D-Day part 6 Longues-sur-Mer-Battery and Carentan

The Longues-sur-Mer battery was a World War II artillery battery constructed by the Wehrmacht near the French village of Longues-sur-Mer in Normandy. It formed a part of Germany's Atlantic Wall coastal fortifications.
The battery was completed by April 1944. Although constructed and manned initially by the Kriegsmarine, the battery was later transferred to the German army. The site consisted of four 152-mm navy guns, each protected by a large concrete casemate, a command post, shelters for personnel and ammunition, and several defensive machine-gun emplacements.


The battery at Longues was situated between the landing beaches Omaha and Gold. On the night before the D-Day landings of 6 June 1944, the battery was subject to heavy bombing from allied air forces. The bombing was followed from 0537hrs on the morning of the landings by bombardment from the French cruiser Georges Leygues as well as the U.S. battleship Arkansas. The battery itself opened fire at 0605hrs and fired a total of 170 shots throughout the day, forcing the flagship HMS Bulolo to retreat to safer water. Three of the four guns were eventually disabled by British cruisers Ajax and Argonaut, though a single gun continued to operate intermittently until 1900hrs that evening. The crew of the battery (184 men, half of them over 40 years old) surrendered to the 231st Infantry Brigade the following day. The heaviest damage was caused by the explosion of the ammunition for a AA gun, mounted by the British on the roof of casemate No.4, which killed several British soldiers.

^{An ariel shot after the battle showing the heavy cratering from both air and sea bourne artillary.}

Here is a shot i tokk showing the line of casements as they are today..

A contemporary shot taken after the battery has been taken..

Eddie and myself outside the casements as they look today.

Some were taken with their guns intact..

A close up showing the tooling inside the barrel of one of the guns..

One of the casements is destroyed, not by allied bombing though but this exploded when being used as a bomb store for the a nearby hastily built RAF airfield.

The Guns are aiming towards the beaches of Omaha and Utah..

There's always one....

Carentan

The battle of Carentan is quite a tale and instead of being reproduced here by me can be read here at this link  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Carentan .  It has also been portrayed as a seperate episode in the Steven Speilberg drama series 'The Band of Brothers'.

Here are a couple of pics I took when visiting Carentan..

This pic shows the handing over ceremony to the Mayor after it has been liberated by the allies.  If you look to the right of the pic you can make out a little girl, 8 years old who presented the incumbent allied commander with a bouquet of flowers.  Minutes after this picture was taken she would be laying dead in the square as the Germans opened up with mortars scattering the presentation party.

This picture is taken by me of the square today.  I am stood on the statue that you can see on the picture above.  The arches o the right of the pic show my position relative to the picture above.

Came across this renovated landing craft in the port area of the town.

Further research on the web has highlighted that this little landing craft has a unique history and we were lucky to find it.  The full story can be read here..

http://www.americancenterfrance.org/front/index.php?&lvlid=24&dsgtypid=10&artid=97&pos=0&lang=en