Wasserwerk Couville was one of five massive WW2 German V1 flying bomb heavy storage facility and launch sites planned for construction in northern France. There was to be two in the Pas de Calais area – Siracourt and Lottinghen (also known as Wasserwerk Desvres) – and three in Normandy around Cherbourg at Brecourt, Couville, and Tamerville.
They would each consist of one large storage and workshop bunker over 200m long and around 40m wide with supporting buildings including generator bunkers, water supply reservoirs, and launch ramps – with two launch ramps planned for each.
To hide their true identity and function, the sites were codenamed ‘Wasserwerk’, or waterworks.
In early 1943, construction began on two sites in the Pas de Calais region – Wasserwerk St Pol, at Siracourt, and Wasserwerk Desvres, near Lottinghen, which is inland of Boulogne-sur-Mer.
The plan was for them to be operational before the end of December 1943.
More sites were planned for Normandy with two under construction – Wasserwerk Cherbourg at Couville to the south west of the city, and Wasserwerk Valognes near to Tamerville, north east of the town of Valognes.
Four of the sites were still under construction when they became targets for Allied air raids, with the Siracourt site the one closest to becoming operational with only excavation beneath the finished roof due to be completed.
Wasserwerk Cherbourg at Couville didn’t make it past the early stages of excavation and construction of the site due to raids between November 1943 and January 1944 while work was stopped at the Tamerville site near Valognes around the same time to divert resources towards defensive Atlantikwall sites nearer to the coast.
Siracourt was one of the most bombed V1 buildings of the war with 27 Allied air raids taking place, the last one in late June 1944 which saw Tallboy bombs dropped. One of these massive bombs – dropped by and RAF Lancaster - penetrated the roof of the building leaving the site inoperable.
Modified Wasserwerk sites were also planned within the constructions, one of which is the Wasserwerk 2 site, an underground facility at Brecourt, to the west of the port of Cherbourg. This site was due to be a replacement for the now abandoned project at Couville.
It was the French Navy who originally constructed the underground facility at Brecourt, excavating eight large storage areas and tunnels for fuel oil in the 1930s. When the German Army captured the site in 1940 it continued to be a fuel store until being earmarked for further development and the storage of around 300 V2 rockets with a launch platform nearby.
Initial plans were for the site to be fully operational by mid-1944 but a series of Allied bombing raids on V1 sites from November 1943 saw plans change and in early 1944 construction began on creating a launch ramp for V1 flying bombs instead.
Linked to the tunnels, this building had some similarities to the protected ramp style used in many early V1 launch sites in Normandy and beyond with two large blast walls protecting the ramp.
Today, the Wasserwerk Couville site is difficult to find as it has been reclaimed by woodland and is heavily overgrown. Its network of rail lines and sidings with space for building materials has been long replaced by agricultural fields and woodland.
At the site you can see two long walls running parallel to each other around eight metres apart. Outside the walls you can only see around a metre of concrete above ground, but head inside and you can see excavation has taken place and the walls are approximately four metres high above the undergrowth in certain areas. They are likely to go deeper into the ground too.
Although difficult to measure due to the vegetation, we paced one of the walls and estimate it is around 150 metres long, with the other slightly shorter.
Standing between the two walls you can see that even the thickest of reinforced concrete – in places measuring over 1.2 metres thick - can be damaged and there are many large cracks along the lengths of both of the walls. At the south east end the concrete has been broken into several giant blocks which rest at alarming angles to the wall.
It’s not actually known what these parallel walls were for as the plans of the Couville site were never recovered but they look similar in scale to those being created for the main building at the Wasserwerk Desvres site, albeit without a concrete roof over the top.
Over 500lb tonnes of bombs were dropped on the Couville site between November 1943 and May 1944, with work ceasing in April 1944.
The Wasserwerk Couville site is on private land and hazardous, permission must be sought before visiting.