Meiller car
The Meillerwagen was a German trailer vehicle during World War II . It was used to transport a V2 rocket (unit 4) from the transshipment point of the technical troop area to the starting point ("burning stand"). It also served as a supply vehicle for refueling and for take-off preparation.
The unofficial name "Meillerwagen" was often used in official documents and refers to a parts supplier for the trailer, the Franz Xaver Meiller vehicle and machine factory . The Meiller car designed in the Peenemünde Army Research Center was assembled by the Gollnow & Sohn company with the help of Italian and Russian prisoners from the Rebstock satellite camp . The Meiller car was also the subject of studies on the development of mobile rocket launchers (project earthworm).
Preserved Meiller car
A total of around 200 Meiller cars are said to have been built, three of which are still preserved:
- Australian War Memorial at the Treloar Resource Center in Canberra ( Australia )
- Royal Air Force Museum in Cosford ( Great Britain )
- National Museum of the United States Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio ( USA )
Web links
- Operation Backfire - A4 V2 German Rocket Documentary , contemporary educational film by the British War Office about the launch handling of the A4 rocket during Operation Backfire , youtube video, 40:37 minutes, in English
Individual evidence
- ^ Gregory P. Kennedy: Vengeance Weapon 2: The V-2 Guided Missile. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington DC 1983, pp. 44f, 48.
- ^ Ernst Klee, Otto Merk: The Birth of the Missile: The Secrets of Peenemünde. Gerhard Stalling Verlag, Hamburg 1965 (original edition 1963, German)
- ^ Dieter K. Huzel: Peenemünde to Canaveral. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs NJ 1960, p. 93.