wiener Neustadt Wiener Neustadt (; ; Central Bavarian: ''Weana Neistod'') is a city located south of Vienna, in the state of Lower Austria, in northeast Austria. It is a self-governed city and the seat of the district administration of Wiener Neustadt-Land Distr ...

Lower Austria Lower Austria (german: Niederösterreich; Austro-Bavarian: ''Niedaöstareich'', ''Niedaestareich'') is one of the nine states of Austria, located in the northeastern corner of the country. Since 1986, the capital of Lower Austria has been Sankt P ...

. During World War II, the company also produced lamps for

Panzer This article deals with the tanks (german: panzer) serving in the German Army (''Deutsches Heer'') throughout history, such as the World War I tanks of the Imperial German Army, the interwar and World War II tanks of the Nazi German Wehrmacht, ...

tanks and

anti-aircraft guns Anti-aircraft warfare, counter-air or air defence forces is the battlespace response to aerial warfare, defined by NATO as "all measures designed to nullify or reduce the effectiveness of hostile air action".AAP-6 It includes surface based, ...

. Two Raxwerke plants employed several thousand

forced labor Forced labour, or unfree labour, is any work relation, especially in modern or early modern history, in which people are employed against their will with the threat of destitution, detention, violence including death, or other forms of ex ...

ers from the

Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp Mauthausen was a Nazi concentration camp on a hill above the market town of Mauthausen, Upper Austria, Mauthausen (roughly east of Linz), Upper Austria. It was the main camp of a group with List of subcamps of Mauthausen, nearly 100 further ...

(on 20 June 1943 Mauthausen delivered ~500 prisoners to the Rax-Werke).

Operations

Part of the Eastern Works (V-2 facilities in the Vienna-Freidrichshafen area), the 30 meter-high Serbs hall at the Raxwerke was selected for

V-2 The V-2 (german: Vergeltungswaffe 2, lit=Retaliation Weapon 2), with the technical name ''Aggregat 4'' (A-4), was the world’s first long-range guided ballistic missile. The missile, powered by a liquid-propellant rocket engine, was develope ...

manufacturing. A few V-2 center sections had been assembled by the Raxwerke when, on 2 November 1943, the US Fifteenth Air Force targeted the nearby Wiener Neustädter Flugzeugwerke (WNF) plant in

Operation Crossbow ''Crossbow'' was the code name in World War II for Anglo-American operations against the German V-weapons, long range reprisal weapons (V-weapons) programme. The main V-weapons were the V-1 flying bomb and V-2 rocket – these were launched aga ...

and hit the Raxwerke. Rax test equipment was subsequently moved to the site of the

Redl-Zipf The Redl-Zipf V-2 rocket facility (code name ''Schlier'') 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 move ...

brewery in central Austria (

code name A code name, call sign or cryptonym is a code word or name used, sometimes clandestinely, to refer to another name, word, project, or person. Code names are often used for military purposes, or in espionage. They may also be used in industrial c ...

Schlier Schlier is a town in the district of Ravensburg in Baden-Württemberg in Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, a ...

) where V-2 test stands were built.

Werner Dahm Werner Karl Dahm (February 16, 1917 in Lindenthal, Germany – January 17, 2008 in Huntsville, Alabama) was an early spaceflight scientist of the Peenemünde Future Projects Office who emigrated to the US under Operation Paperclip and was the ...

was sent from

Peenemünde Army Research Center The Peenemünde Army Research Center (german: Heeresversuchsanstalt Peenemünde, HVP) was founded in 1937 as one of five military proving grounds under the German Army Weapons Office (''Heereswaffenamt''). Several German guided missiles and ...

in Germany to the Raxwerke for the construction of an engine test stand for the ''

Wasserfall The ''Wasserfall Ferngelenkte FlaRakete'' (Waterfall Remote-Controlled A-A Rocket) 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 operati ...

'' anti-aircraft missile (construction was never completed).

References

German V-2 rocket facilities Buildings and structures in Lower Austria Operation Crossbow Economy of Lower Austria {{manufacturing-stub

Operations

See also

References