Sottevast (Manche)
Les villes de Normandie pendant les combats de 1944
- Liberation: 20 June 1944
- Units involved:
314th Infantry Regiment, 79th Infantry Division
- History:
In 1943, during the Occupation, the Germans began construction of a gigantic V2 rocket assembly and launch site on land in the commune of Sottevast. The project was called Reservelager West (RLW), and its dimensions were impressive: the main building, which was supposed to contain around forty V2 rockets, was 92 metres long, 75 metres wide and 28 metres high, with walls over 4 metres thick. All the buildings on the site will require more than 118,000 m3 of concrete. The project is also known as Sottevast-Brix, given the site’s proximity to the Brix municipality.
The Allies, informed by aerial reconnaissance flights, realised the purpose of the works on 20 October 1943. They decided to slow down the work as much as possible by regularly bombing the site: the Allies wanted at all costs to avoid saturation fire from the V2 rockets in the south of England, where they were preparing to mass troops and equipment for Operation Overlord. The first bombing mission against the Sottevast site was organised on 26 November 1943. Ten raids followed, from 8 February to 8 May 1944: a total of 723 tonnes of bombs were dropped by 301 Allied aircraft. This relentless effort paid off: work was halted by the Germans and the site never saw the light of day.
On 19 June 1944, the Americans of the 79th Infantry Division experienced their baptism of fire to the south-west of Sottevast. Advancing towards Cherbourg along what is now Route Nationale 13, they pushed through the German defences, which proved incapable of slowing the Americans down.
On the morning of 20 June, the 314th Infantry Regiment (IR) commanded by Colonel Warren A. Robinson liberated Sottevast and then continued towards Saint-Martin-le-Gréard. The 1st Battalion of the 314th IR discovered the abandoned RLW worksite. The initial reports from the American infantrymen testified to the extraordinary nature of the site, describing it as a ‘platform for robot aircraft’.
Sottevast map:
