Cross channel by Eurotunnel or P&O Ferry and drive to the Bunker at Eperlecques Forest. Visit the small museum there and then proceed on a tour of the site which includes many examples of military vehicles and weapons of the day, including a complete
“La Coupole” represents the high-point of Nazi design and ingenuity and now house a splendid museum and film-show devoted to the “Space- Race”. There are also many
After our stay here we will be travelling back towards the coast to our last stop at the Atlantic Wall defences embodied by the magnificent “Batterie Todt” , one of many bunkers built by Hitler in defence of the Atlantic Wall, or “Festung Europa”, Fortress Europe. Here there is another marvellous museum and collection of 2nd world war military vehicles and dioramas of life under the Nazis.
This tour can be comfortably achieved in one day, but could ideally be linked to say the Dunkirk tour to make a really interesting and varied 2-day tour with an overnight stay at a suitable hotel in either St.Omer or perhaps Ypres. To continue the “Life under the Nazis” theme, visits could also be made to the Citadel in Arras, site of Gestapo Headquarters where many resistance workers were executed in the Vauban “Ditches” and where there is a moving memorial, and to the historic town centre of Arras to see the national Resistance Memorial.
Day-trip price from £245.00 per person all-inclusive. Prices for groups and longer trips on request.
"Life under the Nazis"
Before the Second World War the Germans were developing weapons far ahead of the accepted technology of the day. Hitler decided that he would divert valuable resources to developing weapons of unprecedented destructive power which would, he felt, swing the progress of the war in Germany’s favour, at the same time exacting revenge on the Allies. His scientists, including the renowned Wernher Von Braun, who was later to be at the forefront of the space-race, developed two weapons in particular which became known to the world as the V1 & V2 rockets, the “V” standing for Vergeltungs waffe or vengeance weapon. The V1 has gone down in history as the “Doodlebug”, the V2, or more correctly the A4 rocket, always known simply as the V2. These weapons rained down on mainland Britain, mainly in the S.East, Kent and London, and wreaked havoc and considerable destruction of lives and property. However, their destructive capability was far out-weighed by their psychological impact, particularly the Doodlebug, whose monotonous drone and subsequent cutting-out of its motor brought fear and panic to entire populations. Many measures were instigated to combat this menace culminating in the now famous “Operation Crossbow”, since made into a feature film starring George Peppard, Tom Courtenay and Jeffrey Kemp.
Although there were numerous sites developed to build and fire these weapons, and indeed the V2 could be, and was, fired mostly from mobile trailers, two enormous installations were built by the Nazis to act as the main manufacturing and firing points in the war against Britain. These installations have fortunately been preserved and are open to the public and it is on these that this tour focuses its attention. There was a third V weapon in production, the infamous V.3 rocket-propelled guns at Mimoyecques. These were designed to propel a conventional explosive shell vast distances by rocket thrust up a long sunken barrel and were perhaps the forerunner of the Iraqi “supergun” of the ‘80s.
Itinerary
preserved examples of prototype missiles and models of the installations used to build and launch them and, to balance the high-science, a sobering film about life under the Nazi occupation in the ‘Pas de Calais’ region which became a forbidden zone for the entire war. There is ample to see and occupy the visitor here for at least two hours, including a wonderful multi-lingual guided tour by “smart” headset.
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Arnhem
Dunkirk and the Fall of France
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