La Coupole

At the end of WWII the Germans employed their V-weapons "Vergeltungswaffen". Towards mainly London and Antwerp. For this reason they were building special assembly and launch sites in Northern France. One of these sites was La Coupole. A domed shaped bunker for assembling and launching V-2 rockets. A few weeks before the site could have been operational the English bombed it with their Tallboy bombs. Severely damaging the complex.Today I visited this site. To photograph the V-weapons on display inside the bunker. Especially the V-1 Reichenberger was of interest to me.

Only a few of those still exist in the world. And this particular one was a gift from General Armstrong to the city of Antwerp in June 1945. It was put on display near the museum "Het Steen", in a little garde. Before it went in deep hiding in the city archives for several decades. More info about this can be found here.

Another site nearby, the "blockhaus", also has a V-1 and its launch rail on display. The last three pictures in the photo album (link below) are from this museum.

Want to see more pictures click on the image above, or on the following link.