La Coupole

The Coupole d’Helfaut-Wizernes is a WWII bunker complex in northern France. It was built by Nazi Germany between 1943 and 1944 to serve as a launch base for V-2 rockets directed against London and southern England. It is the earliest known precursor to modern underground missile silos still in existence. The complex was captured by the Allies in September 1944, partially demolished on the orders of Winston Churchill to prevent its reuse as a military base, and then abandoned. In 1997 it opened to the public for the first time, as a museum.

About La Coupole in brief

The Coupole d’Helfaut-Wizernes is a WWII bunker complex in northern France. It was built by Nazi Germany between 1943 and 1944 to serve as a launch base for V-2 rockets directed against London and southern England. It is the earliest known precursor to modern underground missile silos still in existence. The complex was captured by the Allies in September 1944, partially demolished on the orders of Winston Churchill to prevent its reuse as a military base, and then abandoned. In 1997 it opened to the public for the first time, as a museum. Exhibits in the tunnels and under the dome tell the story of the German occupation of France during World War II, the V-weapons and the history of space exploration. The German leadership hoped that a barrage of rockets unleashed against London would force Britain out of the war. The 12. 5-ton missile, standing 14 metres high on its launch pad, was fuelled primarily by liquid oxygen and ethanol. The missile’s operational range of 320 kilometres meant that the launch sites had to be fairly close to the English Channel or southern North Sea coasts, in north France, Belgium or the western Netherlands. Because of the complexity of the missile and the need for extensive testing prior to launch, the German Army favoured using heavily defended fixed sites where the missiles could be stored, armed, and fuelled from an on-site LOX production plant before launching. The bunker was soon spotted by Allied reconnaissance, and on 27 August 1943, a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bomber wrecked the construction site before it could be completed.

A surviving portion of the bunker was reused by the Germans as a production facility for the LOX produced by the Watten factory. They would later use it as a storage depot for V2s and a launch station for the Luftwaffe’s Meillerwagens. The Coupole is located in the Pas-de-Calais department of northern France, about 5 kilometres from Saint-Omer, and some 14. 4 kilometers south-southeast from the less developed Blockhaus d’Eperlecques V-1 launch installation in the same area. The most prominent feature of the complex is an immense concrete dome, to which its modern name refers, built above a network of tunnels housing storage areas, launch facilities and crew quarters. In March 1943, Adolf Hitler ordered the construction of a massive bunker in the Forest of ÉperleCques near Watten, north of Saint- Omer, to store a large stockpile of V- 2s, warheads and fuel. But the Germans were unable to complete the construction works and the complex never entered service. The Germans had already taken possession of an old quarry between the villages of Helfaut and Wizernes, some 12 kilometres south-west and some 12km south of the Watternes railway line. The quarry had been designated for use as a V2 storage depot where they would store the missiles and fuel for launch.

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