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Latitude: 54.1 N. Longitude: 13.9 E. Minimum Inclination: 56.0 degrees. Maximum Inclination: 56.0 degrees.
First launch site in the world, used for development of A-4/V-2 missile, engine test stands built for A-9/A-10, A-11, A-12 intercontinental missiles/satellite launchers.
History:
Originally, a quiet, wooded region in Germany located on the Baltic Sea at the
mouth of the river Peene on the island of Usedom. It came to the attention of
the German Army and the Luftwaffe in their search for a new rocket development
site to replace Kummersdorf, having been suggested
to Wernher von Braun by his mother. By the late
1930s, a massive construction project was underway involving new housing for engineers
and scientists, a power plant, a liquid oxygen plant, a wind-tunnel facility,
barracks, a PoW camp, a rocket production facility, a development works facility,
and the Luftwaffe airfield. The site would eventually be home to over 2,000 scientists
and 4,000 other personnel under the command of Walter
Dornberger. To the northern end of Peenemünde, between the forest and the
sandy foreshore, nine test stands for the firing of rockets were constructed,
the largest and most infamous of them being Test Stand VII from which the A-4/V-2
was eventually launched.
Eventually, Allied intelligence became aware of the importance of Peenemünde
and on the night of August 17/18, 227 bombers from the RAF were ordered to attack
the site. The objective of Operation “Hydra” was to kill as many German rocket
scientists as possible and destroy key targets such as the liquid oxygen plant,
the power plant, the Experimental/Development Works, and the test stands. The
Peenemünde West area was ignored because the Allies didn’t know of the V-1
flying bomb development there. In the event, the bombing left 732 people dead
and much of the facility undamaged. But the vulnerability of Peenemünde was
now evident and the remaining field trials of the V-2 were carried out at Bliszna
in Poland. Heinrich Himmler persuaded Hitler that production and deployment
of the V-2 should henceforth be handled by the SS and a suitable site for mass
production was found in the complex of tunnels beneath the Kohnstein Mountain
near Nordhausen, in central Germany. This subterranean V-2 factory, in which
PoW’s were forced to work under brutal conditions, became known as the Mittelwerke.
Research into rocketry and rocket weapons continued at Peenemünde but on a
much-reduced scale. The autumn of 1944 saw testing of the Wasserfall anti-aircraft
missile, a winged version of the V-2 designed to carry explosives into the midst
of Allied bomber formations where it would be detonated. At Peenemünde West
development continued of the Me 163 “Komet” rocket-powered fighter plane along
with the Me 262 jet fighter.
Dates:
- 01 May 1937: Peenemünde opened.
- 04 December 1937: First launch from Peenemuende (A3)
- 23 March 1942: First launch of A4.
- 13 June 1942: First A-4 static test.
- 03 October 1942: First A-4 flight.
- 17 February 1943: A-4 test.
- 17 August 1943: Peenemünde attacked by RAF.
- 01 June 1944: Manned V-1 test flights.
- 01 June 1944: V-2 crashes in Sweden.
- 24 January 1945: A-9 / A-4b first launch.
- 05 May 1945: Peenemünde occupied.
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