Centre interarmées d'essais d'engins spéciaux  The Interarmy Special Vehicles Test Centre (CIEES) (French: Centre Interarmées d'Essais d'Engins Spéciaux) was France's first space launch and ballistic missile testing facility. Outside France, the facility is often referred to by the name of the nearest town, Hammaguir (also called Hammaguira). It was established on 24 April 1947, by ministerial decree as the Special Weapons Test Center (CEES, "Centre d'essais d'engins spéciaux") for use by the French Army. In 1948, it was turned over to the French Air Force, who renamed it CIEES. Its remote location in the middle of the Saharan Desert and its relative closeness to the Equator (compared with Metropolitan France) made it an attractive launch site for missiles and orbital rockets. The origins of CIEES and the French missile and space program date to the end of the Second World War. On 12 June 1945, less than a month after V-E Day, the War Department ordered the study of self-propelled projectiles (rockets). On 13 August, the Directorate of Studies and Manufactures of Armaments (DEFA) proposed the creation of a Rocket Studies Center to continue studying and developing ballistic missiles. The Center aimed initially to attempt to reconstruct the V-2 rocket based on blueprints captured from V-2 launch sites in France. In November 1946, a mission arrived at Colomb-Béchar, French Algeria, to study the site's suitability as a missile range and launch facility. CIEES began operations at Colomb-Béchar six months later on 24 April 1947. The Air Force built two launch pads at Colomb-Béchar: the small B0 pad for sounding rockets, and B1, completed in December 1949, for larger missiles. However, both of these launch sites were suitable only for smaller missiles, so a larger launch pad – dubbed CIEES B2 – was eventually built at Hammaguir, southwest of Colomb-Béchar, in May 1952. CIEES B2 quickly expanded to include five launch pads: "Bacchus", for solid fueled sounding rockets, "Blandine", for liquid fueled sounding rockets, "Beatrice", for testing the Hawk surface-to-air missile and the Cora and Europa rockets, "Brigette/A", for the "precious stones" series of rockets, and "CB", for the Monica sounding rocket.