Oberpfaffenhofen

You've served on projects including Philia, the Rosetta lander that touched down on a comet in 2014, and as a payload manager on Mascot, which landed on the asteroid Ryugu, part of the Japanese Hayabusa-2 mission.

Yes, I'm located in Germany, one of the centers of DLR, but of course there are many institutes of DLR involved in these missions, so I'm closely working together also with the colleagues in DLR in Berlin and also in Oberpfaffenhofen, which is close to Munich.

To summarise this MMX mission, it's JAXA-led and it's launching later this year to orbit Mars and study the moons Phobos and Deimos and return a sample from the surface of Phobos to Earth by about 2031.

That's the mission in brief.

Now here is where it gets interesting.

Where the whole story pivots, the door near facility at Oberpfaffenhofen, near Munich, was the primary final assembly site for the Do 335.

Allied intelligence knew about it.

Allied bombers had targeted it.

Lists of specific aircraft, engines, and components had been prepared in advance.

The Do-335 was high on that list.

Performance numbers that had filtered through neutral countries had generated genuine interest at Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio, at Oberpfaffenhofen the advancing forces found Do-335s in various states.

Some still in shipping crates, some partially assembled and apparently abandoned mid-build, at least one that appeared ready to fly.