Day off riding today to visit La Coupole a WW2 site that could have changed the outcome of the war and Europe. Built by the German army in 1943-1944 to launch V2 rockets to target London. When the allies bombed the site they reckon they were less than 3 months from launching their first rocket.
The sacrifices so many made, moving letters from resistance fighters hours away from facing a firing squad, fighter pilots risking all by flying low to gain images of suspect sites, experts interpreting the high resolution images, to bomber pilots, bombardiers and their navigators who survived heavy flak fire to immobilise similar rocket launching sites. One under ground factory alone in Germany had 26,000 conscripted workers who were guarded by 3000 SS - at the end of the war 2000 bodies were found at this site by dumbfounded GI’s.

Today the site is a museum that takes you from the occupation to the hidden face of US space exploration (following the end of the war they took 150 of the best German rocket engineers to work on their space program despite what they did during the war). I spent almost 5 hours in the museum leaving feeling totally overwhelmed when I left and trying to make sense of the moving experience now sheltering in my camp site under cover in a huge electrical storm ⛈