Lehesten is a town in the

Thuringian Forest The Thuringian Forest (''Thüringer Wald'' in German), is a mountain range in the southern parts of the German state of Thuringia, running northwest to southeast. Skirting from its southerly source in foothills to a gorge on its north-west side i ...

, 20 km southeast of

Saalfeld Saalfeld (german: Saalfeld/Saale) is a town in Germany, capital of the Saalfeld-Rudolstadt district of Thuringia. It is best known internationally as the ancestral seat of the Saxe-Coburg and Gotha branch of the Saxon House of Wettin. Geography ...

World War II V-2 facility

After an August 194

explosion at 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 ...

V-2 liquid oxygen plant at

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 ...

stopped production, the third

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 ...

liquid oxygen plant (5000 tons/month) was built at a slate quarry at Lehesten at the Thuringia-Bavarian border near Nordhausen (acceptance testing of combustion chamber was also performed at the Lehesten plant). Dr Martin Schilling (the head of testing at Peenemünde) located the Lehesten site, and 400 engineers were moved from

Peenemünde Peenemünde (, en, " Peene iverMouth") is a municipality on the Baltic Sea island of Usedom in the Vorpommern-Greifswald district in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany. It is part of the ''Amt'' (collective municipality) of Usedom-Nord. The commu ...

to Lehesten, which eventually had 16 liquid oxygen production plants.

References

Towns in Thuringia V-weapon subterranea Saalfeld-Rudolstadt V-2 missile launch sites {{SaalfeldRudolstadt-geo-stub