Battlefield Travel - Exklusive militär-historische Reisen

Myth or reality?

Still, the history of the retaliation weapons, the V-Weapons (Vergeltungswaffe) of the III. Reich is bathed in mysterious light.
Experience the history of the development of these futuristic and sometimes grotesque inventions that stamped the 21.century.

Travel in style in the "coach of excellence" and enjoy the hospitality and cuisine of  the German Baltic Coast or Thuringia.

Become an expert in German hitec engineering that created the forerunnners of the Starfighter, the X-15, the Cruise Missile, the Excocet or moon rocket Saturn V.

Historical background to this trip

The foundation for modern rocket technology was laid in Germany in the 1920’s. The first solid fuel and liquid fuel missiles were built by Hermann Oberth, Max Valier and Rudolf Nebel, the first rocket scientists. In the fall of 1929, a young man named Werner von Braun joined Rudolf Nebels team. He would later head the American Space program that took the first men to the moon. Secret collaboration with the German military began in 1930. The military gave the scientists the financial backing and the test facilities that they needed to further their research. The men believed they had found a way around the restrictions of the Treaty of Versailles that prohibited the development of long-range artillery weaponry.

Construction began on the military testing facility in Peenemünde in 1936. At its completion in 1940, the military had invested over a half a billion Reichsmarks. There were testing grounds and production facilities for Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe weapons. Over the next couple of years, the scientists developed the V1, V2 and several different anti-aircraft missile systems. Parallel to these developments in weaponry, there was also an intense collaboration of the Luftwaffe and private aviation industry. There they were building the modern jet and rocket planes, airplane components and the revolutionary Henschel Hs 293 air to surface missile.

The third secret weapon, also known as the V3, was a project whose roots went all the way back to 1855. The defining characteristic of this weapon was its powder chambers. The United States even built a functional prototype, the 20,3 cm Lyman-Haskell-Canon. The weapon appears to have been forgotten until the French picked up the idea in 1918, and the Germans rediscovered it among secret weapon documents captured in France. In 1944 Hitler made the development of the V3 his top priority. The V3 was actively used by the Germans in the Battle of the Ardennes.

Since Allied air raids rendered above-ground weapon production nearly impossible, it was decided in 1943 that the production and firing of these three new weapons would take place in special bomb-proof, underground shelters. A former plaster mine, Kohnstein by Nordhausen in the Harz region was transformed into Camp Dora. Concentration camp prisoners had to transform the mines into an underground factory code-named Mittelwerk for the V2’s under the worst possible conditions. A total of 5 940 missiles were produced at the Mittelwerk until the American conquest.

Firing facilities were all built in Pas de Calais. At first, the thought was to set up the V1 missiles on open ramps aimed at London, but they had to give up this idea when the English continuously bombarded the facility. Then they just planned to store the V1’s there. In 1943 a huge plant was built in Wizernes with the sole purpose of maintaining, fueling and firing the V2’s. A huge storage facility for the V2’s and another V1 firing facility was built a couple of miles away in Watten. The Todt Organization built an underground battery for the construction of high-pressure pump, the “Busy Lizzy”, in Mimoyeques. The Royal Air Force put an end to all of this doing before it could even begin. The Tall-boy bomb bombardment wreaked such havoc and destruction that it was fully impossible to put any of these facilities into operation.