Eperlecques V2 Blockhaus, Saint-Omer

The construction of this blockhaus started in 1942. It used 120,000 cubic meters of concrete and slave labour working for the Todt Organisation. It was designed to launch 36 rockets a day and make enough liquid oxygen to fuel them (representing 65 tonnes of it every day)... Grouping the factory with the launching platform had the advantage for Nazi to avoid the evaporation losses of transporting liquid oxygen...

Due to this huge requirements, a complex railway system linked the site to Calais and St Omer...

Such a place, despite the cubic meters of concrete, was really vulnerable to bombings... But Hitler insisted and wanted more fixed factory-lauching bunkers than mobile "shoot and run" launching platforms...

Despite repeated allied bombings, including even tallboy bombs, the Germans pursued the blockhaus construction, adopting a new building method : they started to build a 5 meter thick concrete roof (37,000 tons !), then lifted it up with hydraulic jacks... Then some concrete was poured to create surrounding and supporting walls. This process was repeated a few time to reach a final structure 28m high...

Eventually, the Nazi considered the site too vulnerable and converted the blockhaus as a oxygen factory, supplying the close new launch site at "La Coupole" (the Copula).

On September 4, 1944, Canadian forces captured the site, famous to be the most easterly of the fixed V-2 rocket launch sites.