|
Saturday, June 07, 2008 - 1:31 PM
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.[18] By midsummer 1943, the first trial runs of the assembly-line in the Production Works at Werke Süd were made, [19] 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.[20] In early September, Peenemünde machinery and personnel for production (including Alban Sawatzki, Arthur Rudolph, and about ten engineers)[21] were moved to the Mittelwerk, which also received machinery and personnel from the two other planned A-4 assembly sites.[22] On October 13, 1943, the Peenemünde prisoners from the small F-1 concentration camp[23] boarded rail cars bound for Kohnstein mountain.[24]
[edit] Operation Crossbow
As the opening attack of the British Operation Crossbow, the Operation Hydra air-raid
targeted the HVP's "Sleeping & Living Quarters" (to specifically
target scientists), then the "Factory Workshops", and finally the
"Experimental Station"[25] on the night of 17/18 August, 1943. According to an official German report, this 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,[26] August 4,[27] and August 25,[28], the US Eighth Air Force[29] conducted three additional Peenemünde raids to counter suspected hydrogen peroxide production.[30] Two Polish slave janitors'[31] of Peenemünde's Camp Trassenheide, as a reward for their early 1943[32] sketches and reports to Polish Home Army Intelligence,
received preliminary warnings of the first attack, but the workers
could not leave due to SS security and the facility lacked air raid
shelters for the prisoners.[33]
In June 1943, British intelligence had received two such reports had
identify the "rocket assembly hall', 'experimental pit', and 'launching
tower'.[34]
[edit] 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.[35] 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.[36] After a September site survey by Papa Riedel and Schubert, Kammler designated the code name Zement (Cement in English) in December for the site,[37] and construction to blast an underground cavern into a cliff at lake Traunsee near Gmunden started in the beginning of 1944.[38] 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.[39] Other evacuation locations included:
-
- Hans Lindenmayr's valve laboratory near Friedland moved to a castle
near the village of Leutenberg, 10 km S of Saalfeld near the Bavarian
border.[40]
- the materials testing laboratory moved to an air base at Anklam
- the wind tunnels moved to Kochel (then after the war, to White Oak MD, USA)[41]
For personnel being relocated from Peenemünde, the new organization
was to be designated Entwicklungsgemeinschaft Mittelbau (Mittelbau
Development Company)[42] and Kammler's order to relocate to Thuringia arrived by teletype on January 31, 1945.[43]
On February 3, 1945, at the last meeting at Peenemünde was 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).[44] 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.[45]
|