Located north of the D940 road between Audinghen and Tardinghen, Wn176 Kranich was built for a Wurzburg Riese radar dish used to track Allied aircraft approaching this area of France just 40km from the English coast.
Positioned on top of Mont Mottelette, the site once had a commanding view towards Wissant and the coastline around Cap Gris Nez – home to many gun batteries which fired upon England during the Second World War.
Kranich, or crane (many of the sites in this area are named after birds), is now heavily overgrown and largely inaccessible, but there were around a dozen structures here supporting the medium range radar system.
Exploring inside the dense and very spikey shrubland on the edges of agricultural fields, you can still see many of the supporting structures, including three large brick and concrete personnel buildings, smaller shelters, a storage bunker, barracks, and an electricity transformer building.
There were two 2cm anti-aircraft gun positions here too, one near to the tracking radar and the other located on top of the main HQ building, a Sonderkonstruction/special construction (SK) concrete Kommandostand.
This building is now almost completely buried with just a filled-in entrance still visible in the scrub.
Wn176 Kranich stands on private agricultural land and cannot be accessed by the public without permission.