page_title: V-2 missile launch site, Blizna
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: V-2 missile launch site, Blizna / History
caption_attribution_description: English: German World War II bunker in Sadykierz, Poland
context_page_description: The V-2 missile launch site, Blizna was the site of a World War II German V-2 missile firing range. Today there is a small museum located in the Park Historyczny Blizna in Blizna, Poland. After the RAF strategic bombing of the V-2 rocket launch site in Peenemünde, Germany, in August 1943, some of the test and launch facilities were relocated to Blizna in November 1943. The first of 139 V-2 launches was carried out from the Blizna launch site on 5 November 1943.
context_section_description: After the air raid on Peenemünde on 17 August 1943, German strategic command decided to divide the work on the V-2 rocket among three independently operating centres. Assembly plants were transferred to underground factories that had been built in a massive hollow cave complex in the Harz mountains in Germany. The research, development, and design (codenamed "Project Cement") were handled by secret offices in Ebensee, near the banks of Lake Traunsee in Austria. The main rocket testing, training, and launch site was transferred to Blizna in southeast Poland, outside of the range of Allied bombers. An SS military base near Blizna was set up on 5 November 1943, from which 139 A4 (also known as V-2) rockets were launched for experimental purposes and for training. The site was operational until early July 1944. Test launches also continued at Peenemünde until 21 February 1945.
  Before construction began in Blizna, there was nothing there but uncleared forest. The Nazis used slave labour from the nearby SS Truppenübungsplatz Heidelager concentration camp in Pustków to build new infrastructure, starting with concrete roads, then a narrow-gauge railway line linking to the station at Kochanówka village. They built barracks, bunkers, buildings and all the specialised equipment needed for the operation and firing of rockets. In addition, efforts were made to disguise the site as much as possible. They did this by building an artificial village; cottages and barns were made of plywood, lines were hung with clothes and bed-sheets, and imitation people and animals were created using gypsum plaster.
  The site was considered to be of such high strategic importance that it attracted personal visits from many of the Nazi régime's most elite officers; Heinrich Himmler and SS-Obergruppenführers Hans Kammler and Gottlob Berger visited in September 1943, and Adolf Hitler visited in the spring of 1944. The commander of the site was Major-General Dr Walter Dornberger, leader of Nazi Germany's V-2 rocket program. Wernher von Braun, creator of the V-2, the central figure in Germany's pre-war rocket development program, and post-war director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, worked at the Blizna test site and personally visited the test missile impact areas to troubleshoot any problems discovered during trials.
  British Intelligence were very keen to obtain information about the new V-2 missile site. The first reports came in October 1943 from the Polish underground Home Army (Armia Krajowa) Intelligence HQ in Warsaw, stating that a number of villages around Dębica were being forcibly evacuated. This area was already known for its SS training centre SS-Truppenübungsplatz Heidelager. Further reports brought information about a new railway line being constructed in the same vicinity, leading to Blizna. A report made on 14 February 1944 gave information about a sighting of a rocket "fourteen metres (46 feet) long and [with] a weight of seven tons". On 22 February the report was of a projectile "twelve metres (39 feet) long, [with] a diameter [of] one and a half metres (4.9 feet) and a weight of twelve tons". These missiles were being fired 24 hours a day. The codebreakers at Bletchley Park in England also managed to decrypt vital information from German communications. These made mention of "Versuchsstab (experimental staff) Komanndostelle Siegfried" and of "SS-Truppenübungsplatz Heidelager". Many more communications were intercepted and decrypted, which together with information from the Polish, helped British Intelligence build up a good picture of what was going on.
  
  The missile testing ground at Blizna was quickly located by the Polish resistance movement, the Armia Krajowa, thanks to reports from local farmers. The site was constantly under observation by Armia Krajowa and the Polish Peasant Battalions. Due to Blizna's perceived strategic importance, Armia Krajowa (AK) had many field agents operating covertly in the area; these included AK Kolbuszowa (code name: "Kefir"), AK Dębica (code name: "Deser") and AK Mielec (code name: "Mleko"). The
caption: German World War II bunker near Sadykierz, 5.5 kilometres (3.4 miles) from the launch site
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