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Wn138 Carpiquet

French airfield site occupied by German fighters and bombers

Wn138 Carpiquet site overview

What to see

The modern passenger terminal and expansive airfield at Carpiquet airport to the west of Caen is a stark contrast to how this area began life in the 1930s.
Built for the French Airforce, the grass-runway airfield became an important base and refuelling location for German Luftwaffe fighters, bombers, and reconnaissance aircraft from June 1940 onwards, and was heavily used during the air offensive again Britain for almost three years.
After taking control of the site, the German’s built a 1,000m concrete runway with a paved assembly area at the south eastern end, extending the runway later to over 1,600m and adding further paved areas, large hangars, barracks, a hospital, and ammunition and fuel storage facilities. By 1943 there were around 40 large, covered shelters for aircraft.
Surrounding the site was a perimeter of defensive sites with a mixture of ground defences and anti-aircraft positions. Three of the sites remain today in Wn135, Wn138, and Wn139.
While the roads towards the airfield were marshalled by a ring of Tobruks, the largest concrete building was a R661 ‘hospital’ bunker, a building designed for casualty assembly, which can still be found next to the modern passenger terminal in what was Wn138.
This heavy-duty bunker is almost fully buried so can’t be accessed, but inside were two large rooms for casualties, plus an escape shaft, and observation cupola which can still be seen.
Visiting is easy, albeit it must be brief unless you want to pay for long stay car parking at the airport.
At the eastern end of the runway is an expanding industrial park and within it the superb D-Day Wings Museum which is packed with interesting items from the air war including a barrage balloon, aircraft, weapons, cockpits, and a huge number of fascinating exhibits related to D-Day in the air.
Carpiquet airport was bombed during a series of Allied raid during early 1943 and between June 6 and 17, 1944 the site was destroyed by retreating German forces.
On July 9 it was captured by Canadian infantry and was put back into action by US engineers as airfield No. B17 to aid the Allied push east from Normandy.

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