R-2 missile transported toward its launch pad

The photographs were made public to mark the 70th anniversary of a missile test range in Kapustin Yar, which was founded by a Soviet government decree on May 13, 1946. Hidden in the vast grasslands of Southern Russia halfway between the cities of Volgograd and Astrakhan, the site on the Volga River was first used in 1947 to test-fire infamous V-2 ballistic missiles captured in Germany at the end of World War II.





In the years to follow, Soviet engineers led by the legendary Sergei Korolev relied on German hardware and on their own experience from 1930s to develop more sophisticated ballistic missiles—the R-1, R-2, R-11, and R-5—designed to counteract the American air superiority in the Cold War.