Max Valier tests his new liquid-fuel rocket-car motor at the Heylandt Company in Berlin, March/April 1930. He was killed in a laboratory experiment soon afterward, due in part to his cavalier attitude toward safety. (Imperial War Museum)
In 1931, Heylandt built a new rocket car under the direction of three engineers. Arthur Rudolph (left) and Walter Riedel (right) had worked with Valier and would become prominent in the Army rocket program. The man in the center is almost certainly their foreman, Alfons Pietsch. (Imperial War Museum)
In late 1931, the Army began its investigation into liquid-fuel rocketry with a contract to Heylandt, which conducted compressed-air experiments on the shape of nozzles. In this experiment, the nozzle, which is pointing upward, has eight pressure measurement gauges along its lower half. (Imperial War Museum)
This April 1931 photo of the Raketenflugplatz shows, from left to right, Rudolf Nebel, space popularizer Willy Ley, and Klaus Riedel. Behind them is an engine test stand made out of the launch rail for the ill-fated Oberth Frau im Mond rocket of 1929. (SI neg. no. 82–4628)
A soldier holds the rocket the Raketenflugplatz launched for the Army at the Kummersdorf test range on June 22, 1932. This demonstration’s failure confirmed General Beckers decision to concentrate Army efforts on in-house development. (Imperial War Museum)
An A-3, missing some of its exterior skin, undergoes guidance testing at Kummersdorf, 1936–37. Ground tests alone failed to show the weaknesses of the guidance system built by an outside contractor. (SI neg. no. 77–14790)
An A-3 is prepared for launch on the Greifswalder Oie, an island near Peenemünde, in December 1937. Standing to the right, with his hand in his vest, is Dr. Wernher von Braun, the technical director of the Army side of Peenemünde at age twenty-five. (Deutsches Museum Munich)
Test Stand 1 at Peenemünde, designed to accommodate engines or missiles with up to 100 metric tons of thrust, was finished in spring 1939. The Army had made a massive investment in ballistic-missile technology since the mid-1930s. (SI neg. no. 79–12318)
The Heinkel He 176 rocket plane made limited flights in June-July 1939. It was a product of the joint Army-Luftwaffe rocket program that led to the construction of Peenemünde. (Deutsches Museum Munich)
A key technical innovation for the A-4 was the creation of the Vertikant guidance system. The version shown used three gyroscopes: two to control the orientation of the missile in space, and a third (at top) to shut off the engine when the correct velocity was reached. (SI neg. no. 86–1067)
After the outbreak of war, the rocket program was drawn into political battles. Armaments Minister Fritz Todt (center left, in profile) visited Peenemünde in early October 1940. At far left is General Emil Leeb, Chief of Army Ordnance after Beckers suicide in April. Third from right, in the front row, is Colonel Dornberger. Third from left, in the background, is Heinrich Lübke, an official in Albert Speer’s Construction Group Schlempp who was later president of West Germany. (Deutsches Museum Munich)
Walter Dornberger signing papers in his office in Berlin or Peenemünde sometime after his promotion to general m June 1943. He was the Army rocket program’s energetic leader and administrator. (SI neg. no. 90–2937)
Between 1938 and 1943, regular launches of the A-5, which looked like a scaled-down A-4 (V-2) ballistic missile, proved essential to guidance-and-control development. (SI neg. no. 76–15523)
The propulsion and test group, headed by Dr. Walter Thiel (second from right), included at least two of the tiny handful of veterans at Peenemünde from the early rocket groups: Kurt Heinisch (second from left) and Helmut Zoike (third from right), both from the Raketenflugplatz. (SI neg. no. 91-15663)
After the first A-4 success, Armaments Minister Albert Speer (right, with armband) moved to take over missile production. Here he watches a launch with Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels (center), who dubbed the missile “Vengeance Weapon 2” (V-2) in 1944. (Bundesarchiv Koblenz)
An A-4 is launched from Test Stand VII in Peenemünde, 1942 or 1943. After suffering numerous technical delays, the program came to depend on a successful flight. (SI neg. no. 83-13847)
General Fellgiebel (left), head of Army signals, congratulates Peenemünde-East Commander Colonel Leo Zanssen (center) after the first successful A-4 launch on October 3, 1942. Third from left is Dornberger, followed by von Braun. Second from right is Dr. Rudolf Hermann, head of the wind tunnels, and at far right is diploma engineer Gerhard Reisig, chief of the measurement section. (SI neg. no. 87-5769)
Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler (center right) began to take an interest in the A-4 program in late 1942. During his June 1943 visit to Peenemünde, he is accompanied by General Dornberger (center left) and Development Works chief Lieutenant Colonel Gerhard Stegmaier (far left). Half hidden behind Himmler is a man in a black SS dress uniform—probably Wernher von Braun on the only day he is known to have worn it publicly. (From V-2 by Walter Dornberger. Copyright © 1952 by Walter Dornberger. Used by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Books USA Inc.)
The Peenemünde housing settlement after the British air raid of August 18, 1943. Two coffins stand on the street corner. (Deutsches Museum Munich)
During a funeral service for the victims of the air raid, the Gauleiter of Pomerania gives the Nazi salute. (SI neg. no. 91-13828)
After the air raid, the use of slave labor was increased and missile production was moved underground to the supersecret Mittelwerk facility. This photo shows A-4 center-section assembly in main tunnel B in December 1944. The sign at left forbids passage through the A-4 assembly area to all workers and prisoners not working there. (SI neg. no. 79-12324)
Working conditions underground could be chilly, damp, and unpleasant even for the better fed and dressed German civilian workers in the Mittelwerk. For the slave laborers, the factory and the camp were the scene of unspeakable horrors. (Deutsches Museum Munich)
A concentration-camp prisoner in Nordhausen lies dying soon after his liberation by the American army in mid-April 1945. A-4 production led directly to the deaths of thousands of prisoners at the Mittelwerk and elsewhere. (National Archives and the Kz-Gedenkstätte Mittelbau-Dora)