Bodenwöhr Waldwerk - Mtt Bf 109 K-4 assembly lines 1944 - 1945

[Marc-André Haldimann]

Hallo Matthias,

Wow, great, simply great! I wasn't aware of this huge "Goldfisch" DB underground production plant at Neckarelz! And to know it was just 65 km away from Wertheim... Talk about piecing back some basic evidences, Congrats, Matthias!

There I found more precise informations:

http://www.kz-denk-neckarelz.de/gold...ldfischbro.pdf

Daimler-Benz Director Müller decided on 7 March 1944 to relocalize the Genshagen plant to the Gypsum mine of Neckarelz after visiting this place. The plan was to have the 50'000 square meters underground factory up and running within 7 weeks. The first 500 deportees to be used as forced labour were brought from Dachau by the SS around mid March; during late spring and early summer, an estimated 5'000 deportees toiled on a horrendous schedules in day and nightshifts to finish "Goldfisch" and "Brasse" underground factories. By 26 June 1944, the first 21 out of the 2'000 factory machines from Genshagen effectively arrived, together with the skilled workers, to Neckarelz; by the end of August, the first prodcution step was installed and production started at once; It was interrupted in septmeber by the collapse of part of the cavern's vault, with heavy loss of lief.

Finally, the first DB 605's were delivered to Mtt at the beginning of October. The planned-for monthly output of 500 new engines and 350 more repaired engines was never achieved though, even with the employment of 7'000 workers, mainly foreigners, on a double shift schedule, with about 3'000 deportees employed under atrocious conditions for developping the infrastrucures and suffering accordingly terrible loss of life rates. "Goldfisch" was also used to relocate the Slovak Rochen /Dubnica Daimler-Benz factory, and plans were drawn to relocate the Sindelfingen factory as well, but the latter move was never carried out. Thus Daimler-Benz managed to keep most of its production tool out of harm's way from incessant Allied raids. Production ceased by the end of March and this huge facility was overrun by the US Army on 2 April 1945, the very day T/5 Robert F Stubenrauch took his pictures of the Fulmann GbmH Wertheim assembly place.

For nowaday pictures:
http://www.explorate.de/militaria/goldfisch.htm

For more informations on Neckarelz and Daimler-Benz:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/KZ_Neckarelz



Between your infos, the ones of Carl and Roland, all elements of this thread do find their place within the following probable time frame:

- Summer 1944: Wertheim' Flumann GmbH becomes a Messerschmitt repair facility carrying repair work in their Schlossberg tunnel workshop. Acceptance flights are carried out (Carl, post #38).

- From October 1944 onwards: the "Goldfisch" Daimler-Benz underground facility in Neckarelz, 65 kilometers away from Wertheim, starts to turn out new and repaired DB 605/AS or D (Matthias, post #46-7)

- End of January 1945: due to operational priorities, acceptance flights activities in the Amberg-Schafhof-Vilseck area are shut down (Roland, post #39).

- From February 1945 onwards, part of the Bodenwöhr airframes production is sent to Wertheim for engine and wings outfitting, final assembly, test and acceptance flights.

Now remains to know:

- Why only Bodenwöhr "outsourced" part of it's Bf 109K-4 fuselages production to Wertheim, and not Flossenbürg.

- To where was sent the engineless part of the Flossenbürg airframes production, "outsourced" for engine and wing outfitting, test and acceptance flights?
Let's hope that geographically more revealing or better captioned pictures of those engineless Flossenbürg camouflage patterned fuselages lined up on a "location unknown" Holzrückerweg will show up!

So long for tonight, and thanks to all for bringing this complex chain of events back together!

Cheers
Marc

[Charles Bavarois]

Marc,

please let me add a few thoughts to your great scenario on Wertheim.

Quote:
“Summer 1944: Wertheim' Flumann GmbH becomes a Messerschmitt repair facility carrying repair work in their Schlossberg tunnel workshop. Acceptance flights are carried out”

Flugzeugwerke Mannheim “Flumann” was doing repairs on Bf 109s at least since 1942. Flumann always was an independent plant with its own leadership, workers, infrastructure and budget. It never was a subcontractor of Messerschmitt. I have acceptance-flights of repaired a/c from 1942 up to March 1944 at Mannheim and from Juli 1944 from Wertheim.

Quote:
“End of January 1945: due to operational priorities, acceptance flights activities in the Amberg-Schafhof-Vilseck area are shut down”

We can verify a lot of acceptence-flights at Vilseck, Amberg and Cham up the the end of March and even early April 1945 what is very near to the absolute cessation of Bf 109 production itself. As for Amberg-Schafhof: Sharing an airfield with an operational flying unit was not unusual. Just remember München-Riem, Neuburg/Donau, Schwerin, Leipzig-Mockau a.s.o).
BTW: IV./SG 151 was not an operational flying unit, but a mere advanced training group and stopping activities of A/B 43 and A/B 121 has no conection to Messerschmitt, but was part of the general reduction of training due to fuel-shortages.


Quote:
“From February 1945 onwards, part of the Bodenwöhr airframes production is sent to Wertheim for engine and wings outfitting, final assembly, test and acceptance flights”..

This points towards a general shift of final-assembly to Wertheim. Actually it was a small-scale and unique stopgap measure. Hauptausschuss Flugzeugbau filed a report on the situation on a/c-deliveries on 14. February 1945 and said:
“Zur Entlastung vom Mtt.R wurden den Reparaturwerken Flumann Wertheim und Wels im Januar für je 30 Flugzeuge die Großbauteile übergeben. Eine Ausbrigung von diesen aufgerüsteten Flugzeugen erfolgte bis 10.2.45 nicht“
(rough translation: to relieve Messerschmitt-Regensburg in January 1945 major subassemblies for 30 a/c each were handed over to repairworks Flumann at Wertheim and Wels”. None of these rigged-up a/c was delivered up to 10. February 1945”

The term “Großbauteile” regularily is connected to larger prefabricated parts of an a/c, for example the fully equipped fuselage including the cockpit, the complete wings, the engine with all necessary equipment and with its cowlings attached (“Triebwerk”). This explains, why the K-4s at Wertheim were without engines. Flumanns task was to fit “ready to use” Triebwerke and wings to the fuselage, to built in weapons and radio and to do the regular works on Einflug and Abnahme. Also “aufgerüstet” points towards some “putting together” of parts, not real production of any kind.


Another thing:

Looking at the foto of the tunnel-entrance, I consider, that the tunnel itself was quite narrow. The tunnels at Tisnov or at Gevelsberg were much broader. Installing machines and tools for wing-repair perhaps was possible, but not for fuselages and certainly not for wings and fuselages at the same time. I think, we have to look for other facilities around the Schlossbergtunnel, perhaps some wooden buildings in the forrest or some of the hangars of the Wertheim Fliegerhorst.

HTH

Carl