{"id":75,"date":"2007-01-25T21:11:25","date_gmt":"2007-01-25T21:11:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/f-john.de\/lostplaces\/?p=75"},"modified":"2013-02-26T09:47:33","modified_gmt":"2013-02-26T09:47:33","slug":"the-search-for-the-mysterious-v","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/f-john.de\/lostplaces\/?p=75","title":{"rendered":"The Search for the Mysterious &#8222;V&#8220;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" id=\"image77\" src=\"http:\/\/f-john.de\/lostplaces\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/02\/img_0013_a.jpg\" alt=\"Wald_V2_Heek\" height=\"260\" width=\"752\" \/><br \/>\nSeems the Odyssey gradually reaches its end. Two days ago, I could discover first traces of the &#8222;legend shrouded&#8220; V2 in Muensterland. I was excited to get in touch with Mr. Schaten, who lives nearby Schoeppingen in a small city called Heek. Mr. Schaten guided me to the remains of a concrete launching platform, which has been left in a small forest called &#8222;Oer&#8217;scher Wald&#8220;.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" id=\"image78\" src=\"http:\/\/f-john.de\/lostplaces\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/02\/img_0025_schwefelkopf_sc.jpg\" alt=\"img_0025_schwefelkopf_sc.jpg\"ALIGN=\"Left\" height=\"240 width=\"180\" \/> It was a cold, but very clear winter morning, good to walk the normally muddy ground. The whole area is still carved with old trenches and ditches &#8211; on some rotting trunks frozen <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Sulfur_tuft\">sulfur tufts (Hypholoma fasciculare)<\/a> were gathering. It looked as if the mushrooms have absorbed the sulfur fall-out from the launching rockets. I also could find several bigger pits in the forest soil which apparently stem from removed platforms &#8211; or from crashed V2-rockets. (V2-crashes are reported from several eye witnesses in Western Muensterland)<\/p>\n<p>In some previous postings I have already mention the peculiar history about the V2 in this area, which launching platforms draw a huge bow from south to west around the Schoeppingen Hill. (some details and related links about the &#8222;nazi wonder weapon&#8220; and its impact on the &#8222;Space Race&#8220; you can find further below at the &#8222;<a href=\"http:\/\/f-john.de\/lostplaces\/?p=42\">The Sputnik of Havixbeck<\/a>&#8220; posting.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" id=\"image76\" src=\"http:\/\/f-john.de\/lostplaces\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/02\/v2_us-610pix.jpg\" alt=\"v2_us-610pix.jpg\"height=\"600\" width=\"752\" \/><\/p>\n<p>If you are interested in such topics, I highly recommend two books: &#8222;V&#8220; and &#8222;Gravity&#8217;s Rainbow&#8220; by Thomas Pynchon. &#8222;V&#8220; is the title of Pynchon&#8217;s first novel, which is concerning the quest of an aging traveller named Herbert Stencil to identify and locate the mysterious entity he knows only as &#8222;V.&#8220; \u2013 The major portion of &#8222;Gravity&#8217;s Rainbow&#8220; takes place in the final months of the Second World War in Europe. One of the most spectacular moments in the book is &#8222;Slothrop&#8217;s &#8222;rocket-dowsing&#8220; penis anticipates the &#8222;Blitz bomb&#8220; hits on London with a precision that confounds statistical probability.&#8220; Also in the best-selling 2003 novel &#8222;The da Vinci Code&#8220; of Dan Brown &#8211; and the related film (2006), the symbolic and mystery of &#8222;V&#8220; plays a crucial part.<\/p>\n<p>If you intend to visit this area sometime, here are the coordinates of the V2-platform in the &#8222;Oer&#8217;scher Wald&#8220; (Oer&#8217;scher Forest): N52\u00b07&#8217;30&#8220; E7\u00b05&#8217;32&#8220;(no guarantee can be given about the correctness of the results)<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" id=\"image80\" src=\"http:\/\/f-john.de\/lostplaces\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/02\/v2-rampe-1944_08_s-sw.jpg\" alt=\"V2-Rampe_sw\" \/><br \/>\nRemains of the former V2 launching platform, near Heek (Foto H. Schaten)<\/p>\n<p>The next posting will be &#8222;Radar Love&#8220;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Seems the Odyssey gradually reaches its end. Two days ago, I could discover first traces of the &#8222;legend shrouded&#8220; V2 in Muensterland. I was excited to get in touch with Mr. Schaten, who lives nearby Schoeppingen in a small city called Heek. Mr. Schaten guided me to the remains of a concrete launching platform, which [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-report"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/f-john.de\/lostplaces\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/f-john.de\/lostplaces\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/f-john.de\/lostplaces\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/f-john.de\/lostplaces\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/f-john.de\/lostplaces\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=75"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/f-john.de\/lostplaces\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":182,"href":"https:\/\/f-john.de\/lostplaces\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75\/revisions\/182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/f-john.de\/lostplaces\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=75"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/f-john.de\/lostplaces\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=75"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/f-john.de\/lostplaces\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=75"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}