How the Nazis Invented Iran’s Missile City

Hello, this is the Captain. Tunneling is the answer chosen by Israel’s enemies to some of the most famous advantages of the IDF, for example, excellent fighter jets, sensors among the best in the world, and intelligence capabilities that border on science fiction. As for my previous columns, the Iranian comeback of the A-10: is it still not suitable for the IDF? Anatomy of a threat, everything they did not tell you about Hezbollah’s new drones. The helicopters are already there, so why not destroy Iran’s mines from the air? All of these are, unfortunately, less relevant when the target is protected under a billion tons of rock and cannot be seen or monitored, and dropping a bomb exactly in the right place is a challenge even for the United States’ stealth bombers.

You can see it very clearly across all the arenas. Hamas built weapons factories in halls beneath Gaza’s cities, Hezbollah released videos of rotating missile launchers inside tunnels, and every Israeli knows Iran’s dangerous missile cities. Today we will talk about them, understand where they came from, and learn how the modern missile tunnel developed and what it has to do with the dispute between the political echelon and the military echelon beneath it.

Let’s start with some ancient history. Here in the Middle East, military tunneling is not a new invention. The finest soldiers of Sargon, king of Akkad, dug offensive tunnels to conquer enemy cities some 4,300 years ago. There are also records of offensive tunnel warfare in ancient Greece, and any child who visited Beit Guvrin can tell you about the use of the underground for defense and concealment, if he listened a little before the selfie in the Bell Cave.

The roots of ballistic missile tunnels go back 80 years, and like many air warfare innovations, this one also emerged from the mind of a Nazi. In late 1942, Germany began building infrastructure for its most important weapon, the A4 aggregate missile, better known as the V2. We are talking about the first ballistic missile in history, a development led by engineer Werner von Braun, with components built by Jewish laborers under hellish conditions, a weapon no country knew how to detect and certainly not to intercept, one that tore through the sky at thousands of kilometers per hour and could easily reach from occupied Holland to the alleys of London. There would be no sirens, no sound of bomber engines, a murderous surprise attack on innocent civilians. Exactly what Hitler wanted, so he could sow terror in the British rear and push civilians to beg King George to restrain his army and ask the United States to stop the war.

The officers leading the missile project on the military side wanted the V2 to be launched from a vehicle, one that could hide in the forests of Europe, evade any possible air strike, and give Germany breathing room while it wore down the cities of its rivals. Hitler heard this and was horrified. What nonsense. The tyrant wanted everything grand, inflated, excessive, and his magnificent missiles were to be launched from an indestructible base, a large facility wrapped in huge belts of concrete, similar to other bunker systems built in the Third Reich. The Führer’s order was carried out, and in the summer of 1943 such a base began to be built in northwestern France, near the town of Watten. The Allies picked up the project thanks to a rich network of local agents and regular reconnaissance flights, and from August a steady bombing campaign of the construction site began. Again and again the equipment and stockpiles of materials were destroyed, and the project simply stalled.

Hitler was angry at Luftwaffe commander Hermann Göring, cursed and waved his hands theatrically, but he still did not listen to the officers’ advice. Mobile launchers? Shameful. Instead, he ordered an underground missile fortress, a site so protected that it would be death proof, a base that nothing could destroy from the air, not even an asteroid ridden by all of Wagner’s Valkyries. The location was nearby, about 14 kilometers from the Watten bunker, and the new fortress was designed to be the factory shop of the missiles. It was dug into the side of a quarry and included a large main tunnel with a railway, through which V2 parts and equipment entered. Inside, the missiles were assembled, and the oxidizer, part of the missile fuel, was produced there on site. Each ready missile was placed on a launch stand running on rails out of the tunnel, launched, and returned for the next missile.

Five launch tunnels were planned there, and behind them an underground route leading to maintenance, living, office, and medical complexes, kilometers of fortified tunnels. Above all this was planned to sit a huge concrete dome, 84 meters in diameter, 5 meters thick, with an estimated weight of 55,000 tons. The dome was not chosen by chance. Its curved shape provides better protection against standard bombs and increases the chance that a bomb will be deflected rather than planted inside it. In this way, the German engineers thought, Allied attacks would be blocked, and this huge shield gave the base its name, La Coupole, the dome.

Construction began in October, and the Nazis brought mainly legitimate workers and fewer forced laborers to the area. Allied agents picked up the project very quickly, and reports about it flowed into Britain like beer in a London pub, although intelligence officers took time to understand what the Nazis were doing there and to give La Coupole the proper priority. That happened in the spring of 1944, and 187 heavy bombers roared over France and dropped bombs on the project. Once again, construction equipment was damaged, and the building of the dome slowed. In the summer the attacks escalated. Tallboy bombs were dropped, a dedicated bunker-busting weapon with an especially thick casing that helps it penetrate the ground, and an underground explosion that collapses fortifications.

I told you about that bomb. The British used it to try to destroy dams in Germany. The bombs pierced the dome’s structure and caused the collapse of three of the five missile tunnels, which stalled La Coupole even further. Shortly afterward, the workers and security forces at the fortress were ordered to evacuate immediately. German intelligence fell for one of the most important deceptions in military history and feared that an Allied invasion was imminent on the Pas de Calais coast, which is relatively close to La Coupole.

Hitler raged again, and was horrified when the Allies landed in Normandy instead. This time he had to listen to the military echelon, and he did not object when the V2 missiles began to be operated from trucks with mobile teams. And this time, beautifully, the method worked from beginning to end. Attack aircraft had a very hard time finding the launchers, since there is no shortage of forests in the Netherlands and Belgium from which the missiles were launched, and the Allies focused on striking the logistical chain of the ballistic missiles rather than chasing V2 trucks.

After World War II, a new world order was established, in which two superpowers with opposing ideologies invested everything they had in the most destructive weapons ever seen. The ballistic missile, the star of the previous war, received a nuclear warhead in the 1950s, both in the United States and in the Soviet Union. And the two rivals quickly began building bases for these missiles to keep them for the day of reckoning. The Soviets were first. At first they installed underground fueling and maintenance systems in the R-7 missile bases at Baikonur, and in 1960 the first ballistic missile base of the USSR was built in Plokštinė in western Lithuania. It had four large vertical shafts, inside which R12 missiles could threaten all of Western Europe.

The United States saw this, puffed out its chest, rolled up its sleeves, and inaugurated in Salina, Kansas, its first operational missile base, which also contained a dozen missiles, including Atlas F models that could fly all the way to Russia. The Soviets were not to be outdone. Naturally, an arms race began, and both sides adopted the Nazi concept, very large bases that kept growing steadily. The number of launch shafts increased to dozens as well, to deliver as powerful a nuclear strike as possible. And the bases were dug ever deeper to improve the chances that they would survive a surprise attack, or a counterstrike.

Such an attack was bound to come, for sure. The superpowers knew where the rival bases were, because it is not easy to hide the digging of enormous shafts for ballistic missiles, 40 meters deep. Therefore the rivals preserved nuclear launch capability also from bombers and submarines, so they would not lose in the opening blow. By the late 1970s, militaries understood that their superweapon was in danger. There had been significant improvements in the accuracy of air-to-ground munitions, and missile bases were no longer safe enough for the long arm. The result was the development of mobile launchers capable of carrying and firing even intercontinental missiles, and hiding in forests when needed.

Since the end of the 20th century, one can see a full combination of fixed underground systems and launch vehicles. This is a configuration common in China and North Korea, in India and Pakistan, and also in Russia, and it provides both protection and flexibility, as well as concealment when needed. This is how Iran’s missile cities work too. These are giant complexes dug into the sides of ridges so that the main protective layer is the topography itself. In each complex there are many launchers that can exit from many tunnels, launch and return inside within minutes, or fire from an internal hall, as we saw in bases in Lebanon.

But the Iranian case is fundamentally different in one thing we all know well. In all the countries I mentioned, a strategic missile base is meant to deliver one nuclear blow, perhaps two, before being attacked by the enemy. Iran does not think in terms of a single strike at all. Its missile bases are meant to allow continuous and sustained firing, even after severe damage to the infrastructure. For this purpose, it likely has equipment and facilities for very long stays by the operators, until their enemies wear down or give up. And the Iranian missile city also has assembly and maintenance complexes, a kind of combination of Hitler’s approach and that of his generals.

Despite the many years of humanity developing underground missile bases, the vast majority of armies have no experience in attacking and destroying one. After all, a war between the superpowers did not happen, to humanity’s relief. The first attempt to hunt mobile launchers took place in the 1991 Gulf War, and it failed miserably. The first attempt to attack a missile city was carried out by Israel and the United States in the current war.

And as every Israeli will attest, the success was partial. We managed together to neutralize the bases temporarily, but destroying a missile city? That is already a story from another era. For example, sometimes the tunnel is deeper than the bombs’ penetration capability. Sometimes it is not, but there is no intelligence on the shape of the base, so the bombs do not ignite the missile depots simply because they are on the other side of the mountain. Parts of the missile base can be isolated from one another by blast doors, and the rock itself blocks much of the damage effect. So even if one missile warehouse exploded, it does not necessarily mean that a missile warehouse in the neighboring tunnel will explode too. And as long as launchers and tunnels remain in place, the base can continue firing even if it is hit.

So what can be done with these missile cities? I am currently unable to expand on the creative solutions on our side and on America’s side, which will come to light when the fire resumes. And the IDF has another advantage in this story that others do not, quality missile defense, which keeps improving all the time. But remember that in any case, missile bases are a very complex challenge, one for which people have been looking for a complete solution for 80 years, and no army has yet managed to find one. Take care of yourselves, stay alert, and we will win.