page_title: Siracourt V-1 bunker
section_title: Discovery and destruction
hierarchical_section_title: Siracourt V-1 bunker / Discovery and destruction
caption_attribution_description: English: Royal Air Force Bomber Command, 1942-1945. Low-level oblique aerial photograph showing the heavily-bombed flying-bomb assembly and launch bunker at Siracourt, France, the target for a number of attacks by Bomber Command and the USAAF in June 1944. The final attack on the site was made by 17 Avro Lancasters of No. 617 Squadron RAF in the afternoon of 25 June 1944.
context_page_description: The Siracourt V-1 bunker is a Second World War bunker built in 1943–44 by the forces of Nazi Germany at Siracourt, a commune in the Pas-de-Calais department in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region of France. Codenamed Wasserwerk St. Pol, it was intended for use as a bomb-proof storage facility and launch site for V-1 flying bombs. However it never went into operation due to intensive Allied bombing that made it the most heavily attacked of all the German V-weapon sites, and also of all military targets in Europe during World War II.
context_section_description: The Allies spotted the construction of the Siracourt bunker almost as soon as it began in September 1943, when two parallel trenches were dug and concreted to form the walls of the structure. Heavy Allied bombing hindered construction but it continued until the end of June 1944, when the site was wrecked by Tallboy bombs dropped by the Royal Air Force. By this time about 90 per cent of the concrete had been completed, apart from the end sections, but the supposedly bomb-proof structure proved unable to withstand the six-ton Tallboy. One bomb fully penetrated the roof and exploded underneath, while another caused substantial damage when it exploded next to one of the walls. The ground around the site was churned up by over 5,000 tons of bombs. By the time the site was abandoned in April 1944, the exterior had practically been completed but the excavation of the interior had only just begun. Roland Hautefeuille estimated that Siracourt was the most heavily bombed military target in all of Europe with 5,070 tons of bombs directed at it. These bombs considerably change the terrain around the site, destroying most of the village of Siracourt. After the war, the authorities quickly abandoned the idea of demolishing the bunker.  Before the land was leveled, 80 German prisoners of war removed the launching ramp facing England and partially filled in the interior of the bunker.
  The Siracourt bunker is still extant today and is visible from the road. It is located on private land.
caption: Low-level oblique aerial photograph showing the heavily-bombed flying-bomb assembly and launch bunker at Siracourt (1944).
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