Weapons Testing
In 1939 the company of Hellmuth Walter KG Kiel acquired land by the Plön lake and built their factory's test site in Stadtbek. Here torpedoes and launch systems (Schlitzrohrschleuder, lit. "slotted tube catapult") were tested. This Walter Schlitzrohrschleuder system was a chemical steam catapult that was used until the end of the war. The Fi 103 flying bomb, later called a Vergeltungswaffe ("revenge weapon") or V1, was fired into the air at a speed of 350 km/h from the Walter launch system (catapult) using a steam piston. The piston was released and the Fi-103 flew on under its own pulsating jet engine. The buildings of the test site, constructed on piles in the lake, were blown up after the war by the Allies.
Read more about this topic: Bosau
Famous quotes containing the words weapons and/or testing:
“When it comes to my own turn to lay my weapons down, I shall do so with thankfulness and fatigue, and whatever be my destiny afterward, I shall be glad to lie down with my fathers in honour. It is human at least, if not divine.”
—Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894)
“Bourbon’s the only drink. You can take all that champagne stuff and pour it down the English Channel. Well, why wait 80 years before you can drink the stuff? Great vineyards, huge barrels aging forever, poor little old monks running around testing it, just so some woman in Tulsa, Oklahoma can say it tickles her nose.”
—John Michael Hayes (b.1919)