Chapter 11

The Peenemunde Rocket Centre

Jan Heitmann

Combat Diaries Editor Betty Baxter

Published originally in After the Battle 74, 1991

‘Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed'. The day was July 20, 1969. Dr Wernher Freiherr von Braun listened to Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong advising an anxious earth that man had landed for the first time on another celestial body, he knew that he had reached his aim in life. He was at the end of a course which he had started to follow forty years earlier in Germany.

The statement has often been made that the Space Age began in 1957 when the Russians put their Sputnik I, the first arti­ficial satellite, into orbit around the earth but in fact this event was only the culmination of decades of thought and work. Every space flight begins with a rocket launching and the rocket is the only known propulsion system which will operate in a vacuum. Therefore, before an artificial satellite could be orbited, rockets had to be designed, constructed and tested. And before these rockets could be built, science had to discover the natural laws that applied to rockets and develop the necessary materials and techniques.

Many of the pioneers in rocketry were German. In the early 1920s, a number of young Germans became enthusiastically in­terested in the development of rockets as space vehicles. Hermann Oberth, born in Transylvania and a medical student at Munich, had become deeply interested in this subject. In 1923 he published a book entitled Die Rakete zu den Planetenrllumen (The Rocket Into Interplanetary Space) which rapidly went through its first edition. His book strongly supported the use of liquid rocket fuels, discussed the possible construc­tion of liquid-fuel rockets and considered the problems of orbiting the earth with such devices. Oberth's arguments convinced many people that space travel was not pure science fiction and that it would have to be taken seriously. His book also led to the

formation of the influential Verein fur Raumschiffahrt (Society for Space Travel) in 1927 with the goal of actually building the rockets contemplated by Oberth. Its mem­bership rose rapidly to around five hundred, enough to support a journal, Die Rakete (The Rocket). The society obtained permission to use an abandoned military ammunition storage facility in Reinickendorf, a suburb of Berlin, to test their rockets. The Raketenflugplatz (rocket airfield) became famous as the site of the early experiments of several men who later played major roles in the German Army's rocket programme. Despite odd setbacks, the proving ground was eminently successful. Among the members of this society was the 19-year-old student Wernher von Braun who later became one of the world's most successful rocket designers and engineers. At an early age he had acquired a considerable reputation as a rocket expert and in 1932 he was chosen as first assistant in a rocket development programme sponsored by the German Army.

The German Army's interest in rockets dated back to 1929. At Kummersdorf, a village some 25 kilometres south of Berlin, the Army experimented under the direction of Hauptmann Walter Dornberger, an artil­lery captain who graduated in 1930 from the Technische Hochschule Berlin with a degree in mechanical engineering. The Heeres­waffenamt-Prffwesen (Army Ordnance Department, Research and Development Section) established the Versuchsstelle Kum­mersdorf West as a site for developing and testing static rockets. The Army was looking for a cheap, light rocket and was also interested in the newly-emerging liquid­propellant rocket as a potential weapon.

Meanwhile the economic depression had caused the membership of the Verem for Raumschiffahrt to drop severely. By autumn 1932 the society sought in desperation for support from the German Army. After a demonstration flight, the Army invited von Braun, who by then had obtained his degree, to do the experimental work for his thesis on rocket combustion at Kummersdorf. With the departure of von Braun and the decreas­ing number of members, the days of the Verein fur Raumschiffahrt and the Rake­tenflugplatz were clearly numbered. Work at Raketenflugplatz ended in the winter of 1933-34 and the area reverted to an ammuni­tion dump.

Hauptmann Dornberger successfully be­gan to recruit the members of the Raketen­flugplatz and the Verein fur Raumschiffahrt and many joined the organisation at Ver­suchsstelle Kummersdorf West (Experimen­tal Station Kummersdorf West). The first new rocket to be developed by Wernher von Braun and the Kummersdorf team was the liquid-propelled A1, an abbreviation for Aggregat 1. Powered by an alcohol-liquid oxygen engine developing 330 kilogrammes of thrust, the Al was a relatively simple rocket which was 1.4 metres long and 30.4 centimetres in diameter. After a few success­ful static tests the A l was redesigned in 1934 and named A2. Its dimensions and perform­ance were nearly identical to the A1. In December 1934, on the North Sea island of Borkum, two A2 rockets which were named 'Max' and 'Moritz' after two troublemaking characters of a German fairy-tale, made two successful flights to altitudes of about two kilometres.

The Borkum success gave a new impetus to the rocket programme by convincing the Army that the rocket was practical as a weapon. The staff at Kummersdorf was increased and the organisation grew as did the power of the rockets. Both, the rockets and the organisation which had grown to some eighty people, were now too large for the restricted facilities at Kummersdorf. In 1935 the Army Weapons Department had begun a co-operative programme of rocket research with the newly established Luft­waffe to study the possibilities of rocket­-propelled aircraft. In March 1936 General Freiherr von Fritsch, the Commander-in­Chief of the German Army, visited Kummersdorf. where Dornberger and von Braun demonstrated the firing of their rockets. Then the general asked the one thing they wanted to hear: `How much money do you want?' Dornberger began considering a test centre that would allow development and testing of the very large rockets. A move to another site was essential but the new proving ground would have to be located on the coast where large rockets could be launched away from the base itself. The firing also ought to be parallel to the coastline so that the entire trajectory could be observed by camera and by radio. The site itself should meet the requirements of safety, security and secrecy. Dornberger and von Braun met with Luftwaffe General Albert Kesselring to discuss the project and the choice fell on Peenemunde, near to the small town of Wolgast on the Baltic coast.

This area had two major advantages: its remoteness and the fact that the east coast of the peninsula looked out over an uninter­rupted stretch of German-controlled sea 180 kilometres in length. The decision was made to set up a joint Army-Air Force research establishment covering some 50 square kilo­metres. Almost immediately, military engin­eers and construction workers moved in.

Peenemunde

In 1936 Peenemunde was a small fishing village on the right bank of the River Peene where it flows into the Baltic. The name of the town in fact means `the mouth of the Peene'. Peenemunde was so small and unimportant that it was not even listed in the German railway guide. Indeed this area, the seaward end of the island of Usedom, which is in fact a peninsula, was almost a pristine wilderness with dense forests. The area in which the proving ground was to be constructed was a nature reserve and virtually untouched by man. It consisted of dunes and marshland overgrown with ancient oaks and pines, nestling in untroubled solitude behind a reedy foreland reaching far out into smooth water. The place was far away large towns or any kind of heavy traffic. The nearest cities were Rostock and Stettin, each about 100 kilometres away, but the loneliness and wilderness were not to last for long.

The army installations, called Heeresver­suchsanstalt Peenemunde (Army Research Centre Peenemunde), occupied by far the greater portion of this area, while the Luft­waffe installations, Peenemunde West, covered only some ten square kilometres.

Heeresversuchsanstalt was located generally along the eastern coast of the peninsula from its northernmost tip to the village of Zinno­witz, fifteen kilometres further to the south. However, the term `Peenemunde' was adopted for the whole research establish­ment even though this included Karlshagen and, later, other villages.

North of Karlshagen the planners decided to build a new housing estate for the scientists, engineers and administrators and their families which was called Karlshagen Siedlung (Karlshagen Housing Estate). The new compound was provided with shops, schools, a sports field and a local club, the Kameradschaftsheim. It had all the charac­teristics of a model village, and it was home to more than 3,000 people.

South of the housing estate there were a barracks square for the soldiers of the re­search centre and a camp for foreign workers and prisoners of war. A camp at Trassen­heide also held PoWs and conscripted work­ers, the majority from Poland.

In the south-west corner of the peninsula a new coal-fired, steam-turbine power station was built which provided 30,000 kilowatts of electricity. There was also a factory to produce the liquid oxygen which was used as rocket fuel. Here was also located the wind­tunnel which was the most advanced in the world, and the first in which aerodynamic forces could be measured at supersonic speeds. The small existing Peenemunde harbour was deepened and improved.

To the north, on the boundary between the forest and the sandy foreshore, nine `test stands' for the test firing of rockets were constructed. The largest of these was Test Stand VII from which the famous A4 was actually launched. Three more for engine tests only were constructed in the woods north-east of the village of Karlshagen.

In the north-west corner of the peninsula, the Luftwaffe built an airfield, known as Erprobungsstelle der Luftwaffe - Werk West (Luftwaffe Test Installation) or Peenemunde West, which became a centre for the test flying of secret types of aircraft.

The heart of the new rocket research centre was constructed among the dense woods near to the north-eastern corner of the peninsula. The experimental, research and development laboratories, and work­shops for the rocket programme and the headquarters office blocks were also erected here. The engineering and research area provided the shops and laboratories needed to support the Heeresversuchsanstalt, in­cluding the guidance, control, telemetering laboratory, materials testing laboratory, radar and optical tracking stations, military and civil headquarters, officer's quarters, mess halls and various shops needed for plant maintenance. The buildings were designed along the lines of modern Luftwaffe installations rather than the old fashioned architecture still favoured by the Army. The majority of the buildings were either light brick housing or wooden barracks. Every effort was made to leave as many trees as possible to provide natural camouflage. This part of the new establishment became offi­cially known as Entwicklungswerk - Werk Ost (Experimental/Development Works) or Peenemunde East.

The different parts of the new rocket research centre were linked by a new road system and by an electric railway network of 75 kilometres in length, which started at, Zinnowitz, south of Karlshagen. North of Karlshagen there was a security boundary running from coast to coast across the peninsular. The whole Pennernunde area became a restricted zone to ordinary people and every­one who reached the boundary fence at the southern limit of this area had to show a special pass to be allowed into it. For the reasons of secrecy and security most of the inhabitants of Peenemunde were evacuated.

Of course the removal of personnel and facilities from Kummersdorf to Peenemunde did not take place overnight. As the construction work at Peenemunde required considerable time, some of the rocket per­sonnel remained at Kummersdorf until early 1940.

The first task of Heeresversuchsanstalt Peenemunde was to develop a third gener­ation of liquid-propellant research rockets with adequate growth potential to give experience and information. In October 1937, while the move into the new test centre was in full progress, the first rockets of the new A3 series were launched from Greifs­walder Oie, a small island eight kilometres off the northern coast of Usedom. The A3 was a quantum leap forward from the A2. Its motor produced 1,500 kilogrammes of thrust for 45 seconds and it was provided with quite a sophisticated guidance and control system. However, all three test models of the new rocket failed. After rising a few hundred metres they lost stability and crashed. The engines behaved well enough but the new guidance system did not. Eventually the problem was solved but not before two years of effort had been expended on it. In the meantime, because the A3 ran into so many difficulties, a new experimental rocket had to be produced.

By 1938 the Army wanted a long-range missile, capable of flying up to 300 kilometres with a one-ton warhead. The rocket had to be transportable by road and rail so its size had to be compatible with Germany's existing rail and road network. The response to these criteria was the A4 rocket. The original design for the A4 dated back to 1936 when yon Braun and Dornberger felt that it was time to get down to a weapon rather than to continue building research rockets for space exploration as the rocket people originally intended. However, the step from the A3 to a reliable A4 could not be made without an interim test missile to perfect the guidance system which would be vitally necessary for the larger rocket. Thus the A5 was born.

The first A5 tests started in March 1939 and, together with the vast amount of data already accumulated from previous trials, the rocket team was able to produce the final layout for the A5. It was to have the same propulsion system as the A3, a greatly improved structure and an improved guid­ance and control system. Its first flight in October 1938 from Greifswalder Oie, with­out the new guidance system, proved the usefulness of the rocket's mechanical design. A second launching, this time with the new guidance system, went off perfectly. By 1940 the launches of the A5 numbered at least 25 without a single failure, the tests covering virtually all the aspects of the later A4.

While the A5 flights went ahead, compon­ents were designed and developed for the much larger A4. By the spring of 1939 some A4 components were actually in production and when the last A5 was launched, the first A4 was already on the way to completion.

In the autumn of 1939, Heeresversuchs­anstalt Peenemunde became fully staffed and equipped when all remaining personnel were relocated from Kummersdorf. At the same time the Army agreed to give the A4 project the highest priority. Heeresversuchsanstalt was now part of the Heereswaffenamt­Prafwesen (Army Ordnance Department, Research and Development Section). The Peenemunde side was directed by one of its sub-offices under the command of Dorn­berger, now holding the rank of Oberst. Dornberger's office was concerned with re­search into both liquid-propellant and solid­propellant rockets, as well as all controlled guided missiles except those of the Luft­waffe. The Peenemunde test centre was commanded by Oberst Leo Zanssen, a graduate engineer, with Wernher von Braun as civilian technical director. Reporting to von Braun were nine major departments: Technical Design Office; Aero-ballistics and Mathematics Laboratory; Wind Tunnel; Materials Laboratory; Guidance, Control and Telemetry Laboratory; Development and Fabrication Laboratory; Test Labora­tory; Future Projects Office and Purchasing Office. From now onwards Heeresversuch­sanstalt Peenemunde was the most advanced establishment of its kind in the world.

By the beginning of 1940. the enormous sum of 550 million Reichsmarks (£1.2 billion at today's prices) had been expended on Peenemunde in its first two years. More than 18,000 scientists, engineers, technicians and other personnel worked day and night under the overall supervision of von Braun. Thousands more were under contract at research centres and universities. In March that year an A4 engine was successfully tested for the first time but Hitler, now standing triumphant over almost all of Europe, believed that the rocket would arrive too late for the present war and removed Peenemunde completely from the priority list for men and supplies. The rapid fall of Poland, the Netherlands and France resulted in a re-appraisal of all uncompleted projects and the requirement for a long-­range rocket seemed to be unnecessary. However the failure of the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain, and the first setbacks in Russia, changed the outlook yet again. Priorities for Peenemunde were raised in spring 1941 but only enough to ensure that the development of the A4 was maintained. It was not enough to organise the produc­tion and launch facilities and employ the personnel required to use the rocket as a weapon.

The First A4 Rockets

Nevertheless, work continued and by 1942 the first A4 rockets were coming out of the Peenemunde model shops. After the phase of static testing the first firing took place on June 13, 1942, when the armament chiefs of the Army, Luftwaffe and Navy together with the Armaments Minister himself, Albert Speer, were present to witness the event. It was a disaster. Two seconds after launch, the propellant system failed due to an electrical fault and the huge rocket went out of control, crashed and exploded. A second was launched successfully on August 16, only to break up 45 seconds into the flight due to a structural failure. The rocket exploded at an altitude of more than eleven kilometres and fell into the sea nine kilometres from the launching site. Although the test was not entirely successful, this A4 was still the first guided missile to exceed the speed of sound.

Then came the day of triumph. On Octo­ber 3, while the crew was busy preparing the rocket at Test Stand VII, an excited Oberst Dornberger looked into the clear, cloudless sky. In the streets between the widely scattered buildings of the Peenemunde in­stallations, at the windows and on the roofs of sheds, offices and workshops, the entire staff was waiting and watching. All wanted to witness the third firing of an A4 rocket.

`X minus 1'. The tension grew. If this test failed . . . Dornberger felt cold with sus­pense and excitement under the warm autumn sun.

`Ignition!' After about a second, thrust rose to 25 tons and the gleaming body of the 12.5-ton rocket rose vertically into the sky.

In the full glare of the sunlight the rocket rose higher and higher. The flame darting from the stern was almost as long as the missile itself. The black and white segmented markings facing the men on the ground remained stationary indicating that the rocket was stable and not turning. The first critical moment had passed. Then, almost imperceptibly at first, the rocket began to incline its tip eastwards.

`Sonic velocity!' reported the loudspeaker.

Nothing untoward happened. The rocket flew imperturbably. After 58 seconds the motor was switched off by radio and the rocket carried on as a ballistic missile, reaching the maximum altitude of 84 kilo­metres before plunging downwards in an arc towards ground. The reddish flame had vanished. Only a thin, milky streak of mist still followed the rocket as it raced away at supersonic speed. The A4 followed its pro­grammed trajectory to the target point 190 kilometres down-range in the Baltic where it fell into the sea only four kilometres from its predicted impact point.

For the rocket team this was the day of triumph. Even the normally detached scien­tists and army officers were caught up in the exitement of the moment. That night the top level managers of the rocket team met in the senior officers' mess. After recapitulating the success, Dornberger stated that they had invaded space for the first time and had used space as a bridge between two points on earth. But, he continued, so long as the war lasts, their most urgent task could only be the rapid perfecting of the rocket as a weapon. Dornberger is reputed to have said to von Braun later: `This 3rd October 1942 is the first day of a new age of traffic technology today space travel was born.'

The German High Command was, however, far more interested in the military uses of the rocket than in space travel. The A4 was the prototype of the huge V2, the abbreviation for Vergeltungswaffe 2 (retalia­tion weapon) which later devastated Antwerp and London. The V2 was the largest and most advanced rocket of that time. It was 14.20 metres long, 1.65 metres in diameter and weighed more than 12,000 kilogrammes. It carried its 1,100 kilogramme payload from 290 to 340 kilometres, propelled by an engine using turbo-pumped liquid oxygen and alcohol and generated an average thrust of 25,000 to 30,W0 kilogrammes. It had a range nearly double that of Germany's famous Paris Gun of World War I and it carried a warhead with ten times as much explosive.

Hitler Becomes Interested

Hitler, who had not seemed impressed when he viewed test firings at Kummersdorf in 1939, suddenly became interested in what was happening at Peenemunde. A V2 pro­duction committee was established in the Ministry of Armaments with Gerhard Degenkolb as director. It immediately began issuing directives and setting up a mighty production organisation. Mainly composed of men of little scientific judgement, although of vast energy, this committee was a thorn in the side to Peenemunde. Despite this interference, hundreds of V2s were manufactured and fired over the next two years to prove out systems and acquaint the military with the operational characteristics of the new weapon. In December 1942 Hitler signed a decree drafted by his Armaments Minister, Albert Speer, authorising the mass production of the V2, though failing to give it any special privilege. It took six more months for Hitler to grant the rocket top priority.

A major problem was that the V2 had never been designed for mass production. Each test rocket was hand made and indiv­idual modifications were incorporated on the construction line based on a long programme of continous development. No serious pro­visions were ever made in the design for large-scale production. The first V2s had been assembled in a large workshop in the middle of an area of virgin woodland be­tween Peenemunde East and the housing estate. A second, larger workshop was now being constructed nearby and fitted out with equipment to enable the V2 to be mass­produced from the hundreds of parts being made in factories all over Germany. The resulting rockets were to be used in further test firings. The next phase would be the production of rockets for operational use. The new two assembly halls became known as Versuchsserienwerk or Peenemunde South. It was one of three places where V2 rockets were to be assembled. The others were the Zeppelin works at Friedrichshafen and the Henschel-Rax works in Austria. The Degenkolb Committee produced a pro­gramme for the increasing production of V2 rockets at Peenemunde and the other two factories which aimed at reaching a peak of 950 rockets per month by autumn of 1943. At the same time Dornberger, now promoted to Generalmajor, took over the post of camp commandant from Oberst Zanssen.

One problem which had to be solved was whether the V2 should be a mobile weapon. The rocket experts preferred a fixed launch site where loading, preparing, servicing and last-minute adjustments could be handled, but the military experts realised that any fixed site, no matter how well protected, would be an easy target for Allied bombers. So the V2 was made fully transportable and launchable from road or rail equipment. The Peenemunde engineers created a combined transporter and erector for the V2, the Meillerwagen, which was produced in Munich by the Meiller Company, hence the name, only one month after it was designed. A typical trailer-mounted rocket was sup­ported by about thirty vehicles, including transportation trailer, launching platform trailer, propellant vehicles, and command and control trucks.

Peenemunde gradually became more mili­tarised as the war progressed and a formal military unit, Versuchskommando Nord (Experimental Detachment North) was established there. It consisted of some thousand men, all of whom were scientists or engineers. Rank meant little and orders were usually given by the man with the highest technical qualification regardless of his military rank. Versuchskommando Nord received strong reinforcements and the whole of Germany and its armed forces were combed for technical men. The principals of universities, technical high schools and re­search centres were asked to name their best men and many were thus suddenly plucked from military service or other civilian em­ployment. Now they were virtually freed from normal military discipline and were able to practise their civilian qualifications at Peenemunde. A significant addition to the Peenemunde garrison was the Lehr and Versuchs Batterie 444 (Training and Experi­mental Battery 444). This was the first unit to train the soldiers who would eventually fire operational rockets against the enemy. They started work in the summer of 1943, operat­ing from one of the test stands. Later they reinforced the skeleton staff of Fern Raketen Truppenschule (Long-Range Rocket School) at Koslin.

Super Rockets Ready for Space

Of the later designs of the `A' series, only the A7 had actually been built during the war. The A6, an improved V2 with fuels that could be stored for faster tactical response and greater ease of handling, was complete on paper but never converted to hardware. There was an A7, a winged missile that was about the same size as the A5. The first A7s did not have propulsion systems but were used merely for air-drop tests to gather ballistic data. Later models had A5 engines for ground launch tests. The AS, like the A6, was never built. It would have been essen­tially an improved A6 adapted to the same winged configuration used for the A7 and A9. The objective for the A9 programme was increased range. Instead of hurtling to earth, the winged missile would have made an extend glide towards the target. The final `A' programme on which some design work was accomplished before the end of the war, was also the most ambitious. It was the A10, which was not a complete vehicle but the first stage of a two-stage vehicle, the A9 was to be the second stage. Calculations showed that the missile could carry a one-ton payload roughly 4,000 kilometres. Above and beyond the Al0 were ideas aimed at exploring space. One project, which could have become the All , visualised a third stage under the A10/9 combination. And there was even thought of an A12 stage, producing a minimum of 1.14 million kilogrammes of thrust, with the Al l second stage and a winged A10 third stage, it could possibly have orbited a payload of up to 27,240 kilogrammes.

The rocket people got off to a late start on ground-to-air missiles, beginning develop­ment work only when the Allies began to dominate the skies over Germany. A variety of models were test-fired with some success but the war was over before they were ready for operational use. The principal missiles developed were the Enzian (25 missiles fired, of which one third were successful), the Feuerlilie F-25 (20 launches in 1943/44), the Feuerlilie F-55 (two flights in 1944), the Hecht, two models of the Rheintochter, the Schmetterling (occasionally called the V3, went into prototype production in 1943), the Taifun (both liquid and solid propellant motors were in production when the war ended) and the most important project of a ground-to-air anti-aircraft missile called the Wasserfall. Basically a one-third model of the V2, the Wasserfall was designed to knock out enemy aircraft at high altitudes. The first firing was in February 1944 at Peenemunde, about two years after the programme began. This was followed by 24 more in 1944 and 10 early in 1945.

Almost a sidelight to the major rocket and missile effort were the experiments con­ducted in the Baltic with rockets launched underwater. Short-range army rockets with solid propellants were used. Their exhausts were sealed and special ignition systems were installed. A simple welded steel rack, mounted on the deck of a submarine, was the launcher. The project was the idea of Kapitanleumant Fritz Steinhoff, the com­manding officer of U-511, whose brother, Dr Ernst Steinhoff, was one of the leading figures at Peenemunde. Six rockets were fired with complete success in summer 1942 but, despite the successful firings, the Kriegs­marine did not become interested in the project. In the autumn of 1943, the rocket team started to develop a submersible launching pontoon, code-named `Prufsstand XII', but the war was over before the prototype was completed.

The Allies find Peenemunde

Allied intelligence services had been watching Peenemunde with no clear idea at first as to what took place there. Then, after four years of uninterrupted research and development, the Allies finally realised the importance of Peenemunde. The order to attack Peenemunde came as no surprise to RAF Bomber Command. In view of the importance of the target, it was considered essential to damage the Peenemunde facili­ties effectively. Accordingly, three separate areas were designated to be attacked: The Experimental/Development Works of Peenemunde East, the V2 production works of Peenemunde South, and the housing estate including the Wehrmacht camp. Omit­ted were the power station and liquid oxygen plants, all rocket test stands and the Tras­senheide foreign labour camp. The intention of the raid was the destruction of the laboratories and workshops used to design and produce the V2 and to try to kill as many as possible of the scientific and technical personnel working on the project. The Luft­waffe airfield and the facilities of Peenemunde West were also ignored be­cause the RAF was not aware of any link between Peenemunde and the VI until later in the year.

The night of August 17/18, 1943, was selected for the raid which was code-named Operation `Hydra'. At 11.25 p.m. local time the sirens at Peenemunde sounded and at 00.17 a.m. the Master Bomber ordered the first wave of 227 bombers to begin their attack, directed at the housing estate. However, because of difficulties encoun­tered by the Pathfinders, many of the bombs fell further to the south in the area which contained the large camp for foreign workers at Trassenheide, killing many hundreds of them. Ten minutes later the first attack was over but more aircraft were approaching. At 00. 5 a.m. the second wave of 113 Lancas­ters attacked the V2 production works at Peenemunde South but scattered bombing again hit the housing estate. Within eight minutes, the second wave of bombers had completed its work. The last attack wXis mounted by 180 bombers of the third 4­and directed against the Experim9,6tal/ Development Works of Peenemunde East.

There were no German fighters over the target during the first thirty minutes of the raid but just before the third wave went in, the Luftwaffe finally appeared. All told, Bomber Command lost 40 aircraft, a loss rate of just under seven per cent, but this was considered acceptable for a once-for-all effort on such an important objective in which 1,600 tons of high explosives and 250 tons of incendiary bombs had been dropped.

On August 21, 1943 Peenemunde buried its dead. A clearing had been made in the woods between Trassenheide and Karls­hagen and long communal graves prepared, although a few of the more prominent dead had individual graves. Of 12,000 people living at Peenemunde, 8,000 of whom were directly concerned with the rocket pro­gramme, 732 had been killed. Only 120 were Germans, the rest consisted of PoWs and foreign workers. The top men had been lucky, except for Dr Walter Thiel, who was in charge of the V2 engine development. It was perhaps the greatest failure of the raid that it did not achieve one of its major objectives: to kill as many of the scientific and technical personnel as possible. Since the V2's propulsion system was already in production, Thiel's death did not affect the development of the weapon.

Despite the number of deaths, the only heavy damage was to the housing estate and the Experimental/Development Works. In the former, destruction was nearly total, while in the latter area fifty of the existing eighty buildings were destroyed or severely damaged. the foreign labour camp at Tras­as well as V2 test firing. A suitable site for production was soon found in a complex of huge tunnels, previously used for various purposes, under the Kohnstein Mountain at Niedersachswerfen, near to the town of Nordhausen, in central Germany. The underground factory, which became known as Mittelwerke Nordhausen (Central Works Nordhausen), consisted of two Fahrstollen (main parallel tunnels) one and a half kilo­metres long and some hundred metres apart, joined together at regular intervals by forty­-six Hallen (smaller galleries) in the form of a ladder. The mountain rock above ranged from forty metres to sixty metres thick. In some of the galleries second floors were installed. This was a layout which lent itself to a highly efficient production-line system. The place was remote and secure both from air raids and enemy eyes.

The conversion of the tunnels started in September 1943 with the help of nearly 15,000 concentration camp inmates from the newly established Buchenwald camp Dora-Nordhausen, and 2,000 engiac

The principal installations for tes, firing were transferred to Heidelager, a for:-rer SS training camp near Blizna, a small viii~ige in south-east Poland. No time was wasted in creating a new rocket research centn~ at the new location and during Oct0hC! and November, huts, living quarters. sheds, workshops and launching facilitie:> were erected at Heidelager which eve~aually became a German community witl- some 15,000 inhabitants. By the end <r-' 1943, Nordhausen had already ove taken Peenemunde as the main producno-, plant and test firing at Blizna was in full pr egress. The assembly plants at Austria and Fried-' were also closed and their equip­ment transferred to the Mittelwerke slant.

Peenemunde had ceased to be important and lived in the shadow until the end of the war. Little new construction work toch, place and the wrecked areas were deliberately left as they were. Burnt timbers were lying around for years and craters were not filled in where they did not actually block the roads. The effect of complete destruction was maintained to mislead subsequent recon­naissance sorties although almost all the machinery, including the wind tunnel and the liquid oxygen plant, had been removed. Some important experimental work and the building of small numbers of V2s for test firings continued but most of the rocket personnel left in the months following the raid and the housing estate became a ghost town. Nevertheless von Braun and some other members of the key personnel remained behind. 

In late 1943 another grand production plan was announced by the Degenkolb Commit­tee: 2,000 rockets per month were be

manufactured, almost double the target for Peenemunde and its satellite factories before the Allied bombing. The figure was to be reached by allocating 300 from each of the original production facilities, Peenemunde^, Friedrichshafen and Austria, plus 900 from Mittelwerke, the total being rounded up to 2,000. Yet in May 1944 mass production was still based entirely at Mittelwerke, with Peenemunde only producing test rockets, and the new figure was never achieved^, although approximately 6,000 rockets were built at Nordhausen between January 1944 and March 1945. In January and February 1944 a total of 140 rockets were produced at Mittelwerke, followed by 170 in March and 300 in April. Production did improve as the flow of modifications decreased and the workers became more familiar with the procedures, 600 rockets a month being turned out from August 1944. So the rockets designed at Peenemunde were eventually built by a labour force mainly of foreign workers and concentration camp inhabitants, deep underneath the Harz mountains.

At the same time, the German military situation deteriorated, especially in face of the Russian advances, and launches were trans­ferred from Blizna to the new launching site `Heidekraut' at Tucheler Heide, only a few miles from Peenemunde.

A programme of this magnitude inevitably had political aspects. When it became obvious that the V2 was going to be a spectacular weapon, the SS began to try to take over the rocket programme. A power struggle was now taking place for control of the complete project, with SS-Oberfuhrer Dr Kammler, Himmler's representative and head of the SS building construction depart­ment, slowly gaining control. General­major Dornberger managed to keep the Nazi Party and the SS out of the rocket project for some time, but the SS did not give up.

In February 1944, von Braun was called to Gestapo headquarters in East Prussia, where Himmler tried in vain to persuade him to leave the Army and to work for him. Three weeks later, von Braun was arrested by the Gestapo on the grounds that `his object all along had been space exploration and not weapon development' (this was, in fact, a rather common attitude at Peenemunde). Also arrested were some of his colleagues, one of whom was his brother, Magnus von Braun, a recent arrival at Peenemunde. It was only the rocket programme's continuing need of them that enabled Dornberger to secure their release after several days. The power struggle went on and eventually the SS was in complete control of the whole rocket project, including the Vl flying bomb, with Kammler becoming one of the fastest ascending stars in the SS power constella­tion.

The Vl Flying Bomb

Although the V2 was the most spectacular rocket developed at Peenemunde, it was not the only secret weapon to be seen there. On the other side of the peninsula, at the Luftwaffe airfield at Peenemunde West, Luftwaffe scientists were hard at work on their own projects. The most important of these, the Fi 103 (`Fi' stood for Fieseler, the aircraft company concerned) which later became known as Vl. This pilotless flying bomb was simply aimed at the target by a pre-set guidance system, launched from a ramp and flew on until the measured amount of fuel was expended, whereupon it dived to the ground and exploded.

A winged subsonic missile, developed and controlled by the technical department of the air force, the Vl used a pulse-jet engine that operated on petrol and developed 550 kilo­grammes of thrust. The basic concept of the engine was a joint venture by the research departments of both the air force and army. The vehicle itself was designed by Fieseler Flugzeugbau, which was already famous for their slow-flying Fieseler Storch army com­munications aircraft. The missile weighted 2,200 kilogrammes, including its 900­ kilogramme payload of Amatol, a mixture of trinitrotoluene and ammonium nitrate. It was 8.23 metres long and 0:84 metres in diameter.

The history of the V1 goes back to the early 1930s when the German air ministry revived its interest in remote piloted aero­planes at a relatively cheap cost. The work progressed to the position where a working example had been developed by November 1939. The VI was the Luftwaffe's main hope of securing a major place in the secret weapons programme and the direct com­petitor of the Army's V2 rocket. Three launching ramps were built adjacent to the airfield at Peenemunde West, pointing out over the Baltic and experiments continued during 1941 to develop a reliable and safe launcher. The first test firing took place in December 1941. The maiden flight one year later was a complete success, the VI flying on for more than 200 kilometres along the Baltic coast. Ramp launches continued dur­ing the spring of 1943, the majority reaching ranges of 250 to 320 kilometres.

The test vehicles were all produced by Fieseler and transported by air to Peene­munde West, where a mixed team of civilian and Luftwaffe technicians carried out the test and launch experiments. It must be stressed that the VI was not conceived and developed at Peenemunde; the Peenemunde West in­stallations were merely the location of its test flying programme. The VI flying bomb was everything that the V2 rocket was not: cheap, easy to perfect, simple and quick to produce, and likely to be ready for action soon. Its main disadvantage was that it could fly only on a constant course and altitude and only at a low speed making it vulnerable to enemy defences.

In May 1943 there was a competitive demonstration between the Vl and the V2 and, although the flight of the rocket was a complete success, those of the two Vls were both a failure. After the Kommission fur Fernschiessen (Commission for Long-Range Weapons) had made an exhaustive study of the two missiles, Hitler decided to accelerate the development of both together as comple­mentary means of delivering high-explosive warheads on the enemy without the risk of human aircrews. So plans were put in hand for the production of 2,000 V Is per month by the end of 1943. Another task for the Luftwaffe personnel at Peenemunde West was the test flying of the German jet aircraft and the sounds of the Messerschmitt Me 163, Arado Ar 234 and the Heinkel He 162 filled the air at the northern tip of the peninsula for several years.

By June 1944, enough Vls had been produced to start the attack on southern England. More than 9,000 `doodlebugs', as the British called them, were launched day and night from ramps against London alone, and thousands of others were despatched against other targets in England and on the Continent. While the VI did provide a severe nervous strain for the London citi­zens, who were always on the alert for the sudden cut-out of the engine, it failed to fulfill its goals. For one thing it was too slow and could be shot down. For another, the flying bomb offensive suffered under a vast number of mechanical failures. About one quarter of the missiles aimed at Britain failed because of their inherent unreliability and about half were destroyed by counter­measures. Only a quarter reached the target,

Breaking the Sound Barrier

In the early evening of Friday, September S, 1944, there was no air alert when a violent explosion occurred in Staveley Road in West London. An instant later, a double thunder­clap echoed across the city. The people of London had become used to German bombs and VIs, but no one had heard either the sound of German bombers or the noise of a flying bomb engine. The Chiswick explosion and the huge crater in the roadway had been caused by three-quarters of a ton of high explosive contained in the nose of a rocket launched by a German unit from a position in The Hague in Holland. The double thun­derclap heard after the explosion was the noise of the rocket breaking the sound barrier. Some hours before, two rockets had been fired at Paris, an event which was a turning point in the history of warfare: the beginning of the German V2 rocket offensive.

There were many other targets hit besides London. The rockets also fell around Ipswich and Norwich, and many Allied-held targets in France, Belgium and Holland. Approximately 2,500 rockets were launched during the seven months of the campaign. More than half, 1,712, fell in and around Antwerp. The London area was hit by 517 and several hundred more landed in the surrounding counties. The worst London incident was when 160 were killed in and

around Woolworth's store in Dept ford on November 25, 1944, but an even more horrendous death toll came on December 16 in Antwerp when the Rex Cinema in the Avenue De Keyser was struck when full to capacity, killing 567 including 296 Allied Servicemen. Another 29 people were severe­ly injured. (See After the Battle No. 57).

The V2 offensive ended nearly seven months after it had begun when the launch­ing batteries were finally driven from their

firing sites and withdrawn to Germany when in danger of being outflanked and captured by Allied forces. On April 3, the launching batteries were converted into ordinary infan­try units to reinforce the 5. Armeekorps, which Kammler, now holding the rank of SS­Obergruppenfiihrer, had formally entrusted with the defence of the Nordhausen area.

It was now that the Peenemunde rocket people introduced their last project, the A4b, a standard V2 whose external surfaces had been modified to permit the attachment of supersonic wings and enlarged aero­dynamic control surfaces. The A4b concept was the result of the loss of the launching sites in France, Belgium and Holland. The rocket team was faced with continuing de­mands to keep the V2s, by now in full mass production, flying, even though the ranges were much longer than before. In October 1944 it had been decided to modify some V2s to extend their range. Although five A4bs were put under construction, only two were actually launched in January 1945. The first was a failure, but the second went straight up, reached a maximum altitude of 80 kilometres, and attained a speed which made it the first winged guided missile to exceed the speed of sound,

The End

In early 1945, when it had become obvious that the Third Reich was facing its collapse, 4,325 people were still working at Heeresver­suchsanstalt Peenemunde, which had been code-named Heimatartilleriepark 11 (Home Artillery Depot No. 11) since June 1944. Von Braun met secretly with his top staff members to decide whether they should remain at Peenemunde and surrender to the advancing Russian Army or go south and make contact with American forces. The result was a unanimous decision to leave Peenemunde and to move to a region likely to be occupied by the US Army. On Febru­ary 14, 1945, the last A4/V2 was fired from the launching pads at Peenemunde. Three days later the evacuation began. The Peene­munde team had received a dozen unco­ordinated directives and orders from minis­tries in Berlin, military commanders, the SS and Nazi Party bosses. About 4,000 Peenemunde employees and their families, along with large quantities of documents, drawings and papers, left Peenemunde in ships, railway wagons, trucks and cars. Heading south, avoiding detection by Allied aircraft and bluffing units of the Gestapo and the SS, they finally reached the town of Bleicherode in the Harz mountains, near to Nordhausen, where the Armament Ministry had directed that the rocket research work was to continue. In the beginning of April, Kammler ordered the transfer of about five hundred Peenemunde rocket experts to Bavaria

Post War Developments

Thus, as the war approached its end, von Braun, his close associates and a large majority of the Peenemunde team waited in the hamlets and villages around Oberam­mergau for the arrival of the Americans. From their mountain retreat, Dornberger and von Braun sent off Magnus von Braun to make contact. He surrendered to a unit of 44th Infantry Division on May 2, 1945, at the town of Reutte, stating that he repre­sented a group of some 150 rocket experts who wished to join the Americans to con­tinue their work in rocket development. The captured scientists were moved to German Army barracks in Garmisch Partenkirchen for further interrogation because the Americans quickly realised that they held a pool of enormous scientific ability and ex­perience. During Operation `Paperclip', most of the scientists, under von Braun's leadership, were offered contracts to go to America and continue with their experi­ments. There were few refusals and even­tually the Americans employed 492 German rocket scientists and technicians. All went to the United States voluntarily and with proper contracts.

For more than twenty years the backbone of American rocket research was provided by the men of the old Peenemunde team with von Braun becoming the guiding spirit of the American rocket research programme. They started in 1946 by firing captured V2s at White Sands Proving Ground, launched a V2 which set an altitude record of 122 kilo­metres and eventually, 23 years later, they put the first man on the moon. Thus the V2 became the direct ancestor of all major post­war rockets and space carrier vehicles as a result of the capture of German rocket experts and many V2 components by the Allies. In a very real sense, the Peene­munde scientists created modern rocket technology and virtually all post-war rocket developments were based, in varying degrees, on what had been learned at Peenemunde.

When the American troops entered the subterranean Mittelwerke plant, they found, to their surprise, that it was completely intact and that its lines of Vl and V2 assemblies had been left undisturbed. The Americans had come upon one of the greatest technical prizes in history. A `Special Mission V2' was instructed to transport from Nordhausen to Antwerp all the rocket equipment they could lay their hands on. Enough parts were captured to fill 300 large railway wagons, sufficient to construct 75 V2s. The last trainload left Nordhausen on May 31, 1945, the day before the Russians were expected to arrive. As soon as the Nordhausen and the Bleicherode area were vacated by US troops, the Red Army moved in and captured some 3,500 lower rocket personnel. The Russians also started a programme of rocket research based on the V2, their first captured V2 being launched from a range near Volgograd (Stalingrad) in October 1947. The British and French also obtained the services of a few German rocket specialists, but were unable immediately to undertake major mis­sile development programmes. In Project Backfire (see After the Battle No. 6) the British secured German aid in firing V2s from Cuxhaven out over the North Sea, but this did not lead to any sustained ballistic missile effort on their part.

After the rocket team had left in February, Peenemunde became lonely and deserted. There was no activity at all, and the only people left were a handful of civilians and a few troops of an SS unit preparing for the last battle against the Russians, expected at any moment from the east. They had a long wait for it was not until May 5, 1945 that Major Anatoli Vavilov, commanding a unit of the Second White Russian Army, actually cap­tured the facility. The Russians approached from the south-west, via Wolgast, but found Peenemunde deserted except for the few defenders. There was little fighting. The Soviets tried to get the few technical men remaining to build them a V2 rocket from spare parts and every piece of salvageable machinery was systematically removed and taken to Russia. Thus ended the life of Peenemunde as a scientific establishment.

For more than 45 years Peenemunde lay behind the Iron Curtain, the whole area classified as a prohibited military zone until December 1989. Immediately after the war, the Red Army had started to demolish all the installations according to the Potsdam Agreement under the supervision of the Allied Control Council. It took three years to complete the work of destruction which was mainly carried out by German PoWs. The Peenemunde Rocket Centre was liter­ally razed to the ground. During the follow­ing years nature struck back and recon­quered the areas man had taken from her. Today new forest growth and dense brush­wood covers the area and it is now a retreat for rare animals and flowers. Although most of the tracks of the railway network were disassembled and taken to Russia, some of the platforms can still be seen in the woods. Only the lines to Peenemunde village and to Peenemunde West remained intact. The liquid oxygen plant resisted all attempts to be blasted and therefore the massive concrete building is one of the very few installations which can still be seen. The power station is still the all-dominating structure at Peene­munde. It has not been destroyed but was used to provide electricity for the village and the various Warsaw Pact military installa­tions in the Peenemunde area until it was put out of operation in 1990.

In 1956, when the Russian forces left the area, the East German Navy came to Peenemunde and made use of the small harbour until 1990. Since the 1. Flotille terminated its activities on the unification of East and West Germany, the naval installa­tions are now used by the Bundeswehr to store more than 80 ships of the former Volksmarine which are now waiting to be sold to private interests or foreign countries.

Unlike the other seaside towns on the island of Usedom, Karlshagen remained for nearly 55 years in the shadow directly south of the security boundary. Only 72 of the former 2,500 flats of the scientist's living quarters survived. In 1956 the area was cleared of most of the ruins and debris and the rubble recycled. Part of the former housing estate area is now occupied by unsightly blocks of tenements but the rest is so overgrown by trees and bushes that it is impossible to trace the outline of old streets. The former barracks of Versuchskommando Nord, which were originally a holiday camp of the Kraft durch Freude (Strength Through Joy) organisation, were used by Jagdflieger­geschwader 9 and are now the headquarters and accommodation of the Peenemunde garrison commander and his small Bundes­wehr unit. All other army buildings in the Karlshagen area are gone. Also nothing remains of the Trassenheide workers' camp and the site is now completely overgrown. Only the platform of the camp railway station survived.

Although the security boundary was abol­ished in December 1989, there are still prohibited zones which prevent the ordinary visitor from viewing the most important places of the former Peenemunde rocket centre. The test stands, the airfield, the harbour and most of the Peenemunde West installations and the Experimental Works (Peenemunde East) are inside military secur­ity zones, to which access is strictly forbid­den. It is not advisable to ignore this prohibition, because in all military security zones the guards are ordered to open fire on trespassers. The beach and the dunes north of Karlshagen and the Trial Series Works (Peenemunde South) are also prohibited zones, because of unexploded shells and bombs which are said to be still buried there. However it is most likely that this is a plausible excuse, the real reason being the fear that the Army, as the owner of the area, might be obligated to pay out if someone met with an accident

German aircraft returned to the Peene­munde West airfield in 1961, when the Luftstreitkrafte/Luftverteidigung (East German Air Force) established the Jagd­fliegergeschwader 9 (9th Fighter Wing) there. Although the sound of MiG aircraft had replaced the roaring of the Vls and the Wehrmacht jet planes, the old wartime flight control building remained in use for several years until a new covered flight control installation was built. Jagdfliegergeschwader 9 carried out its last sortie on September 26, 1990, one week before German unification. The airfield is now used as a parking area for thousands of trucks, lorries and other vehi­cles of the former East German forces which are waiting to be sold by a private company. Despite the fact that there is no longer any air activity, and that the airfield is now leased by this private company, the area of Peenemunde West is still a military security zone guarded by military personnel of the Bundeswehr Luftwaffe. It is not certain at the time of writing (September 1991) if the airfield, which is a modern and efficient base, will be used as a military airfield in the future.

South of Karlshagen there is a monument to the concentration camp men of several nations who died at Peenemunde. Alongside is the well-kept common grave of the Peenemunde air raid victims.

The men who built the rockets at Peenemunde are now retired. There is still a sizeable German community at Huntsville, `the space capital of the world', but the remainder are either scattered across the United States or have returned to Germany. Death has also taken its toll. People who survived the war to settle, finally, in the small town in north Alabama, chose to be buried in Huntsville's Maple Hill Cemetery. Hermann Oberth, highly esteemed, returned to Germany in the early 'sixties where he died in 1989. Wernher von Braun, the man who always had his eye on the moon as the eventual destination for his rockets, died of cancer at Alexandria, Virginia, in June 1977, just a few months after he was awarded the National Medal of Science by President Gerald Ford and only eight years after seeing his greatest ambition fulfilled. His old chief, Walter Dornberger, retired in 1966 and returned to Germany. He died in 1980

Today there is an active association of former Peenemunde employees, the Interes­sengemeinschaft ehemaliger Peenemunder, based in Germany, which holds annual reunions, and in September 1991 the survi­vors grabbed the opportunity afforded by unification to meet for the first time at their former place of activity. More than 200 engineers, technicians, administrative per­sonnel and other Peenemunde employees made the long journey to this extreme northern corner of Germany. Even a con­siderable number from the German com­munity at Huntsville spared no pains to revisit the cradle of modern rocketry where they achieved their early scientific success.

It was an absorbing experience to attend the reunion which attracted various tele­vision teams and press people from Germany, Japan, and the USA. The event was carried out' ith the devoted support of the employees of the newly established Peenemunde Historical Technical Museum for Spacecraft and Rocketry, the majority of whom are former officers of Jagdflieger­geschwader 9. Herr Heinz Grosser, the president of the association, always addresses his comrades as `the Peenemunde family' and in fact, they are a family in the very positive sense of the word. They are not only colleagues or comrades, but friends for life, irrespective of rank, age or residence.

There is also unanimity about their atti­tude concerning their wartime work. The Peenemunde veterans talk willingly about their scientific achievements, less happily of the reliance of the rocket programme on suffering slave labour and of the victims and effects of the V2 offensive. Many of them are embarrassed at the part they played in the wartime rocket research. They always stress that their real aim was that of peaceful space research, their work on military rockets being no more than a temporary phase. There is some truth in these statements for their original work was undoubtedly scien­tific, the wartime episode being forced upon them by events beyond their control.

In October 1992, the survivors of the Peenemunde rocket team will return to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of their greatest wartime triumph: the first successful launching of a rocket which opened the door to space.