Екінші дүниежүзілік соғыстағы Пеенемүндэ ғылыми орталығы

Research center under Nazi Germany
the village and the World War II Luftwaffe airfield that tested the V 1 flying bomb

The Peenemünde Army Research Center (Heeresversuchsanstalt Peenemünde,efn|An alternative spelling is Heeresversuchsstelle Peenemünde, for the whole Northern peninsula of the Baltic island of Usedom. 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 Test Site (Erprobungsstelle der Luftwaffe), one of the four test and research facilities of the Luftwaffe, with its headquarters facility at Erprobungsstelle Rechlin.

Several German guided missiles and rockets of World War II were developed by the HVP, including the V 2 rocket (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 system in the world, installed at Test Stand VII to track the launching rockets. According to Walter Dornberger, "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, "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."

The supersonic wind tunnel 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 system to reduce the condensation clouding caused by the use of liquid oxygen, 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) and Walter Haeussermann.

The last V 2 launch at Peenemünde happened in February 1945, and on May 5, 1945, the soldiers of the Soviet 2nd Belorussian Front 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 while Wernher von Braun, Walter Dornberger and several others surrendered in Reutte on May 2, 1945. As part of Operation Paperclip, 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 and Erich Apel, signed a contract with the Soviets and were forcibly transferred to the USSR as part of Operation Osoaviakhim in October 1946. 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 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 and is an anchor point of ERIH, the European Route of Industrial Heritage.