was called “Project Zossen,” a clue, perhaps, that the origin of the idea came from within the OKW’s super secret underground communications and command bunker in Zossen, a suburb of Berlin. In any case, the project was more than just a “paper project” for two designs were actually modeled and wind tunnel tests were performed on them, as indicated by the following pictures of German wind tunnel test models:
The Bundle Rocket Design Test Model: The Rocket Model is in Front of a Larger Rocket inside the circle
Close-up of the German “Bundle Rocket”
This expedient had the advantage over designing, testing and building an entirely new rocket in that the V-2’s components and performance capabilities were known quantities, already tested, and in production. And clearly Korolëv’s boosters are but a streamlined second generation version of the earlier Nazi prototype. But was a full scale version of the rocket, or for that matter, any of the other intercontinental rocket designs the Nazis had proposed, ever tested? To answer that question, we return to Peenemünde, at the end of the war, and notice yet another “problem.”
E. SS Obergruppenführer Hans Kammlers “Evacuation” of Peenemünde and the Russian Arrival
Is there any indication that these early German ICBM “bundle rockets” or any other long-range strategic rockets went to actual construction and testing? If so, then the logical choice was Peenemünde, for in spite of the heavy attention of Allied bombers, it was the only place presumably with facilities large enough to achieve the task.
1. Strange Events at an “Empty” Site
General Walter Dornberger made it clear that as early as 1939 the ultimate goal of the Peenemünde center was to create a long range rocket capable of striking New York City and other targets on the east coast of the United States. Of course, this implies a capability to strike all of European Russia as well. 8 By July 29, 1940, at Peenemünde the engineer Graupe had already produced the first designs for a trans-Atlantic 2 stage rocket. Hermann Oberth began his own formal studies for the fuel and lift requirements for such a rocket in October of 1941, 9 as the Wehrmacht continued to liquidate the Red Army in Operation Barbarossa.
But more to the point is a letter from the Reich’s emerging “plenipotentiary for secret weapons development,” SS Obergruppenführer Hans Kammler, dated October 1943, and stating that the development of the Amerikaraket continued apace. 10 Moreover, there exist estimates for cost, labor, and material for the “America Rocket” that strongly suggest that it had become more than a mere “paper project.” As with anything else in Kammler’s black empire of black projects, anything suggesting “labor” meant the slave labor of concentration camps, and to suggest that the project was merely a “paper project” is to diminish the human suffering that was involved in its very real flesh and blood actualization.
Another factor must be weighed. As indicated in my previous book on German secret weapons, The Reich of the Black Sun , there is a circumstantial case that the Nazis successfully tested an atom bomb ca. Oct. 10 th , 1944, on the island of Rügen, or possibly some other island, standing along the German Baltic coast in the sea lanes running from Königsburg to Kiel. 11 This would imply that some time earlier in the summer of that year, the SS achieved some sort of breakthrough in its bomb program, perhaps finally acquiring enough critical mass to test in a bomb. In any case, the alleged Rügen test was successful, and as German researcher Friedrich Georg observes, the call then went out for “secure delivery systems.” 12 It stands to reason then, that the Amerikaraket , given this alleged atomic bomb success and actual fuel air bomb success, 13 was much more than a “paper rocket.” By the time of its successful testing in 1944, the paper studies and wind tunnel tests