minus four minutes", etc. In addition to the control room, the blockhouse also contained offices, a conference room, a small dormitory with double bunks and an adjoining shower, a wash room, and a workshop. A long underground corridor led from the measurement blockhouse to a room in the concrete foundation by the flame pit, and multiple rows of measurement cables covered the walls of the tunnel. A different gradually rising tunnel led from the long flame pit room to the exterior of the arena near the pumphouse (). Near the pumphouse were high wooden towers to cool the water, and high tanks for the recooling water were integrated into the ellipse wall. Test tower The prominent tower within the arena was a mobile test frame/crane (Fahrbare Kranbühne) which could be moved over the flame pit to position the rocket nozzle 25 feet above the deflector, and which allowed an entire missile to be gimbaled in two directions up to five degrees from vertical. The tower included an elevator and a German-made Toledo scale for thrust measurements. Actual launches were from a steel table-like structure (firing stand, Brennstand) across the railway from the flame pit on the test stand's large concrete foundation. Under the concrete foundation were the recorder room, a small shop, an office, compressed nitrogen storage cylinders, and catch tanks. The arena also included an engine cold-calibration pad for conducting flow test measurements by pumping water (instead of Liquid oxygen) and alcohol (which was recovered afterward) via the turbopump through the combustion chamber. Since the V-2 motor had no controller for the turbopump, cold-calibration allowed the determination of "freak cases" of equipment. Hangar Outside of the arena was the 150x185x100h foot assembly and preparation hall/hangar (), which had been designed to be able to handle a larger A9/A10 multi-stage rocket that was planned, but never built. The roof of the hangar had camera stations for filming events. Allied reconnaissance and bombing On 15 May 1942 after photographing German destroyers berthed at the port of Kiel, Spitfire pilot Flight Lieutenant D. W. Stevenson photographed 'heavy construction work' near the Peenemünde aerodrome. Later in the month Constance Babington Smith decided the scale was too small ... then something unusual caught my eye ... some extraordinary circular embankments ... I then dismissed the whole thing from my mind. Then a year later on 22 April 1943, Bill White and Ron Prescott in