Douvres-la-Délivrande

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in French. (December 2008) Click [show] for important translation instructions.

View a machine-translated version of the French article.
Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia.
Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing French Wikipedia article at [[:fr:Douvres-la-Délivrande]]; see its history for attribution.
You may also add the template {{Translated|fr|Douvres-la-Délivrande}} to the talk page.
For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Commune in Normandy, France

Coat of arms

Location of Douvres-la-Délivrande

(2020–2026) Thierry Lefort^[1]Area

10.71 km² (4.14 sq mi)Population

(2021)^[2]

5,097 • Density480/km² (1,200/sq mi)Time zoneUTC+01:00 (CET) • Summer (DST)UTC+02:00 (CEST)INSEE/Postal code

14228 /14440

Elevation17–58 m (56–190 ft)
(avg. 19 m or 62 ft)¹ French Land Register data, which excludes lakes, ponds, glaciers > 1 km² (0.386 sq mi or 247 acres) and river estuaries.

Douvres-la-Délivrande (French pronunciation: [duvʁ la delivʁɑ̃d] ^ⓘ) is a commune in the Calvados department in the Normandy region in northwestern France. The name was simply Douvres until 1961, when it was expanded to refer to the basilica Notre-Dame de la Délivrande ("Our Lady of Deliverance"), located in the town, a site of pilgrimage.

History

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.

The Northern zone held a large Siemens 'Wasserman' long-range radar and associated structures. The larger Southern zone had two intermediate-range Freya and two short-range Würzburg Riese radars; as well as command and infirmary bunkers, garages and artillery placements. Some 230 Luftwaffe personnel were based at the station, including electricians, engineers and 36 air controllers.

At 11 pm on the night of 5/6 June 1944, the Allies launched intensive jamming of radar frequencies which blinded the entire German radar network from Cherbourg to Le Havre. On the morning of the 6th (D-Day) the antennas at Douvres-la-Délivrande were rendered inoperative by Allied naval artillery bombardment.

Canadian troops who had landed nearby on 'Juno Beach' isolated the station but the Germans successfully defended it for 12 days, awaiting a counter-attack by Panzers; on one occasion it was resupplied with food via a nocturnal paradrop mission from Mont-de-Marsan.

On 17 June, a massive offensive by the British 41 Commando, Royal Marines - preceded by an artillery bombardment and supported by mine-clearing and anti-bunker tanks of 79th Armoured Division - secured the surrender of the garrison.

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 commune has a war cemetery with the graves of 1123 soldiers from both the Allied and Axis forces:

927 British
180 Germans
11 Canadians
3 Australians
1 Pole
1 unknown soldier

Population

Historical population
Year	Pop.	±% p.a.
1968	1,916	—
1975	2,356	+3.00%
1982	2,877	+2.90%
1990	3,983	+4.15%
1999	4,809	+2.12%
2007	4,884	+0.19%
2012	5,072	+0.76%
2017	5,062	−0.04%
Source: INSEE^[3]

International relations

The commune is twinned with:

Oerlenbach, Germany, since 2003
Axminster, UK, since 1999

References

^ "Répertoire national des élus: les maires". data.gouv.fr, Plateforme ouverte des données publiques françaises (in French). 2 December 2020.
^ "Populations légales 2021". The National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies. 28 December 2023.
^ Population en historique depuis 1968, INSEE