Camping Château du Gandspette - Le Blockhaus d`Éperlecques 290608

This short route takes you from the camping Château du Gandspette to the Blockhouse d'Eperlecques. The Bloackhaus at Eperlecques is a bunker complex to be found in the Esperlecques Forest in the North of France. The bunker was constructed in 1943 after Hitler order to build numerous launching sites of V-2’s. The Germans intended to build a factory to produce enough liquid oxygen to launch 10 rockets a day. This wasn’t enough to achieve the target of 36 launches a day. The site was also mend for the assembling of V-2’s. For the construction itself the Germans used an enormous labor force consisted of French, Belgians, Dutch and Russians prisoners working in 12-hour shifts. After the British RAF took the first aerial photographs of the Blockhaus it became clear that the building was “of a special nature” and had to be bombed. On the first air-raid B-17 dropped a total of 366 bombs which devastated the building site. After this raid the bunker complex was attacked four more times between August 30 to September 7. The Germans decided the northern section was lost and focused on the southern portion of the bunker for the manufacturing of liquid oxygen. They continued the construction using the so called “tortoise technique”. This technique protected the site from air raids during construction. This technique paid off and the Germans finished the factory. Heavy new generation bombs did shook the building but never caused major damage. Afraid of the liquid oxygen compressors might explode under the conditions the Germans removed them. Hitler decided in July 1944 to abandon the bunker.