For our last couple of nights we stayed at a very good French camper stop in the village of Watten (N50.83139, E2.20879). We chose it because it’s only a 40 minute drive to Calais.
We discovered that the neighbouring village, Eperlecques, played a significant role in World War II because the Nazis chose it as the site for the “Blockhaus” (bunker) which was originally intended to be a launching facility for the V2 ballistic missile and a factory for the production of liquid oxygen. It was constructed using thousands of prisoners of war and forcibly conscripted workers.
It was never used because the Allies found out about it and subjected it to heavy bombing including ‘Tall Boy’ bombs which drilled down 30 metres into the ground and created a mini-earthquake. It has been turned into an open air ‘history park’ which provides a lot of information not only about what was going on there, but about World War II.
We walked there not knowing quite what to expect and were astonished to find in the middle of a beautiful forest this enormous, 33 metre high block of concrete and a replica of the 14 metre long V2 rocket. The plan was for 36 of these to be launched each day for three days and the target was England.
The photographs don’t give a realistic sense of the size of the place and how chilling it is. I found it quite terrifying. Half of it was destroyed, but in the other half the Germans went on to manufacture liquid oxygen which they then used to launch the V2s on mobile launch pads. Over 1,400 V2s were launched on Britain and over 1,600 on Belgium – mainly London and Antwerp. After the war many of the scientists and engineers working on these rockets were invited to the United States to become part of the US space program.