The D Day Series. Beyond the Beaches; Visit Longues Sur Mer and see how it could have played a pivotal role on D Day.
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Anyone with an interest in the D Day Landings should definitely visit the gun battery at Longues Sur Mer. The shear size of the casements and their guns suggest that they were untouchable. One gets the feeling that any shell coming out of their barrels would go a long way and do an awful lot of damage. Several attempts were made to put them out of action before they finally succumbed to naval bombardment on D Day. They could have turned the successful D-Day landings into a total disaster.
The battery was made up of four guns with the objective “to destroy the enemy before he is able to land, as far away from the coast as possible or, if necessary, as soon as he sets foot on the beaches.” Knowing that the RAF would have taken aerial photos of the casements, the sheer size of them would scare the Allies off from attacking this area.
A concrete casement to protect the guns was approximately, 15 metres long, 10 metres wide and 6 metres high. To ensure the guns were never put out of action, each casement was built with 600 cubic metres of concrete which was reinforced by 4 tons of steel. Like a good medieval castle, the walls were 2 metres thick and were constructed to survive an aerial assault. To prevent a bomb being dropped at the side of a casement and undermining it, an underground foundation plinth was created.
Having written down how strong these casements were, some people have a theory that on the right of the casement photo above, the concrete has been severely damaged and this can be explained by poor quality concrete. How could this have happened? By suggesting that the French and foreign workers of the Todt Organisation, the organisation that built the casements, might have sabotaged it at the construction stage to assist any possible allied attack.
With vegetation growing around them and camouflage nets draped over the top the casements were not easy to spot from the air.
The 4 guns here were not newly created to do their part in the “Atlantic Wall”. They were built in 1928 and had been designed to take out ships. They weighed a huge 20 tons and had barrels that were 8 metres long. The guns were able to shoot 45 kg shells nearly13 miles (20km) which would mean taking out ships off the coasts of Omaha and Gold Beaches. They could fire these shells at a rate of 6 per minute, which in total meant 24 shells from the battery per minute, quite a formidable fire power.
Above and below; the remains of one of the gun barrels.
Above and below; the “Control Bunker” situated on the edge of the cliffs to give observers the best view possible of any approaching enemy ships.
The bunker was made up of two floors. On the upper floor, observers would be based, endlessly staring out to sea with the help of binoculars and on the lower floor, calculations would be made using a range finder to ascertain the exact position of the spotted enemy vessel. These calculations would then be sent via buried radio cables to the casements so that they could raise or lower their guns and/or move them sideways to get an accurate shot. Although the RAF bombed the casements, they missed but they were able to destroy the buried cables! The Germans discovered that it was better to lay the cables on the surface and replace them if they got damaged rather than keep burying them.
Above; Loretta’s father’s RAF log book. He was a radio operator in the Pathfinders in World War Two and flew in a Lancaster bomber. At the bottom of this page he mentions Longues and remarks that it was his “heaviest raid of the war”. Notice that on the 3rd June, he bombed Calais, miles from the landing beaches. Why was this? This raid was probably part of the deception to reinforce the German view that the Allies would land in the Calais area. I use the word reinforce because there were numerous parts of this deception plan. Listening to decoded German messages, the decoders at Bletchley had read countless German reports that the Allies were definitely going to invade in the Calais area.
The Command Bunker was also connected to the overall commander at Cherbourg but on June 6th, these overhead cables were also destroyed, this time, by the French Resistance.
Above, the observer would look through this gap which was wide enough and big enough, to give him a good view but not big enough for most shells to get through the window to the interior.
What happened on D Day to the Longues Sur Mer Battery?
Although the four guns never hit their targets out to sea, they fired 170 shells at ships off both Omaha and Gold Beaches. Eventually, the British ships, Ajax and Argonaut, took out three casements and the French ship, Georges Leygues put the last casement out of action. On June 7th, 184 soldiers who had manned the battery, surrendered to the 2nd Battalion Devonshire Regiment without putting up much of a fight. The casements now sit as a reminder of how amazing the successful landings were.
Essential information.
Getting there;
Address, Batterie de Longues Sur Mer 39 Rue de la Mer, 14400 Longues-sur-Mer, France. Your Sat Nav will be able to take you right to it. There is plenty of free parking.
Opening times and fees;
Open all hours and it is free to visit.
