Azeville battery

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

The Azeville battery was a German World War II coastal defense position near the village of Azeville in Normandy. Built in 1941 as part of the Atlantic Wall, it housed four 105 mm guns in fortified casemates. The casemates were two H671 designs and two H650 designs, completed by December 1941. Casemate No. 1 and No. 2 were H671; Nos. 3 and 4 were H650. Each casemate had a small flak gun on the roof, two machine-gun openings, a ready room for 12 soldiers, and two rooms with shells and charges (about 300 rounds per gun). The gun pits could sweep 120 degrees and elevate up to 35 degrees, giving a range of about 12 km. The four casemates stood about 40 m apart and were connected by 700 m of tunnels, with ammunition bunkers, mortar pits, Tobruks with machine guns, and a minefield. The outer walls were painted to look like local ruined buildings. Fire control for Azeville came from Crisbecq battery, about 2 km away.

The battery was manned by about 170 German soldiers from the 2nd Company of the 1261 Heeresküstenartillerie-Regiment, under Captain Hugo Treiber. A lieutenant named Kattnig handled daily operations. The garrison had no on-site barracks and was billeted in nearby villages. The casemates were linked by armored communications, and the position was run from a fire-control bunker at Crisbecq.

Azeville was one of the first German coastal defenses built on the French coast and saw action during the Normandy invasion. On June 6, 1944, the four 105 mm guns fired on ships near Utah Beach and bombarded the beach to slow the Allied advance. The Americans attacked in the following days. The USS Nevada bombarded the position on June 8, damaging casemate No. 1 and killing its crew. By the morning of June 9, after heavy fighting, the remaining German defenders surrendered at 2:30 p.m. Of about 253 Germans at the battery, 78 were killed and the rest were captured or escaped north.

Today the site is owned by the local council, and one of the casemates has been turned into a museum. The remaining bunkers, tunnels and gun pits are preserved as a reminder of Normandy’s coastal defenses.