Douvres la Deliverande

The Radar Station at Douvres la Delivrande


Codenamed 'Distelfink' (Goldfinch), The Luftwaffe Radar station west of the village of Douvres,
completed in Autumn,1943 was the largest in the Normandy, Calvados region.

With a total area of 25 acres, the base was divided into two sectors, north and south.The smaller northern sector nearer the sea, housed the big Siemens FuMG 402 Wassermann S long-range radar antenna

            

The southern sector housed 2, Telefunken FuMG 65 Würzburg Riese short-range radars and 2,Telefunken FuMG 80 Freya medium-range radars.
The north and south perimeter fortifications altogether comprised over thirty concrete works with linking trenches and surrounded by an anti-tank ditch, barbed wire, and anti-tank and anti-personnel minefields.The base was a real fortress with machine guns, anti-tank, field and flak guns, and mortars.

Info from the museumn guide

After paying your entrance fee at the smart ticket office/shop, you walk to the right and visit a type H622 personnel shelter bunker, inside, in the first room, you will find a 20mm FlaK 38. Go on, sit on it :) The bunker housed 20 men in 2 posts, and is the only one of 3 on the site, open to visitors.
On the walls of the room you will see various photos taken when the site was captured on June 17th, 1944

      

After you leave the shelter bunker and walk past the toilet block to your right and then up a slope, you can see the radar and other bunkers in front of you.

      

The radar is currently being restored,the 'dish' was getting a coat of paint when we visited.

Designed and manufactured by Telefunken, the FuMG 65 was a fighter guidance and air raid warning radar. It had a 7.5m dish with a detection range of 60Km, maximum output power was 8Kw at 0.53 to 0.67m wavelength. The whole assembly weighed 12 tonnes.

The next part of the visit is the Command bunker, a type CP L479 "Anton", which was a standard Luftwaffe design for radar and fighter control


This is a very large construction and is 25m long,an average of 16.5m wide and 8.4m deep. The roof was 2m of extra hardened concrete. There are 20 rooms on two levels,the largest of these is a pit containing two,Seeburg plotting tables which were the heart of the system. These were made of frosted glass with a Luftwaffe map of the region on it. The principal was basically, two operators under the glass, were in telephone contact, with the two Würzburg operators, who would be sending co-ordinates to them. they would shine coloured torches above their heads onto the underside of the glass map. Blue was for intruding aircraft and red, for friendly. The Fighter control officer above, could then direct the fighter/s on an intercept course.
This process proved to be too slow, and was eventually dropped months before the Allied landings.

      

There are many interesting facts and items to be found in the various rooms of this bunker. Very rare photos of life inside one of these stations.
Above are two photos from the site's brochure, they are of the barrack quarters, for 10 men, and the telephone switchboard.

If you didn't really think radar was very interesting,you will after after a visit to Douvres, the whole history of radar is explained here!

How to get there