Fecamp bunker site designation Fe09 is a clifftop location where you can see three different types of radar facility within a few metres of each other.
Perched on the northern edge of Cap Fagnet, Fe09’s buildings are impressive, and remain in excellent condition.
The beautiful port town of Fecamp is a popular holiday spot and for concrete tourists there's a lot to see including over a dozen gun casemates spread across the hillsides, a stack of casemates on the cliff edge, and a huge radar facility.
Fecamp was split into around a dozen different strongpoints with bunkers built to protect the town, on the edge of the hill to cover the port area, and on the cliffs at the top of Cap Fagnet where a mixture of defensive structures and radar bunkers still remain.
After the fortress ports of Le Havre and Dieppe, Fecamp was the third most fortified port in this area of Normandy. Fecamp was occupied between June 9, 1940, and September 2, 1944.
Fe09’s three radar buildings are all of completely different designs. Standing the tallest is a V143 radar bunker built for a Gustav Mammut radar - one of the biggest radar systems used during WW2. The radar was fixed to three giant plinths with cables running into the bunker below where the data would be captured and processed. This bunker never became operational as it was captured before the large radar array was fully installed.
Just a few yards away is a protective enclosure for a ‘sea searching’ FuMo2 Seetakt radar, and also a R636 observation bunker which features a position on top where a huge FuMo214 Wurzburg Riese radar dish was mounted.
In the grounds of the modern semaphore station you can just see a cable bunker which is a giant junction box for the wiring needed to power the site while in the area between the church and the semaphore there are two R622 type personnel shelters - only the roof of each is visible - plus a number of small niches and shelters.
A R621 bunker with an additional storage building and linked concrete trench stands to the rear of the radar buildings.
Two Vf58c Tobruks at either end of Fe09 offered defensive cover for the radar buildings, as did a series of other fortifications found along the cliff line and wooded area below the site.
One anomaly which isn’t marked on maps is a large, two storey concrete building attached to the outer wall of the church and priory complex. It looks like Second World War era German concrete rather than an original build and looks like the perfect location of an observation or distance measuring post – will try to discover more!