PEENEMUENDE rocket-science! Krauts to the Moon... A Nazi Legacy.

glitch

Mapping the next ride...
Staff member
:eek:This is going to be a pretty "lumpy ride-report"....



1) there are no bikes and sensually-swooping bends or cracking gravel-tracks and scenic lookouts
2) even after trying to digest the stuff-seen for weeks now and trying to "sort it into something I can accept"....I'm torn any which way.
3) there is pride and utter shame all at once for being a "Kraut-by-birth"....for what those guys have achieved....and how horribly they fucked up the results of their incredible brilliance.
It left me rattled right down the guts...
4) I'm one of the last ones for museums of any kind (bar automotive/ bike-related)....
but Peenemuende/ Germany turned out a very profound, very sobering experience!

5) yes...the place wasn't unknown to me.
There were rumours about it in the press occasionally during my school years...when it was Russian/ Communist/ Iron-Curtain....TABOO - East-Germany ...

But I had NO BLOODY IDEA of the world-changing scale and still lasting impact of what happened there 75-or-so years-ago. :doh::doh::oops:

6) to cut an incredible story very short:
IF Hitler and his Nazi-thugs-scum would have had another year or 2, today's world would be profoundly different. There would be no Trump, no Brexit-bullshit,, no UK, maybe no US/Can etc....They were only a year away from intercontinental ballistic missiles to obliterate the US East Coast cities together with the UK as a whole (and bloody-minded enough to actually DO IT!) and they had the manufacturing means for large-scale production in 1943/44!! (as proven by the numbers produced of V1 and V2 rockets, forerunners of the subsequent "V3+V4s" under development)
It would have been "Sergeant Schultz" on the moon instead of Armstrong and his mates, too...

IT WAS OHHH_SOO_BLOODY_CLOSE!

Scary??
OH, SWEET JEEZAZ!



Read on...


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Hytram

<-- now went that way
Re: PEENEMUENDE ROCKET-SCIENCE!! Krauts to the Moon... A Nazi Legacy.

:watch::watch:
 

robbieb

Tassie Daddy
Re: PEENEMUENDE ROCKET-SCIENCE!! Krauts to the Moon... A Nazi Legacy.

Will be interesting to read your take on it, Pete. I've read a little about Peenemuende in relation to the space race. Would have been a much different history if things had turned out as you said, or if Von Braun had been captured by the Soviets, could have been a very one sided cold war
 

glitch

Mapping the next ride...
Staff member
Re: PEENEMUENDE ROCKET-SCIENCE!! Krauts to the Moon... A Nazi Legacy.

:watch::watch:

And the problem with that is?

NONE
...just as toxic+ destructive as good, old Adolf and his pack of thugs.W-)

Will be interesting to read your take on it, Pete. I've read a little about Peenemuende in relation to the space race. Would have been a much different history if things had turned out as you said, or if Von Braun had been captured by the Soviets, could have been a very one sided cold war

Sorry for draggin' my arse... just can't find the time to write this up at the moment.
There's lots more from the Aug/Sept trip, but Peenemuende turned out an absolute stumper.
Just somewhat difficult to bring across as most of the surrounding circumstances of the period played so heavily and are (today still) pretty involved.

And downright scary when putting all the bits together.
The scale and repercussions of the whole thing are mind-blowing :doh:
 

glitch

Mapping the next ride...
Staff member
Peenemuende...what is it then?


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It's the tip of the German island of Usedom, the most north-eastern slither of today's Germany and part of its Baltic seaboard. The river Peene flows into the Baltic Sea here (muende= mouth...Peene-Rivermouth for a direct translation) and is part of what makes Usedom an island, only separated from the mainland by 2 "canals".


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glitch

Mapping the next ride...
Staff member
The former small fishing village of Peenemuende was part of the German Baltic coast trade routes for centuries.
Germany after WW1:

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Alternately occupied and overrun by the Swedish King, Poland, some Habsburg blue-bloods and others, as well as being the HQ of the Teutonic Knights,
a "religious" order of murderous thugs and mercenaries best known and feared through the (so called) religious crusades of the Middle Ages.


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It sure was never dull up here...



...and then came the Nazis, taking over Usedom-island and its environs (some small outer islands in the shallow Baltics) to set up a rocket-research facility.


Initially a High-Tech "playpen" for some space-flight dreamers, Hitlers war-lust and sheer endless resources quickly became the light-that-drew-the-moths and scientists flocked in by the hundreds.


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Things quickly blew out of proportions, the small fishing village turned into Command Headquarters, a brandnew coal-powered powerstation together with piers, docks, cranes, railways to transport coal brought in by coastal freighters night and day to power the rapidly expanding research facilities, a new dual-track railhead from the mainland including a lifting bridge to keep the ever-increasing shipping going, housing, roads, an expansive new airport with rocket-launching ramps, large-area lighting, tunnels and bunkers for after-dark production and all sorts of other industrial facilities like production facilities for liquid fuels and gases for rocket-propulsion.

Starting ramp for a V1 launch down the beach

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Not to mention hotels, entertainment, sport and cultural facilities for the relaxation of scientists, their families, support staff and visiting Nazi observers and controllers.
For the later mass-production of V1 and V2 rockets even a Concentration Camp was added to make sure of satisfying the ever-increasing demand for "cheap and disposable" labour.
(another reason for the quite extensive rail-head and shunting yards/ sheds/ fencing etc).

After British forces finally detected and bombed the facility, the entire operation and production of the V1 and V2 was moved ~500km inland to Nordhausen in the Hartz Mountains where a formerly planned underground fuel storage facility was converted and greatly extended (by yet another purpose-built onsite Concentration Camp).

The famous A4 launch pad for the later, more advanced V2 rockets.:
(the A4 launch pad design is still the standard for all rocket launch sites around the globe today, pic shows the original site and what it looks like today)


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Peenemuende became deserted, the power station continued on to 1990 under East-German rule, which in turn didn't possess the means to convert the existing facilities into anything productive.
(or even modernize any part of it)
Today much of the infrastructure at Peenemuende has been gobbled up by nature again (with 100s of remnants left in the Nature Reserves covering the northern tip of Usedom), the old airfield has been downsized and re-opened after the German reunification, the sandy beaches are mostly open to walkers and kite-surfers once more...


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and the massive, rusting hulk and infrastructure of the power-station, piers, loading, cranes, gantries etc and surrounding sites have been converted into a colossal open-air museum, the
Peenemuende Historical Technical Museum.
https://museum-peenemuende.de/?lang=en


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Strap on those walking boots, it'll be a long day.
Because cobbling together rockets up here certainly wasn't the only flash-bang stuff....






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glitch

Mapping the next ride...
Staff member
ok, looks like the pic server has one of its very rare "outs"....maybe that rocket-stuff here gave it a flame-out :)
I'll keep going, pics will be back at some time.
 

Hytram

<-- now went that way
a "religious" order of murderous thugs and mercenaries best known and feared through the (so called) religious crusades of the Middle Ages.

Nothing much has changed then... Just the location

ok, looks like the pic server has one of its very rare "outs"....maybe that rocket-stuff here gave it a flame-out :)
I'll keep going, pics will be back at some time.

They are watching.. Always watching


Carry on :clap:
 
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