Station Radar 44 - Musée franco-Allemand du Radar

14440 Douvres-la-Délivrande, France (Normandie)

Wikipedia:
World War II

During the Second World War, Douvres-la-Délivrande was the site of an important German air-detection radar installation, part of the strategic Atlantic Wall defences. Completed in the autumn of 1943, the station was split into two zones by the road from Douvres to Bény-sur-Mer; and heavily fortified with bunkers, machineguns and minefields.

Present day

The radar site at Douvres-la-Délivrande is now home to a museum, with two of the bunkers housing displays about the evolution and role of radar. The museum also maintains a rare preserved example of the 'Würzburg' radar antenna.

The Würzburg-Riese radar

A true symbol of the museum, the Würzburg radar was present on the site in 1944, two of which operated in pairs, one tracking Allied aircraft and the other guiding German aircraft.
The Würzburg-Riese (Giant) radar, with its 8-metre diameter dish, could track aircraft up to 80 kilometres away. 1,500 were produced during the war.

All the radars on the site were destroyed in the fighting. The radar on display today comes from another station, where it was recovered by Professor Yves Rocard, the father of French radio astronomy, to be used as a radio telescope at Meudon, and later at Nançay.
In the early 1990s, contacts between the Nançay research centre and the Caen Memorial led to the acquisition of this radar, which had become obsolete for radio astronomy. The town of Caen and the Memorial restored it to its original condition and installed it in the Radar Museum in Dover, created in 1994 to mark the 50th anniversary of the D-Day landings.

In its current configuration, the radar was installed on a concrete base rebuilt to house the structure. Only the cab and parabola date from the war, while the arms, cab staircase and other parts have been rebuilt identically.
The radar underwent another phase of restoration in the 2000s and is now awaiting a new campaign to restore it to its former glory. It is one of the very few examples that can still be seen in Europe today.

The Freya radar

Started in 2012, the construction of a replica of a Freya radar, with the help of the Association Pour le Devoir de Mémoire, is continuing. A cabin and an earthen embankment should help to illustrate what the Freya radars at Dover represented during the war.

The COTAL

Installed at the entrance to the museum on its mobile trailer, this was the first post-war French radar, built by Thomson from an American licence for the SCR 584. It was used in Algeria. Its role was to direct artillery fire at targets.

The SCR 584

This radar comes from the Monterfil radar station, near Rennes. Recovered thanks to the Association des Amis du Musée Radar, this American radar shows just how different and technologically advanced the Allies were compared with the Würzburg radar, which was just behind it. The performance of the SCR 584 is identical to that of the Würzburg, but the two radars are clearly different in size, thanks to the development of microwave techniques (centimetre wavelengths).

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