The routes flown on 14 January 1944 by the two sections of the 392nd BG.
British intelligence eventually identified four kinds of
Noball targets in France: heavy sites, ski sites, modified sites, and supply
and support facilities. It was the discovery of the nine large construction
sites in the Pas-de-Calais region and the Cotentin Peninsula near Cherbourg
that first captured the attention of British intelligence analysts. Throughout
1943 Organisation Todt’s building units, supported by thousands of slave workers
and conscripted civilian labor, began excavating and building what British
documents refer to as the “heavy” Crossbow sites. After the war, the Allies
discovered that the German air force had responsibility for four of these,
which were intended to store, assemble, and launch a large number of V-1 flying
bombs. Code-named “Wasserwerk,” or water works, by the Germans to hide their
purpose, these were primarily long tunnels with gaps in the ceiling to fire
rockets toward London. In the Cotentin, they built one in Tamerville, northeast
of Valognes, and the other at Couville, southwest of Cherbourg. The US Army’s
VII Corps overran both of these installations in late June 1944. The other two
were Lottinghen, east of Boulogne, and Siracourt, west of Arras in the
Pas-de-Calais. Siracourt was typical of these kinds of launching sites. The
dozen or so houses at the beginning of the war contained fewer than 140
citizens, mostly farmers and their families. The German army evacuated the
French civilians as Organisation Todt arrived in the spring of 1943. On a
little hill, just west of the village, contractors began construction in
September. This facility was to be the first of four to process, store, and
possibly fire the V-1. The main construction was 625 feet long and 132 feet
wide and oriented at a right angle to London. The 1,200 workers, primarily
Russians, Poles, Yugoslavs, and French forced labor, lived in a camp at
Croix-en-Ternois a little more than a mile away. Under the supervision of
Organisation Todt’s guard force (Schützkommando), the workers ultimately built
the structure and poured more than 50,000 cubic meters of concrete to make it
invulnerable to Allied bombers. Because of the bombing, however, it was
impossible to finish its construction. As a result, the Germans never fired a
flying bomb from it, and it fell to Canadian troops in September 1944.
The German army controlled the V-2 rockets, and it designed
large concrete installations, capable of launching seven to ten rockets per
day, with sophisticated storage and assembly capability. For example, the
launchers at Wizernes, next to Saint-Omer, lay beneath a massive concrete
cupola twenty feet thick and were capable of launching their rockets from two
platforms. Other sites at Watten (Éperlecques), near Calais, and Sottevast,
near Cherbourg, were just as massive and required millions of tons of concrete.
Forty-four miles north of Siracourt and eleven miles northwest of the Luftwaffe
airfields at Saint-Omer is the three-square-mile complex at Watten. On its
southwest corner, Organisation Todt built a massive structure that came to be
called the Blockhaus. It was an incredibly large structure that absorbed
thousands of tons of concrete and the forced labor of thousands of unfortunate
workers. Based on experience at the submarine pens along the coast, the German
engineers expected it to withstand the bombardment of whatever the enemy could
drop on top. The Allies never understood its exact purpose but knew they had to
destroy anything that was consuming so much German effort. It was the first
site detected by British reconnaissance. Duncan Sandys never believed it had an
offensive capability and, even after his visit in October, considered it to be
a plant for the production of hydrogen peroxide, which the Germans were using
as a fuel. Postwar records and analysis indicate, though, that it may have
served as a general storage, assembly, and launching facility in, according to
one researcher, “a bomb-proof environment.” Most experts believe it was capable
of launching rockets on its own.
Watten (Éperlecques)
Twelve miles south of the Blockhaus near Saint-Omer is the
village of Wizernes. In an old quarry, Organisation Todt constructed one of the
largest installations of the war, the V-2 launcher site known as La Coupole, or
the dome, for the most impressive aspect of the facility. Todt designed it to
assemble, fuel, and fire rockets from within the protected site. Upwards of
1,300 forced laborers worked on this project twenty-four hours a day. Like the
Blockhaus, it had two launcher ramps that could fire rockets simultaneously and
was probably the most sophisticated of the vengeance weapon launching sites. By
March 1944 British intelligence was convinced that it needed to be added to the
list of Noball targets. The most sinister of V-2 launcher sites was the silo
complex west of Cherbourg near La Hague. These, generally overlooked by Allied
intelligence, resemble the later American nuclear missile silos of the Cold
War. It never became operational, and the US VII Corps occupied this region in
July 1944. The problem for the Germans was that the construction crews could
not hide the extensive work sites from the hundreds of Allied reconnaissance
aircraft searching for signs of activity. The continuous bombing of the
extensive excavations in France meant the Germans could not complete the
launching facilities, which ended any possibility of the German air force using
them. Ultimately, the Germans would fire no V-2 rockets from fixed sites but
would employ mobile launchers that were essentially impossible for the Allies
to detect in advance.
Eleven miles from Cap Gris-Nez, across the channel from
Dover and ninety-five miles from the center of London, is a facility unique
among the heavy sites. The British knew the Nazis were developing a long-range
gun, but they did not know any details. The German army had done this before,
and Allied commanders had visions of a weapon similar to the artillery used to
bombard Paris in the previous conflict or the large guns deployed along the
French coast. Therefore, most analysts believed the construction at
Mimoyecques, France, was a variation on a V-2 launch site, since it bore no
resemblance to anything with which they were familiar. Also, since most of the
workers were German, few details emerged as to its actual intent. In reality,
the site housed something revolutionary, a large battery of long-range guns,
called Hochdruckpumpe (high-pressure pump) guns, later referred to by the
Allies as Vengeance Weapon-3. Each 330-foot smooth-bore gun was to be capable
of firing a six-foot-long dart about a hundred miles. Its range was the product
of added velocity created by solid rocket boosters arrayed along the edge of
the tube. Each projectile could carry about forty pounds of high explosives.
The plan was to construct banks of five guns each with the potential of firing
six hundred rounds per hour toward London. British intelligence knew little
about what was going on inside the facility. After the war, Duncan Sandys’
investigation of the large sites discovered the true nature of the threat they
had faced. Fortunately, Allied air attacks prevented Organisation Todt from
ever finishing its work and German gunners were never able to fire these
weapons.
The second kind of targets identified by Allied analysts
were the so-called ski sites, named from the configuration of several buildings
that looked like snow skis on their side. By late 1943 British intelligence
officers had identified between seventy and eighty of these, hidden in the
hundreds of wooden patches that dot the northwestern French countryside, with
their launchers pointed directly at their intended target. If left alone, each
one of these small installations could hurl fifteen FZG-76 flying bombs across
the channel each day. The cumulative effect of hundreds of these striking London
daily would not help civilian morale. They also posed a direct threat to the
harbors from which the Allies would launch and sustain the invasion. One of the
first sites identified by intelligence analysts was in the Bois Carré (Square
Woods) about three-quarters of a mile east of Yvrench and ten miles northeast
of Abbeville on the Somme. A French Resistance agent was able to infiltrate the
construction site in October 1943 and smuggle out some of earliest detailed
descriptions of a ski site layout. The long catapult, generally visible from
the sky and quickly identified by reconnaissance aircraft, became the signature
target indicator. As a result, even with extensive camouflage, they were
identified, targeted, and destroyed by Anglo-American aircraft. As a result,
none of these installations ever became operational.
Soon after the first air attacks, German leaders began
considering an alternative method of launching the V-1. Security and
concealment now became a priority, and these modified launcher sites were
better camouflaged and of simpler construction. These new launchers no longer
had many of the standard buildings, especially those that resembled skis, which
had contributed to their rapid discovery by intelligence specialists. With
minimal permanent construction, the only identifiable features were an easily
hidden concrete foundation for the launch ramp and a small building to set the
bomb’s compass. Other buildings were designed to blend into the environment or
to look like the local farmhouses. All this took less than a week to fabricate,
and forced labor no longer did the construction work, as German soldiers
prepared each site in secret. Supply crews delivered the flying bombs directly
to the launcher from a hidden location, assembled and ready to launch. All the
teams needed to do was set the compass and mount it on the catapult. Difficult
to locate from the air, these launchers would remain operational until overrun
by Allied ground troops in early September 1944. After that, the Germans
launched their V-1 rockets from sites in the Netherlands or from German bombers
specially configured to fire these weapons.
One week after the last V-1 flew from French soil, the V-2
rocket made its first appearance when it slammed into a French village
southeast of Paris, killing six civilians. The German army had abandoned any
hope of using large fixed sites for anything other than storage, and they now
organized the delivery of their rockets as mobile systems, structured around
less than a dozen vehicles and trailers. While the rocket was still hidden,
crews prepared it for launch, a process that took between four and six hours.
Within two hours of mission time, the firing unit deployed to a previously
surveyed site and erected the rocket on a mobile pad. As soon as it was on the
way, the soldiers disappeared into the woods, leaving little trace of the
launch. Unless an Allied fighter happened to catch the Germans during the short
preparation process, there was little the air forces could do to prevent
launches. The Germans fired none of the mobile V-2s from French soil, but fired
them instead from Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany. While not part of the
discussion of bombing France, these rockets are an important reminder that the
Germans continued to use mobile sites until the end of the war.
The final kinds of Noball targets were the supply sites that
provided rockets for the individual firing units and the transportation network
that supported them. By February 1944 the Allies had determined that seven
facilities existed, one on the Cotentin Peninsula and the remainder arrayed
just east of the belt of launchers. These, however, were relatively difficult
to attack and were often located within underground bunkers or railroad
tunnels, under fortresses, or deep within thick woods. They also were often
protected by extensive anti-aircraft artillery. More vulnerable were the
various rail yards that served as offload and staging points for these systems.
Rail stations in Saint-Omer, Bethune, Lille, Lens, and Arras were the crucial
nodes in this network. Attacking these transportation nodes also supported the
goals of the Transportation Plan, the Allied attack of bridges along the Seine
and Loire, and Operation Fortitude, the effort to deceive the Germans as to the
actual location of the invasion.
