Sottevast V2 bunker  Sottevast was a Second World War bunker complex for launching V2-weapons in Sottevast near Cherbourg, in Normandy, France. It was built, under the codename Reservelager West (Reserve Store West), by the forces of Nazi Germany between 1943 and 1944 to serve as a launch base for V-2 rockets directed against southern England. The bunker was never completed as a result of the bombings by the British and United States air forces as part of Operation Crossbow against the German V-weapons program and the Normandy landings in June 1944. The V-2 rocket (, "Retribution Weapon 2") one of several innovative long-range weapons developed by the Germans after the failure of the Luftwaffe to strike a decisive blow against Britain. The missile, powered by a liquid-propellant rocket engine, was developed during the Second World War in Germany as a "vengeance weapon", assigned to attack Allied cities as retaliation for the Allied bombings against German cities. The German leadership hoped that a barrage of rockets unleashed against London would force Britain out of the war. Although Adolf Hitler was at first ambivalent, he eventually became an enthusiastic supporter of the V-2 program as Allied air forces carried out increasingly devastating attacks on German cities. Nazi Germany decided to build four giant bombproof bunkers to assemble, service and launch V2 rockets in the North of France. Watten and Wizernes were set up in Pas-de-Calais, Sottevast and Brécourt on the Cherbourg peninsula in Normandy. At the end of May 1943, the British Chiefs of Staff ordered that aerial attacks be carried out against the so-called "heavy sites" being built for the V-weapons. On 27 August 1943, the US Air force attacked Watten with devastating effect. It was no longer possible to use it as a V-2 launch site, but the Germans still needed liquid oxygen production facilities to supply V-2 sites elsewhere. The Germans' main focus of attention switched instead to "Schotterwerk Nordwest", the former quarry at nearby Wizernes, where work had been ongoing to build a bombproof V-2 storage facility. This project was expanded to turn the quarry into a fixed launch facility. The "Reservelager West" in Sottevast and the "Olkeller Cherbourg" near Brécourt were designed to be launcher bunkers like Watten with the main building measuring about   Following Operation Crossbow bombing, initial plans for launching from the massive underground Watten and Wizernes bunkers or fixed pads such as near the Château du Molay were dropped and forced Walter Dornberger to develop mobile launching systems.