Ammunitions Factory H.

Construction on this ammunitions factory began in 1936. In the secret position plan of the "Reichsamt für Wirtschaftsaufbau" (The Reich's Agency for Economic Development), the facility was recorded at the beginning of 1939 under the code name "Friedland" as one of 87 existing production facilities for explosives, combat agents and ammunition.
The facility was walled with barbed wire. It was an area of about 580 acres with 399 buildings. Next to a factory railway with a length of 17 kilometres they had an extensive road network on the premises.
Three brown coal power stations with an electrical power output of 4.400, 3.000 and 1.200 kilowatt hours were built to ensure the elctric supply.
These were supplied from a high-rise bunker which in turn was directly connected to a nearby coal mine via cable lift.
The generated electricity was transformed and distributed in 20 transformer stations.
In addition, there were emergency generators for the main production buildings.
There is an enormous water demand for the production of explosives. To secure that, five deep wells were drilled, a cooling lake and two elevated tanks were built and two pump stations were constructed.
The facility had one drinking water network and two industrial water networks.
Five seperate sewer networks conveyed the raw acidic sewage directly into a nearby river until 1941 a neutralization plant was completed.
For the production and recycling of the chemicals needed for the production, a denitration and concentration plant for sulfuric acid was built, as well as an acid cleavage plant for the production of Oleum (highly concentrated sulfuric acid).

The actual center of the facility were the production groups for the explosives Trinitrotoluene (TNT) and Picric Acid (TNP).
The TNT production group alone was made up of 13 buildings (Toluene storage, acid combining plant, mononitration plant, Mono (Nitrotoluene) storage, bi-nitration plant, Bi (Binitrotoluene) storage, two washing houses, dry house, pelletizing house, storage and shipping, intermediate tri (TNT) storage).
The two production groups for picric acid were each made up of one Nitration house, washing house, two dry houses, sieve house and acid storage.
After production, the explosive was filled in shells and compressed in 19 compacting houses spread over the facility.
Originally, a third production group for the explosive Nitropenta had been planned, and construction had already begun when in 1940, construction was stopped on orders of the Heereswaffenamt (Army Ordnance Office).
To a large part, the produced TNT was filled in grenades, landmines and aerial bombs on site. For this, two identical filling stations were built, each consisting of two shell storage houses, one preparation building, a casting house, cooling channel and finshing building.

In this facility, after the construction of the Nitropenta production group had been stopped, the two explosives TNT (since 1938) and Picric Acid (since 1939) were produced until 1945.
The highest rate of production was reached in the business year 1942/43 with overall 29.170 metric tons of explosives.
In total, over the years, 118.691 tons of TNT and 5.608 tons of Picric Acid were produced.
Hence, this production site had the second highest output of all the German facilitys in this particular branch.
The production was stopped on March 29, 1945 - three days before the American troops moved into the area.
The production site was seized by the American Military Government, which ordered the local government on January 19, 1946 to shut down the facility, to supply adequate equipment and installations for the purpose of reparations and to destroy all machinery only utilizable for the purpose of war.
In accordance with the demilitarization, 148 buildings were - partly by targeted detonations - destroyed and rendered useless. Furthermore, the ramparts around the buildings and the camouflage on the roofs were removed.

Visited: November 1, 2013

Location: Undisclosed, Germany

Status: Active / Abandoned