Friday, August 05, 2011

D Day Today: 6. Maisy Battery

Maisy battery is about 5km west of Pointe du Hoc and a couple of km inland.  It was buried by the local farmer after the war but rediscovered, excavated and then opened to the public in 2007.  It doesn't have big artillery bunkers with concrete roofs, its armament of 155mm howitzers and 37mm flack were in open bunkers.  Those open bunkers are exposed along with the support bunker system for accomodation, command, ammo storage and the interconnecting trench system.  Thus it is quite different to the other battery sites I visited and very informative. 


 This is a bunker entrance with the typical machine gun hole to protect it from infantry attack.

A "tobruk" machine gun post on the side of one of the bunkers.














An example of the information signs at the Maisey battery.  This one explaining what a tobruk is.  At this site they give you a map to self guide & you follow the arrows & the info signs are in French & English.






One of the 155mm gun emplacements.  This is a field gun from elsewhere put here to indicate the size of the original guns.  The original guns were mounted on steel turntables on the concrete base. 
They had no concrete lids here, just cammo nets,  but being in pits needed a direct hit to be taken out.













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