NAZI V-WEAPONS AT LA COUPOLE ROCKET BASE, NORTHERN FRANCE

SMN reports
If you’re in reach of Northern France sometime this year, then a trip to the site of a World War II Nazi rocket base ought to be on your list of must-go visits.

La Coupole (‘the cupola’) was a planned launching site for the fearsome V-2 rocket, the aim to launch them towards Britain at a rate of up to four an hour. Parts for the rockets were to be assembled in secret workshops all over the Reich, final assembly and launch preparation by slave workers in the long, dank tunnels of La Coupole’s underground complex.

Secret rocket base in a quarry
A massive project, La Coupole had a metres-thick concrete dome built in and over an old quarry, but luckily for the Allies it did not stay a secret for long enough to go into serious action - and timely bombing raids managed to crack the dome and finish the place off as a threat.

For the SMN crew, the place made a fascinating daytrip from the UK, with many interesting machines to look at - from twisted propellers to rocket motors, and even a piloted V-1 flying bomb.

Wernher von Braun
The V-2 is also there of course, and it’s backed up by a display of post-war space progress - for Wernher von Braun, the genius behind the V-2,was also the man who masterminded the Apollo program which safely landed a dozen men on the Moon, from 1969 to 1972.

After the tour, it’s model-maker time, and La Coupole’s visitor store has lots to interest, including one of our day’s purchases, a neat 1:72 scale A9 rocket, made by Special Hobby from the Czech Republic. We’ll be showing you details of this ‘Luftwaffe 1946’ kit in the next SMN report.

The pictures show, top to bottom:
1  The thick concrete dome.
2  Entrance to the tunnel network.
3  Piloted V-1 'Buzz Bomb' prototype.
4  Tail and steering vanes of a V-2 rocket.

Visit La Coupole here.

Dome picture courtesy Eric Desrentes at Panoramio here.

And here are some interesting models to inspect.
V-2 Wehrmacht1/48 Snap, V-2 RocketV-1 Luftwaffe