Location 1 – The Longues-sur-Mer Battery

Directions – If you are staying in Bayeux, then the British and Canadian landing beaches are best explored from west to east. Take the D104 due north of the town towards Vaux-sur-Aure and Longues-sur-Mer. Go straight on at the traffic lights in the middle of Longues-sur-Mer following the Overlord-L'Assaut signs to the "Batterie". Turn left at the top of the slope into the car park.

The Longues-sur-Mer Battery – One of the greatest dangers to the assaulting forces were the German batteries which guarded the Normandy coastline against seaborne invasion, the most visible elements of what was known as the Atlantic Wall. Altogether there were twenty-three batteries stretching from Cherbourg in the west to the mouth of the Seine in the east, capable of sinking Allied shipping up to 20 kilometres from the coast. Construction of the batteries was undertaken by the Todt Organisation, named after its chief engineer Fritz Todt, and utilising mostly forced labour from across Nazi-occupied Europe. By using a small number of standardised designs, these batteries were completed with surprising speed.

The Longues-sur-Mer battery was no exception with construction taking little more than three months between March and June 1944. The battery consists of four casemates, each comprising 600m3 of concrete and four tons of steel reinforcements. The roofs of each casemate are two metres thick and have earth embankments sloping up to the roof for added protection against aerial bombardment. The guns are C/36 152mm naval guns originally fitted to a Kriegsmarine destroyer and forged at the Skoda works in Pilsen – they are the only surviving coastal guns in Normandy. The casemates comprise a firing chamber and used cartridge trench directly behind the mounting and an ammunition hold near the rear entrance.

About 300m in front of the casemates on the clifftop overlooking the English Channel is the Battery Command Post. Again this is a massive reinforced concrete construction. On the top deck the battery commander and his observers would spot Allied shipping and then telephone target co-ordinates back to the gun positions. Below is a two-storey bunker with a map room, telephone exchange and sleeping quarters for the gunners plus an observation deck facing the Channel (be careful when entering – it's dark and very muddy inside). The rest of the site is littered with machine-gun and mortar positions, known as "Tobruk" emplacements and, nearer the guns, shelters and ammunition holds which would have been connected by communications trenches. In 1944 barbed wire and minefields would have surrounded the site.

What Happened on D-Day? – Located equidistant between the American OMAHA Beach and British GOLD Beach landings and able to engage ships off both, the Longues-sur-Mers battery was high on the list of key targets to be destroyed by aerial bombing and, from May 1944, this was exactly what the Allied airforces tried to do. The aerial bombardment culminated in raids by 124 RAF heavy and USAF medium bombers unloading 600 tons of ordnance on the battery during the night and early morning of 5/6th June. Yet, despite extensive disruption to telephone communications and the concussive effect on their Kriegsmarine occupants, the thick casemates remained relatively unscathed. Their neutralisation would now be the task of the Allied naval fleet offshore.

The British cruiser, HMS Ajax, opened fire first at around 0530, shortly after which the battery began engaging the US landing group off OMAHA. This caused retaliation from the battleship, USS Arkansas, and the French cruiser, Georges Leygues. Under this avalanche of shells the battery fell silent for a while before switching their fire to the east where the British landing forces off GOLD beach were now coming into view. After straddling the GOLD beach command ship, HMS Bulolo, Ajax was joined in the engagement by another French cruiser off OMAHA, the Montcalm and then by the British cruiser, HMS Argonaut. The gun battle continued for the next two hours until, at 0845, with the artillery in the casemates either knocked out or damaged, the battery stopped firing. The German gunners managed to the get the No.1 casemate gun working again in the afternoon but it was finally silenced by fire from the Ajax and Georges Leygues at 1800 hours.

The Capture of the Battery – Whilst the guns had been rendered inoperative, however, the casemates and surrounding defences were still manned and would need to be captured by the British land forces moving up from GOLD beach. This task fell to the 2nd Devons of the 231st Infantry Brigade who had landed on GOLD beach, JIG Sector on 6th June.

Early on the morning of the 7th, following a further softening-up bombardment by HMS Ajax and British fighter-bombers between 0815 and 0845, C Company advanced up the road from the village towards Casemate No.4. Luckily the minefields were not as well-sown as first suspected and, as soon as the Devons appeared near to their positions, many of the German defenders, on the receiving end of bombs and medium naval artillery for 24 hours, decided to surrender. Some Kriegsmarine gunners, however, fought on and the western-most casemates and the battery command post had to be cleared by rifle, grenade and machine-gun. By 1100 the battery was secured and 90 bedraggled prisoners rounded up.

The view looking across the battery towards the point from which C Company, 2nd Devons advanced, with Casemate No.4, from which the first Germans surrendered, on the right. Photo: Mark Sluman. Click on image for full size (237 KB).

The ordeal of these men was revealed to one of the Devons following the battery's capture,

"The German told us he was a sailor not a soldier but he had never been to sea. This we had not known and I began to feel for him when he explained how the RAF had hit his battery regularly and how they felt like sitting ducks on the cliff top. The sight of the invasion fleet was intimidating and it was only our Navy's gunfire that prevented many of them from running away! They had no instructions what to do but the officers said that they were to fight us "Tommies" when we came but the final bombardment convinced several groups to surrender."