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