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France/Belgium Trip Post 02
Our next visit was 44 miles away at Watten, NW of St. Omer where we visited Le Blockhaus d'Eperleques. The biggest bunker in northern France.
The site was a V2 rocket base and work began in 1943. It was given the cover name Kraftwerk Nord West (North West Power Plant). It was designed to accommodate over 100 missiles at a time and to launch up to 36 daily.
The facility would have incorporated a liquid oxygen factory and a bomb-proof train station to allow missiles and supplies to be delivered from production facilities in Germany. It was constructed using the labour of thousands of prisoners of war and forcibly conscripted workers used as slave labourers.
The labourers worked in 12-hour shifts of 3,000–4,000 men, with three 20-minute breaks during each shift. The work continued around the clock, seven days a week, under giant floodlights during the night.
The non-German workers lived in two camps officially known as Organisation Todt Watten (Forced Labour Camp 62) about 2 kms distant from the site, near the village of Éperlecques. Over 35,000 foreign workers passed through the camps during the period in which they were operational.
The bunker was never completed as a result of the repeated bombing by the Allied Air Forces as part of Operation Crossbow against the German V-weapons programme. Allied bombing raids started on 27 Aug and during the next 12 months there were a further 24 raids.
The attacks caused substantial damage and rendered the bunker unusable for its original purpose. A Tallboy bomb (designed by Barnes Wallis and known as the earthquake bomb) fell directly on the North side of the building on 6 July 1944, another fell 27 mtrs to the South.
Part of the bunker was subsequently completed for use as a liquid oxygen factory. It was captured by Allied forces at the start of September 1944, though its true purpose was not discovered by the Allies until after the war. V-2s were instead launched from Meilerwagen based mobile batteries which were far less vulnerable to aerial attacks.
The Germans soon abandoned their plans to use the bunker as a unique base to assemble and launch V2 weapons and the facilities were transferred to the Le Coupole dome at Wizernes.
It was decided to install a liquid oxygen factory at Eperleques and use the facility as a storage point for rocket elements, combustives and fuel required for propulsion.
The site today is not a museum but a military history trail through the woods. There are various vehicles, weapons, bombs and commentary points along the route explaining the technology of the V1 and V2 secret weapons. (Hitler's Vergeltungswaffen or Vengeance Weapon).
It is also possible to go inside the bunker to appreciate the enormous size of the structure and work involved in constructing it.
At the entrance is a memorial to the thousands of slave labourers who died during the construction of the bunker, many of whom were victims of the Allied bombing raids.
Le Blockhaus d' Eperleques is open seven days a week from March to October, admission 10 Euros.
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