The Jet Factory
Near the town of Kahla, in the massif of the limestone mountain of Walpersberg, next to the village of Grosseutersdorf, a huge subterranean factory was being built to assemble Messerschmitt Me-262 Schwalbe (Swallow) jet fighters, code name "Lachs." The facility was being built by Flugzeugwerke Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring (abbreviated to REIMAGH). This special state-owned company employed foreign forced laborers, a small number of prisoners of war (mainly Soviet) as well as German workers, who accounted for most of the specialists involved. Near the end of 1944, there were close to 13,000 people working for the needs of this facility, mainly foreigners, and a separate group of about 1,200 forced laborers employed by the Todt Organization. There was enough time to start up production only on a limited scale. Final assembly work was done in bunkers above ground.
In July 1944 London heard the first time about an underground armament factory being built near Kahla. They started a special investigation flight on August 15, 1944, which brought enough evidence for the construction of the site in the so-called Walpersberg near Kahla/Grosseutersdorf. From that moment on, the area had been declared as very important and many pictures had been taken by the British. The use of the construction site was not known yet. One assumed that it will be a rocket production site, others even thought the Atomic bomb might be developed there. Hitler wanted to change the outcome of the war in the last minute with giant war production sites like "LACHS", which was built for the production of the first jet of the world, the so-called Me 262..
One of the most remarkable advancements made by the German military in World War II was the production of turbine-jet aircraft. The most famous of these was the Messerschmitt Me 262, developed beginning in 1938 and fielded in 1944. A special production facility was started in 1944, for quicker assembly line manufacture. Due to the setup at the main Messerschmitt factories, fast assembly line production was not possible, and these sites were vulnerable to Allied bombing. Accordingly, a company called Flugzeugwerke Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring (REIMAHG for short) was formed as a subsidiary of the Gustloff Nazi industrial complex. REIMAHG eventually became concerned only with the Me 262, and its main production facility was located in an old porcelain sand mine in the Walpersberg Hill near Kahla (south of Jena) -- Codename "Lachs" ("Salmon").
The existing tunnels in the Walpersberg were enlarged and others were dug, and massive concrete bunkers were built outside these tunnels. Subparts were made and partially assembled in the tunnels, then moved outside to the concrete bunkers, where final assembly took place. The assembled jets were then moved to the top of the hill via a platform that moved along a railed ramp by a power winch. The top of the Walpersberg had been leveled off and concreted in a massive construction effort, to form a runway some 3300 feet long. This was not sufficient for an Me 262 to take off (even with the jet engines, take-off was actually fairly slow), so small rockets assisted take-off. The runway was also too short for the jets to land, so leaving the Walpersberg was an all-or-nothing proposition: there could be no emergency landings. The jets were flown from Kahla to a site some 130 kilometers away to be fitted with weapons and radios, and to undergo final testing.
REIMAHG only managed to produce some twenty-seven Me 262 jet fighters by the end of the war. The work was done mostly by foreign forced laborers, some 991 of whom died during their nine months at "Lachs." The U.S. Army took the site on 12 April 1945, and before turning Thüringen over to the Soviets in July, they removed enough parts to finish five Me 262s that were found on the production line. Surprisingly, the Kahla area had not been bombed. British Intelligence had photographed Me 262s at the site in March 1945, so the Allies were well aware of "Lachs." But Kahla was spared the fate of the V-2 works at Nordhausen, which suffered a devastating bombing attack only eight days before the American Army arrived.
Recovered at Kahla, intact after the war, was the only surviving Gotha 229, also called the Horton 9. This was a jet-powered flying wing fighter aircraft with no control surfaces whatsoever. If anything, this craft was sleeker than the F-117 or B-2 bomber. Unlike the U.S. stealth aircraft, the Gotha 229 was balanced so well that it flew by stick and rudder control only, with no computer assisted controls, and manoeuvred like a fighter. This last surviving example was sent to the United States and secretly resides in a back room of the Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C.
Beginning in 1947, the Soviets blew up the concrete bunkers and assembly buildings, and also the entrances to most of the tunnels, including destruction of the concrete runway on the hilltop. However, the concrete buildings had reinforced walls some 10 feet thick, so in many cases, the explosions only collapsed the roofs. REIMAHG-Kahla remains today one of the most extensive Third Reich ruins sites, with the walls and foundations of most of the concrete assembly and workshop buildings, some still supporting parts of their roofs.
