The secret project KUNO
As part of the outsourcing after the bombing of the Augsburg works, the Messerschmitt works between Zusmarshausen and Burgau built the KUNO forest works directly on the new Reichsautobahn, in which the "miracle weapon" Me 262 was to be assembled and made ready to fly.
As a designer, Willy Messerschmitt developed the Me 262 combat bomber and a new type of drive. After the Allied bombing raids on industrial targets in the cities, productions were outsourced, including to the secret forest between Zusmarshausen and Burgau.
Construction for the final assembly of the machines began there in the winter of 1944/45. Individual parts manufactured at different locations were put together on the assembly line in a roofed assembly pit.
Under camouflage nets and in the protection of the forest on the Reichsautobahn, which served as a runway, the work could not be discovered by enemy scouts. Only the advancing Americans found it and destroyed it. Machines that were still preserved without national emblems were transported to America.
Kuno memorial path, armory in the forest
The four-kilometer Kuno memorial path leads through the former forest in the Scheppacher Forest on the border of the Augsburg districts. There are information boards and information boxes along the way, which document the production of the “miracle weapon Me 262” of the Nazi regime through the exploitation of forced laborers and concentration camp prisoners under cruel circumstances.
The Bavarian State Forests are the landlords of the ground monuments.
The remains of the armaments factory were almost forgotten until local history researcher Hans-Peter Englbrecht took an interest in them and brought them back into the light of day.