Peenemünde

Peenemünde
Historical Technical Museum Peenemünde
Peenemünde
Location of Peenemünde within Ostvorpommern district
Coordinates
Administration
Country	Germany
State	Mecklenburg-Vorpommern
District	Ostvorpommern
Municipal assoc.	Usedom-Nord
Mayor	Rainer Barthelmes
Basic statistics
Area	24.97 km2 (9.64 sq mi)
Elevation	3 m  (10 ft)
Population	336 (31 December 2009)[1]
- Density	13 /km2 (35 /sq mi)
Other information
Time zone	CET/CEST (UTC+1/+2)
Licence plate	OVP
Postal code	17449
Area code	038371
Website	www.peenemuende.info

Peenemünde (German pronunciation: [peːnəˈmʏndə]) is a village in the northeast of the German (Western) part of Usedom island. It stands near the mouth(s) of the Peene river (the name translates as Penne-mouth), on the westmost edge of a long sand-spit on the German Baltic coast. The area includes the 1992 Heeresversuchsanstalt Peenemünde, an Anchor Point of the European Route of Industrial Heritage. Special show-pieces are reproductions of the V-1 flying bomb and V-2 rocket, which were produced and tested in the area during World War II.

Army Research Center Peenemünde

RAF photo-reconnaissance picture of Peenemünde Test Stand VII

Following earlier experiments at Kummersdorf, the Army Research Center Peenemünde (German: Heeresversuchsanstalt Peenemünde,^‡ HVP) was founded in 1937 as one of five military proving grounds under the Army Weapons Office (Heeres Waffenamt).^[2]:85

On April 2, 1936, the Reich Air Ministry paid 750,000 reichsmarks to the town of Wolgast^[2]:41 for the whole Northern peninsula of Usedom.^[3]:17 By the middle of 1938, the Peenemünde facility was nearly complete.^[4] The Army Research Center (Peenemünde Ost)^[5] consisted of Werk Ost and Werk Süd, while Werk West (Peenemünde West) was the Luftwaffe Test Site (German: Erprobungsstelle der Luftwaffe).^[6]:55

HVP Organization

Dr Wernher von Braun was the HVP technical director (Dr Walter Thiel was deputy director) and there were nine major departments:^[5]:38

1. Technical Design Office (Walter J H "Papa" Riedel)
2. Aeroballistics and Mathematics Laboratory (Dr Hermann Steuding)
3. Wind Tunnel (Rudolph Hermann)
4. Materials Laboratory (Dr Mäder)
5. Flight, Guidance, and Telemetering Devices (German: Bord-, Steuer- und Messgeräte, BSM^[7] -- Ernst Steinhoff)
6. Development and Fabrication Laboratory (Arthur Rudolph)
7. Test Laboratory (Klaus Riedel)
8. Future Projects Office (Ludwig Roth)^[8]
9. Purchasing Office (Mr Genthe)

The Measurements Group (Gerhard Reisig) was part of BSM,^[9] and additional departments included the Production Planning Directorate (Detmar Stahlknecht),^[6]:161 the Personnel Office (Richard Sundermeyer), and the Drawings Change Service.^[10]

Guided missile development

Several WWII German guided missiles were developed by the HVP, including the V-2 rocket (A-4) (see test launches), and the Wasserfall (35 Peenemünde trial firings),^[11] Schmetterling, Rheintochter, Taifun, and Enzian missiles. The HVP also performed preliminary design of rockets for use against the United States. The Peenemünde establishment also developed other techniques, such as the first closed-circuit television system in the world, installed at Test Stand VII to track the launching rockets.

Aerodynamic Institute

The supersonic wind tunnel at Peenemünde's "Aerodynamic Institute" eventually had nozzles for speeds up to the then-record Mach 4.4 (1942/1943), as well as an innovative desiccant system to reduce condensation clouding (1940). Led by Dr Rudolph Hermann who arrived in April 1937 from the University of Aachen, the staff reached two hundred in 1943 and included Dr Hermann Kurzweg (University of Leipzig) and Dr Walter Haeussermann.^[12]

Heimat-Artillerie-Park 11

Initially set up under the HVP as a rocket training battery (Number 444),^[13] Heimat-Artillerie-Park 11 Karlshagen/Pomerania^[13]:125 (HAP 11) also contained the A-A Research Command North^[13]:65 for anti-aircraft rocket testing. Chemist Magnus von Braun, youngest brother of Wernher von Braun, was employed in the Peenemünde development of anti-aircraft rockets.^[13]:66

Peenemünde V-2 Production Plant

In November 1938, Walther von Brauchitsch ordered construction of an A-4 Production Plant at Peenemünde, and in January 1939, Walter Dornberger created a subsection of Wa Pruf 11 for planning the Peenemünde Production Plant project, headed by G. Schubert, a senior Army civil servant.^[14] By midsummer 1943, the first trial runs of the assembly-line in the Production Works at Werke Süd were made, ^[15] 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 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 mountains.^{[3]:123[6]:202} In early September, Peenemünde machinery and personnel for production (including Alban Sawatzki, Arthur Rudolph, and about ten engineers)^[5]:79 were moved to the Mittelwerk, which also received machinery and personnel from the two other planned A-4 assembly sites.^[16] On October 13, 1943, the Peenemünde prisoners from the small F-1 concentration camp^[17] boarded rail cars bound for Kohnstein mountain.^[16]

Operation Crossbow

Two Polish slave janitors^[18]:52 of Peenemünde's Camp Trassenheide in early 1943^[18]:52 provided maps^[19], 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'.^[3]:139

V-2 launch in Peenemünde (1943)

V2 in the Peenemünde Museum

As the opening attack of the British Operation Crossbow, the Operation Hydra air-raid attacked the HVP's "Sleeping & Living Quarters" (to specifically target scientists), then the "Factory Workshops", and finally the "Experimental Station"^[20] on the night of August 17/18, 1943.^[21] 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.^[18]:82 According to an official German report, the raid killed 815 workers (most of them foreign prisoners of war), and Walter Thiel, the head of engine development.

A year later on July 18,^[22] August 4,^[7]:111 and August 25,^[3]:273 the US Eighth Air Force^[5]:141 conducted three additional Peenemünde raids to counter suspected hydrogen peroxide production.^[23]

Evacuation

As with the move of the V-2 Production Works to the Mittelwerk, the complete withdrawal of development of guided missiles was approved by the Army and SS in October 1943.^[24] On August 26, 1943 at a meeting in Albert Speer's office, Hans Kammler suggested moving the A-4 Development Works to a proposed underground site in Austria.^[25] After a September site survey by Papa Riedel and Schubert, Kammler designated the code name Zement (English: Cement) in December for the site,^[24] and construction to blast an underground cavern into a cliff at lake Traunsee near Gmunden started in the beginning of 1944.^[13]:109 In early 1944, construction started for test stands and launching pads in the Alps (code name Salamander), with target areas planned for the Tatra Mountains, the Arlberg range, and the area of the Ortler mountain.^[26] Other evacuation locations included:

• Hans Lindenmayr's valve laboratory near Friedland moved to a castle near the village of Leutenberg, 10 km (6 mi) S of Saalfeld near the Bavarian border.^[5]:293
• the materials testing laboratory moved to an air base at Anklam
• the wind tunnels moved to Kochel (then after the war, to White Oak, Maryland)^[27]
• Engine testing and calibration to Lehesten

For personnel being relocated from Peenemünde, the new organization was to be designated Entwicklungsgemeinschaft Mittelbau (English: Mittelbau Development Company)^[5]:291 and Kammler's order to relocate to Thuringia arrived by teletype on January 31, 1945.^[5]:288 On February 3, 1945, at the last meeting at Peenemünde held regarding the relocation, the HVP consisted of A-4 development/modification (1940 people), A-4b development (27), Wasserfall and Taifun development (1455), support and administration (760).^[5]:289 The first train departed on February 17 with 525 people enroute to Thuringia (including Bleicherode, Sangerhausen (district), and Bad Sachsa) and the evacuation was complete in mid-March.^[2]:247

Another reaction to the bombing was the creation of a backup research test range near Blizna, Poland. Carefully camouflaged, the secret facility was built by 2000 prisoners from the Pustkow concentration camp, who were killed after the completion of the project.^[28]

After World War II

Seaport of Peenemünde

Peenemünde railway station

The last V-2 launch at Peenemünde was in February 1945, and on May 5, 1945, the 2nd Belorussian Front under General Konstantin Rokossovsky captured the Swinemünde port and Usedom island. Russian infantry under Major Anatole Vavilov stormed Peenemünde and found it "75 per cent wreckage" (the research buildings and test stands had been demolished.)^[29] A former adjutant at Peenemünde, Oberstleutnant Richar Rumschöttel, and his wife were killed during the attack,^[5]:285 and Vavilov had orders to destroy the facility.^[29]

More destruction of the technical facilities of Peenemünde took place between 1948 and 1961. Only the power station, the airport, and the railway link to Zinnowitz remained functional. The plant for production of liquid oxygen lies in ruins at the entrance to Peenemünde. Very little remains of most of the other buildings and facilities.

Peenemünde served as a Soviet naval and airbase until 1952 when it was handed over to the German Democratic Republic. The port facilities were initially used by the East German Seepolizei (Sea Police) after new naval infrastructure was put into place. On December 1, 1956, the 1st Fleet (Flotilla) of the East German Volksmarine (People's Navy) was established at Peenemünde. The former Luftwaffe Test Site Werk West (Peenemünde West) became an airfield used by the East German Air Force starting in 1958. It was home of Jagdfliegergeschwader 9 (Fighter Squadron 9) which flew the MiG-23 fighter.

Until German Reunification in 1990 the entire northern area of the island of Usedom to Karlshagen was a restricted area of the National People's Army (NVA).

The Peenemünde Historical and Technical Information Centre opened in 1992 in the shelter control room and the area of the former power station and is an Anchor Point of ERIH, the European Route of Industrial Heritage.

In popular culture

• Peenemünde is a setting in the novels Fatherland, Gravity's Rainbow, Moonraker, The Rhinemann Exchange, The Way the Crow Flies, Space, and Vengeance 10.
• In the novels of the Colonization series, Peenemünde survives World War II and becomes a major space launch center.
• The Nazi occupation of Poland and the Allied bombing of Peenemünde are depicted in the 1958 U.K. feature film Battle of the V-1 [U.S.A.: Missiles From Hell], starring Michael Rennie.
• In the second book of the "Danger Boy" time travel series, by Mark London Williams, "Dragon Sword," Peenemünde is a key setting, references to which recur later in the series.
• In the movie The Cockpit, Peenemünde is an atomic bomb test site.
• In the 1975 movie The Hindenburg, the countess played by Anne Bancroft is leaving Germany because her estate in Peenemünde has been confiscated by the Nazis.
• In the movie Shining Through, the character Linda Voss photographs the plans of the Peenemunde base.
• In the comic Ministry of Space by Warren Ellis, Peenemünde is captured by the British.
• In the game Battlefield 1942: Secret Weapons of WWII, Peenemünde is a playable level.
• In the game Secret Weapons Over Normandy, Peenemünde is a playable level in the main campaign.
• In the novelisation of the film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb by Peter George, the title character is stated to have received the injuries that left him with only one hand and using a wheelchair as a result of the RAF bombings while working at Peenemünde.

References

Notes

^‡ A different spelling is Heeresversuchsstelle Peenemünde,^[5]:36 and Heeresanstalt Peenemünde appears on a German document with Wasserfall velocity calculations.^[13]:78

External links

• Media related to Peenemünde at Wikimedia Commons
• Official website of Peenemünde and the Historical Technical Museum (English)
• V2 Rocket site

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