Located on the south east outskirts of Saint Omer in the Pas de Calais region of northern France, Flugplatz Arques was developed during German occupation of France in August 1940.
It was created as a fighter base and used in this role until September 1942 when it became a forward operating base. Originally a grass airstrip, German forces built a 670m long concrete runway here, along with associated infrastructure including hangars, fuel stores, observation posts, office buildings, a water reservoir, and anti-aircraft gun positions.
Today, very little remains – even the runway has gone – but you can find two rare bunkers on the outskirts of the industrial site which now occupies the area.
Alongside the D211 road between Arques and Renescure (where there’s a massive WW2 German storage depot site) you can see the remains of an L13 bunker – a concrete emplacement for a 2cm anti-aircraft gun mounted inside an armoured steel cupola.
The cupola – of the 857P7 type – could rotate through 360 degrees by use of crank handles in a similar way to a tank turret. The bunker was made up of three rooms, a main crew room, a smaller room for ammunition, and two steps which would take you underneath the cupola in the gun room.
The cupola is missing from this L13 and is likely to have been removed after the war for its scrap metal value.
Further east, on the roundabout with the D942 and D933 roads, there’s a small industrial unit which hides an almost covered L15 bunker – a compact, block and concrete building for a heavy 3.7cm anti-aircraft gun.
The design of the building didn’t allow for 360 degree firing as the L13 did, and this gun would have covered the air to the south of the airfield.