Peenemünde Army Research Center
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The Peenemünde Army Research Center (, HVP) was founded in 1937 as one of five military
proving ground A proving ground is an installation or reservation in which technology such as weapons, military tactics and automobile prototypes are experimented with or tested. Proving grounds can be operated by government bodies or civilian industries. The ...
s under the German Army Weapons Office (''Heereswaffenamt''). Several German guided missiles and rockets of World War II were developed by the HVP, including the
V-2 rocket The V2 (), with the technical name ''Aggregat (rocket family), Aggregat-4'' (A4), was the world's first long-range missile guidance, guided ballistic missile. The missile, powered by a liquid-propellant rocket engine, was developed during the S ...
. The works were attacked by the British 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 primary V-weapons were the V-1 flying bomb and V-2 rocket, which were launched agai ...
from August 1943, before falling to the Soviets in May 1945.


History

On April 2, 1936, the aviation ministry paid 750,000 reichsmarks to the town of Wolgast for the whole Northern peninsula of the Baltic island of
Usedom Usedom ( , ) is a Baltic Sea island in Pomerania, divided between Germany and Poland. It is the second largest Pomeranian island after Rügen, and the most populous island in the Baltic Sea. It lies north of the Szczecin Lagoon estuary of the ...
. By the middle of 1938, the Army facility had been separated from the Luftwaffe facility and was nearly complete, with personnel moved from Kummersdorf. The Army Research Center (''Peenemünde Ost'') consisted of ''Werk Ost'' and ''Werk Süd'', while ''Werk West'' (Peenemünde West) was the
Luftwaffe The Luftwaffe () was the aerial warfare, aerial-warfare branch of the before and during World War II. German Empire, Germany's military air arms during World War I, the of the Imperial German Army, Imperial Army and the of the Imperial Ge ...
Test Site (), one of the four test and research facilities of the Luftwaffe, with its headquarters facility at ''Erprobungsstelle Rechlin''.


HVP organization

Major-General
Walter Dornberger Major-General Dr. Walter Robert Dornberger (6 September 1895 – 26 June 1980) 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 a ...
was the military leader of the V-2 rocket programme and other projects.
Wernher von Braun Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun ( ; ; 23 March 191216 June 1977) was a German–American aerospace engineer and space architect. He was a member of the Nazi Party and '' Allgemeine SS'', the leading figure in the development of ...
was the HVP technical director (Dr. Walter Thiel was deputy director until 1943) and there were nine major departments: # Technical Design Office ( Walter J H "Papa" Riedel) # Aeroballistics and Mathematics Laboratory (Dr. Hermann Steuding) # Wind Tunnel (Dr. Rudolf Hermann) # Materials Laboratory (Dr. Mäder) # Flight, Guidance, and Telemetering Devices (German: BSM) (Dr. Ernst Steinhoff and his deputy
Helmut Gröttrup Helmut Gröttrup (12 February 1916 – 4 July 1981) was a German engineer, rocket scientist and inventor of the smart card. During World War II, he worked in the German V-2 rocket program under Wernher von Braun. From 1946 to 1950 he headed a gr ...
) # Development and Fabrication Laboratory (
Arthur Rudolph Arthur Louis Hugo Rudolph (November 9, 1906 – January 1, 1996) 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 Servic ...
) # Test Laboratory ( Klaus Riedel) # Future Projects Office ( Ludwig Roth) #Purchasing Office (Mr. Genthe) The Measurements Group ( Gerhard Reisig) was part of the BSM, and additional departments included the Production Planning Directorate (Detmar Stahlknecht), the Personnel Office (Richard Sundermeyer), and the Drawings Change Service. 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 Test Stand VII (, P-7) was the principal V-2 rocket testing facility at Peenemünde Airfield and was capable of static firing rocket motors with up to 200 tons of thrust. Notable events at the site include the first successful V-2 launch on 3 O ...
, and Eberhard Rees managed V-2 rocket fabrication and assembly.


Guided missile and rocket development

Several German guided missiles and rockets of World War II were developed by the HVP, including the
V-2 rocket The V2 (), with the technical name ''Aggregat (rocket family), Aggregat-4'' (A4), was the world's first long-range missile guidance, guided ballistic missile. The missile, powered by a liquid-propellant rocket engine, was developed during the S ...
( A-4) (see test launches), and the Wasserfall (35 Peenemünde trial firings), 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. The Peenemünde establishment also developed other technologies such as the first
closed-circuit television Closed-circuit television (CCTV), also known as video surveillance, is the use of closed-circuit television cameras to transmit a signal to a specific place on a limited set of monitors. It differs from broadcast television in that the signa ...
system in the world, installed at
Test Stand VII Test Stand VII (, P-7) was the principal V-2 rocket testing facility at Peenemünde Airfield and was capable of static firing rocket motors with up to 200 tons of thrust. Notable events at the site include the first successful V-2 launch on 3 O ...
to track the launching rockets. According to
Walter Dornberger Major-General Dr. Walter Robert Dornberger (6 September 1895 – 26 June 1980) 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 a ...
, "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."


Aerodynamic Institute

The
supersonic wind tunnel A supersonic wind tunnel is a wind tunnel that produces supersonic speeds (1.2
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 A desiccant is a hygroscopic substance that is used to induce or sustain a state of dryness (desiccation) in its vicinity; it is the opposite of a humectant. Commonly encountered pre-packaged desiccants are solids that absorb water. Desiccant ...
system to reduce the condensation clouding caused by the use of
liquid oxygen Liquid oxygen, sometimes abbreviated as LOX or LOXygen, is a clear cyan liquid form of dioxygen . It was used as the oxidizer in the first liquid-fueled rocket invented in 1926 by Robert H. Goddard, an application which is ongoing. Physical ...
, 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 Leipzig University (), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 December 1409 by Frederick I, Electo ...
and Walter Haeussermann.


Heimat-Artillerie-Park 11

Initially set up under the HVP as a rocket training battery (Number 444), ''Heimat-Artillerie-Park 11 Karlshagen/Pomerania'' (HAP 11) also contained the A-A Research Command North for the testing of
anti-aircraft Anti-aircraft warfare (AAW) is the counter to aerial warfare and includes "all measures designed to nullify or reduce the effectiveness of hostile air action".AAP-6 It encompasses surface-based, subsurface ( submarine-launched), and air-ba ...
rockets. The
chemist A chemist (from Greek ''chēm(ía)'' alchemy; replacing ''chymist'' from Medieval Latin ''alchemist'') is a graduated scientist trained in the study of chemistry, or an officially enrolled student in the field. Chemists study the composition of ...
Magnus von Braun Magnus "Mac" Freiherr von Braun (10 May 1919 – 21 June 2003) 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 ...
, the youngest brother of Wernher von Braun, was employed in the attempted development at Peenemünde of anti-aircraft rockets. 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.


Peenemünde V-2 production plant

In November 1938,
Walther von Brauchitsch Walther Heinrich Alfred Hermann von Brauchitsch (4 October 1881 – 18 October 1948) was a German ''Generalfeldmarschall'' (Field Marshal) and Commander-in-Chief (''Oberbefehlshaber'') of the German Army during the first two years of World War ...
ordered construction of an A-4 production plant at Peenemünde, and in January 1939,
Walter Dornberger Major-General Dr. Walter Robert Dornberger (6 September 1895 – 26 June 1980) 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 a ...
created a subsection of Wa Pruf 11 for planning the Peenemünde Production Plant project, headed by G. Schubert, a senior Army civil servant. By midsummer 1943, the first trial runs of the assembly-line in the Production Works at ''Werke Süd'' were made, 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 Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer (; ; 19 March 1905 – 1 September 1981) was a German architect who served as Reich Ministry of Armaments and War Production, Minister of Armaments and War Production in Nazi Germany during most of W ...
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 The Harz (), also called the Harz Mountains, is a highland area in northern Germany. It has the highest elevations for that region, and its rugged terrain extends across parts of Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia. The name ''Harz'' der ...
mountains. In early September, Peenemünde machinery and personnel for production (including Alban Sawatzki,
Arthur Rudolph Arthur Louis Hugo Rudolph (November 9, 1906 – January 1, 1996) 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 Servic ...
, and about ten engineers) were moved to the
Mittelwerk Mittelwerk (; German for "Central Works") was a German World War II factory built underground in the Kohnstein to avoid Allied bombing. It used slave labor from the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp to produce V-2 ballistic missiles, V-1 flyin ...
, which also received machinery and personnel from the two other planned A-4 assembly sites.Neufeld 1995. p206 On October 13, 1943, the Peenemünde prisoners from the small F-1 concentration camp boarded rail cars bound for Kohnstein mountain.


Operation Crossbow

Two Polish janitors of Peenemünde's Camp Trassenheide in early 1943 provided maps, 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". The Allies also received information about the V-1 and
V-2 rocket The V2 (), with the technical name ''Aggregat (rocket family), Aggregat-4'' (A4), was the world's first long-range missile guidance, guided ballistic missile. The missile, powered by a liquid-propellant rocket engine, was developed during the S ...
s 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 Allen Welsh Dulles ( ; April 7, 1893 – January 29, 1969) was an American lawyer who was the first civilian director of central intelligence (DCI), and its longest serving director. As head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during the ea ...
, the head of the US secret service OSS in Switzerland, and informed him about the research in Peenemünde. 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" on the night of August 17/18, 1943. 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. 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. A year later on July 18, August 4, and August 25, the U.S.
Eighth Air Force The Eighth Air Force (Air Forces Strategic) is a numbered air force (NAF) of the United States Air Force's Air Force Global Strike Command (AFGSC). It is headquartered at Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana. The command serves as Air Forces S ...
conducted three additional Peenemünde raids to counter suspected hydrogen peroxide production.


Evacuation

As with the move of the V-2 Production Works to the
Mittelwerk Mittelwerk (; German for "Central Works") was a German World War II factory built underground in the Kohnstein to avoid Allied bombing. It used slave labor from the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp to produce V-2 ballistic missiles, V-1 flyin ...
, the complete withdrawal of the development of guided missiles was approved by the Army and SS in October 1943.Neufeld. p205 On August 26, 1943, at a meeting in
Albert Speer Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer (; ; 19 March 1905 – 1 September 1981) was a German architect who served as Reich Ministry of Armaments and War Production, Minister of Armaments and War Production in Nazi Germany during most of W ...
's office, Hans Kammler suggested moving the A-4 Development Works to a proposed underground site in Austria. After a site survey in September by Papa Riedel and Schubert, Kammler chose the code name Zement (''cement'') for it in December, and work to blast a cavern into a cliff in Ebensee near Lake Traunsee commenced in January 1944. To build the tunnels, a
concentration camp A concentration camp is a prison or other facility used for the internment of political prisoners or politically targeted demographics, such as members of national or ethnic minority groups, on the grounds of national security, or for exploitati ...
(a sub unit of
Mauthausen-Gusen Mauthausen was a German 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 f ...
) 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 The Alps () are some of the highest and most extensive mountain ranges in Europe, stretching approximately across eight Alpine countries (from west to east): Monaco, France, Switzerland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Germany, Austria and Slovenia. ...
(code name Salamander), with target areas planned for the Tatra Mountains, the
Arlberg The Arlberg (, also: ''Arlberg Pass'') is a mountain pass between states of Tyrol and Vorarlberg in Austria. Ski resorts at the Arlberg include Lech, Zürs, Stuben, St. Christoph, St. Anton, Oberlech, Stubenbach, Zug, and Warth. It is the m ...
range, and the area of the Ortler mountain. Other evacuation locations included: * Hans Lindenmayr's valve laboratory near Friedland moved to a castle near the village of Leutenberg, south of Saalfeld near the Bavarian border. * the materials testing laboratory moved to an air base at
Anklam Anklam (), formerly known as Tanglim and Wendenburg, is a town in the Western Pomerania region of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in north-eastern Germany. It is situated on the banks of the Peene river, just 8 km from its mouth in the , the western ...
* the wind tunnels moved to Kochel (then after the war, to the
White Oak, Maryland White Oak is a census-designated place and unincorporated area in Montgomery County, Maryland, United States. It had a population of 16,347 in 2020. White Oak was known for its Naval Ordnance Laboratory, which was closed in 1994. The headquart ...
-located U. S. Navy's Naval Ordnance Laboratory) * Engine testing and calibration to Lehesten ;Thuringia For people being relocated from Peenemünde, the new organization was to be designated ''Entwicklungsgemeinschaft Mittelbau'' () and Kammler's order to relocate to
Thuringia Thuringia (; officially the Free State of Thuringia, ) is one of Germany, Germany's 16 States of Germany, states. With 2.1 million people, it is 12th-largest by population, and with 16,171 square kilometers, it is 11th-largest in area. Er ...
arrived by teleprinter on January 31, 1945. 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). The first train departed on February 17 with 525 people en route to Thuringia (including
Bleicherode Bleicherode () is a town in the district of Nordhausen, in Thuringia, Germany. It is situated on the river Wipper, 17 km southwest of Nordhausen. On 1 December 2007, the former municipality Obergebra was incorporated by Bleicherode. The f ...
, Sangerhausen (district), and Bad Sachsa) and the evacuation was complete in mid-March. ;Occupied Poland Another reaction to the
aerial bomb An aerial bomb is a type of Explosive weapon, explosive or Incendiary device, incendiary weapon intended to travel through the Atmosphere of Earth, air on a predictable trajectory. Engineers usually develop such bombs to be dropped from an aircra ...
ing 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. The Polish resistance
Home Army The Home Army (, ; abbreviated AK) was the dominant resistance movement in German-occupied Poland during World War II. The Home Army was formed in February 1942 from the earlier Związek Walki Zbrojnej (Armed Resistance) established in the ...
(''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 The Bug or Western Bug is a major river in Central Europe that flows through Belarus (border), Poland, and Ukraine, with a total length of .2nd Belorussian Front The 2nd Belorussian Front (, ''Vtoroi Belorusskiy front'', also romanized "Byelorussian SSR, Byelorussian"), was a Front (military formation), major formation of the Soviet Army during World War II, being equivalent to a Western army group. I ...
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. End of April 1945, a group of more than 450 important rocket scientists from Peenemünde were captured by the U.S. Army in
Oberammergau Oberammergau is a municipality in the district of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, in Bavaria, Germany. The small town on the Ammer River is known for its woodcarvers and woodcarvings, for its NATO School, and around the world for its 380-year tradition of ...
while
Wernher von Braun Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun ( ; ; 23 March 191216 June 1977) was a German–American aerospace engineer and space architect. He was a member of the Nazi Party and '' Allgemeine SS'', the leading figure in the development of ...
,
Walter Dornberger Major-General Dr. Walter Robert Dornberger (6 September 1895 – 26 June 1980) 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 a ...
and several others surrendered in Reutte on May 2, 1945. As part of
Operation Paperclip The Operation Paperclip was a secret United States intelligence program in which more than 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians were taken from former Nazi Germany to the US for government employment after the end of World War I ...
, a group of 127 engineers was eventually contracted for the continuation of the work at the White Sands Proving Grounds in the USA. Only a few members of the previous HVP staff, such as
Helmut Gröttrup Helmut Gröttrup (12 February 1916 – 4 July 1981) was a German engineer, rocket scientist and inventor of the smart card. During World War II, he worked in the German V-2 rocket program under Wernher von Braun. From 1946 to 1950 he headed a gr ...
and Erich Apel, signed a contract with the Soviets and were forcibly transferred to the USSR as part of Operation Osoaviakhim in October 1946. Although rumors spread that the
Soviet space program The Soviet space program () was the state space program of the Soviet Union, active from 1951 until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Contrary to its competitors (NASA in the United States, the European Space Agency in Western Euro ...
revived Peenemünde as a test range, 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 Liquid oxygen, sometimes abbreviated as LOX or LOXygen, is a clear cyan liquid form of dioxygen . It was used as the oxidizer in the first liquid-fueled rocket invented in 1926 by Robert H. Goddard, an application which is ongoing. Physical ...
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 A power station, also referred to as a power plant and sometimes generating station or generating plant, is an industrial facility for the electricity generation, generation of electric power. Power stations are generally connected to an electr ...
and is an anchor point of ERIH, the European Route of Industrial Heritage. The main turbine hall of the
Peenemünde Peenemünde (, ) is a municipality on the Baltic Sea island of Usedom in the Vorpommern-Greifswald district in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in north-eastern Germany. It is part of the ''Amt (country subdivision), Amt'' (collective municipality) of Used ...
plant has been used a concert venue, including a 2022 performance by the New York Philharmonic orchestra and the Baltic Sea Philharmonic as part of the
Usedom Usedom ( , ) is a Baltic Sea island in Pomerania, divided between Germany and Poland. It is the second largest Pomeranian island after Rügen, and the most populous island in the Baltic Sea. It lies north of the Szczecin Lagoon estuary of the ...
Classical Music Festival.


See also

*
Aggregate (rocket family) The ''Aggregat'' series (German for "Aggregate") was a set of ballistic missile designs developed in 1933–1945 by a research program of Nazi Germany's Army (German Army (1935–1945), ''Heer''). Its greatest success was the A4, more common ...
*
Mikhail Devyatayev Mikhail Petrovich Devyataev (; Moksha: Михаил Петрович Девятаев/Mixail Petrovič Devätaev); 8 July 1917 – 24 November 2002) was a Soviet fighter pilot known for his incredible escape from a Nazi concentration camp on th ...


Notes


References

*


External links

*
Official site of Peenemünde and the Historical Technical Museum

V2 Rocket site
{{DEFAULTSORT:Peenemunde Army Research Center 1937 establishments in Germany 1945 disestablishments in Germany 20th century in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania Buildings and structures in Vorpommern-Greifswald German V-2 rocket facilities Government buildings completed in 1937 Military installations established in 1937 Military installations of the Wehrmacht Military research of Germany Wernher von Braun World War II sites in Germany World War II sites of Nazi Germany