Alas, disturbingly, none of this is true. Indeed, the Germans hoped to launch V2s from this site, near St. Omer, even to manufacture liquid oxygen fuel here. But British reconnaissance identified it in 1943, and RAF and USAAF bombers disabled it in 1944, before it could come close to being operational. No V2 was ever launched from St. Omer. The V2 was developed at Peenemunde, in Germany. Interestingly, only a single bomb hit the dome at St. Omer. The rest fell where they needed to fall, at the railroad entrances and architectural supports, undermining the vast structure.
More disturbingly, the French now promote La Coupole, touristically, as a stepping stone to space exploration. The Germans had nothing such in mind, only the pulverization of London, which they might well have achieved. The site is well worth seeing, I think, but kept in its real, grotesque, context. Oh, the state-of-the-art aircraft carrier of WWII, the USS Essex class, was only 27,000 tons. None ever was sunk.
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| The La Coupole complex |
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| The dome itself; it was configured for rockets of 65 feet; the V2 was only 45 feet; which raises questions of more distant targets... |
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| On site advertising...beyond distasteful; could we give any thought to the thousands of victims, and the thousands more lost in destroying the V2? |
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