Bloody Omaha /Timewatch bbc 2 9pm jan 6th

Latchy

One to watch

From Todays Daily Telegraph

Amateur historian unearths Nazi battery
By Stephen Adams
Last Updated: 2:28am GMT 05/01/2008



An amateur British military historian has unearthed a vast underground Nazi gun battery complex thought to have caused carnage during the D-Day landings.

Google Map: Maisy Battery
Gary Sterne, 43, discovered the huge "Maisy Battery" after he found a crinkled map which fell out of an old pair of US serviceman's trousers at a military memorabilia fair in Stockport.

Gary Sterne discovered the Maisy Battery, an extensive installation "the size of four football pitches"

It turned out to be an invasion map for Omaha Beach, which included an area marked "area of high resistance". Mr Sterne, a publisher and collector, believed that this could show the "lost" Nazi gun emplacements, which became buried by nature after the war and could not be located.

Experts were divided about the battery's location and most believed that the area where Mr Sterne was looking was nothing but fields. But after travelling to Normandy to search for himself he stumbled across an entrance to the complex in undergrowth.

He said: "It sparked my curiosity, because that area was previously thought to be just fields."

He discovered an extensive installation "the size of four football pitches", including bunkers, offices, a sizeable field hospital - minus its roof - and housing for 155mm cannon. Trenches surrounding the buildings stretched for a mile and a half.

Within hours of the landings on Jun 6, 1944, at least 2,000 Allied troops are thought to have died. In the days that followed, until the Maisy Battery was captured on Jun 9, hundreds more lost their lives. Mr Sterne said he thought shelling from the battery contributed heavily to Allied losses. It was finally captured following aerial bombardment with 2,000lb bombs.

The Omaha landings and the loss of life that resulted was dramatised in Steven Spielberg's 1998 blockbuster Saving Private Ryan.


The infrastructure of Maisy Battery remained largely intact

Despite being bombed heavily itself, the infrastructure of Maisy Battery - or Grandcamp Maisy, as it was also known - remained largely intact. However, over the years it was lost as nature took hold, and it remained buried in French soil for more than 60 years.

The Germans had built a decoy gun emplacement overlooking the area and the location of the real guns which blasted the beach remained unclear until Mr Sterne's find.

The father-of-two from Cheadle Hulme, Cheshire, has bought a house close to the battery and subsequently spent thousands of pounds buying the 40 acres covering the site from 32 different landowners. He then spent two years excavating the site.

Mr Sterne has also contacted veterans of the US 5th Ranger Battalion, who confirmed that they took Maisy Battery from the Germans. They also revealed that they found $4.2?million worth of French francs, which was shared among the men.

advertisementMr Sterne now plans to open a museum on the site.

The battery will be featured in a documentary for a BBC Timewatch programme, Bloody Omaha, which will be presented by Richard Hammond and broadcast on BBC2 tomorrow at 9pm.

SpitfireIV

Excellent, thanks for that latchyco! I like anything to do with battlefield archaeology or interesting, 'off the beaten track' stories relating to the World Wars.

Shall be watching that!

lostexpectation

watched the prog,it was interesting, basically it said,
1. when the raid the beaches weren't well defended, by the next year they germans were more than ready for it.

2. there planed bombing raids and ship artillery to decimate all these defences missed!, the soldiers were told that the german defences would be wrecked but they weren't and this is why they got slaughtered on the beaches. typical generals ****ing up and the grunts getting srewed.

this is something that I hadn't seen talked about before, but in the program they never said how the planes missed and where the bombs actually hit.

dresden8

Generally strategic bombers were not up to the job of pinpoint bombing so the accuracy was arseways. This was the objection that Bomber Harris had to heavy bombers being used in the tactical role.

Apparently, because of the above the crews (or higher up) gave a little bit of extra space to avoid hitting the ships in the channel. Bingo, screwed up attack.

Was it Churchill who said that war was a serious of blunders leading to victory? Something along those lines anyway.

mike65

I wondered why Omaha was ever chosen, it was clearly a ready made "kill-zone" by its 'design'.

Mike.

SpitfireIV

Seen the documentary, it was interesting, good watch.

I was a little dissapointed though that there wasnt much on the discovery/excavation etc of the Maisy Battery, it featured in the programme for what? 10 minutes? :rolleyes:

Latchy

Quote Mike65-I wondered why Omaha was ever chosen, it was clearly a ready made "kill-zone" by its 'design'.

Mike.

Likwise to confuse Hitler and his generals that to attempt an invasion from that location was madness when calais seemed they more likley place were it would come from.If the bombers had hit the targets correctly we might have had a different scenario with less casualtys

CroppyBoy1798 wrote: »

Seen the documentary, it was interesting, good watch.

I was a little dissapointed though that there wasnt much on the discovery/excavation etc of the Maisy Battery, it featured in the programme for what? 10 minutes? :rolleyes:

From what i
read in the newspaper article if it is to be believed ,it was covered up out of embarresment .I expected more about the discovery of the Battery to.

Mick86

lostexpectation wrote: »

....2. there planed bombing raids and ship artillery to decimate all these defences missed!, the soldiers were told that the german defences would be wrecked but they weren't and this is why they got slaughtered on the beaches. typical generals ****ing up and the grunts getting srewed.

this is something that I hadn't seen talked about before, but in the program they never said how the planes missed and where the bombs actually hit.

What would you expect the Generals to tell their men? That they'd been bombing the sh!te out of Normandy for weeks and still hadn't dented the defences? If they did that nobody would get off the ships.:D

The bombs hit somewhere around their targets. They just didn't have the pinpoint accuracy to put bombs onto the gun emplacements and so on. Even today with laser guided bombs, aerial bombardment is more morale-sapping than anything else. NATO spent a month bombing Kosovo in 1999 and at the end of it all the Sebs drove their tanks (that had been reported destroyed) back to Belgrade.

dresden8 wrote: »

Generally strategic bombers were not up to the job of pinpoint bombing so the accuracy was arseways. This was the objection that Bomber Harris had to heavy bombers being used in the tactical role..

Have you read Bomber Command by Max Hastings? Getting a bomb within a mile of the target was considered an achievement at one stage. He tells the story of a British bomber whose crew thought it was bombing German airfields in Holland when it was actually bombing Fighter Command in Yorkshire.:D

mike65 wrote: »

I wondered why Omaha was ever chosen, it was clearly a ready made "kill-zone" by its 'design'.

Mike.

Not landing on Omaha would have left a huge gap between the Americans on Utah and the rest of the invasion. Invading on Utah was necessary to capture Cherbourg, a major port.

CroppyBoy1798 wrote: »

I was a little dissapointed though that there wasnt much on the discovery/excavation etc of the Maisy Battery, it featured in the programme for what? 10 minutes? :rolleyes:

Reading the blurb, I thought that the Maisy Battery offered something new and exciting. Really it's just another ho-hum part of the Atlantic Wall. A few minutes drive down the road will bring you to the Longues battery or the Merville Battery. Basically the same thing. There must be "Maisy" Batteries buried all along the coast from Denmark to Spain.

latchyco wrote: »

If the bombers had hit the targets correctly we might have had a different scenario with less casualtys.

In the scheme of things casualties were relatively light. About 10,000 Allies were killed, wounded or captured. Churchill anticipated twice that. Compare with 26,000 US casualties in 5 weeks fighting on Iwo Jima or 16,500 in three weeks on Saipan, which were much smaller invasion forces.

latchyco wrote: »

From what i
read in the newspaper article if it is to be believed ,it was covered up out of embarresment .I expected more about the discovery of the Battery to.

What embarrassment?

Fratton Fred

Slightly different but related topic. Exercie Tiger is another so called "Embarrassment" that was covered up for years. I only heard about it after visiting Slapton Sands and coming across a Sherman Tank on the sea front there.

http://www.shermantank.co.uk/home.ikml

Snickers Man

Fratton Fred wrote: »

Slightly different but related topic. Exercie Tiger is another so called "Embarrassment" that was covered up for years. I only heard about it after visiting Slapton Sands and coming across a Sherman Tank on the sea front there.

http://www.shermantank.co.uk/home.ikml

I remember the BBC's Nationwide program "breaking" ths Slapton Sands story in (I thought) the 1970s. Although the website implies that it wasn't mentioned until the 1980s.

Amazing that they managed to cover it up for so long. It must have been rumoured in the area for 30 odd years.

Just goes to show that sometimes the most bizarre "urban myths" can turn out to be true.

Latchy

Mick86 wrote: »

What embarrassment?

Despite being bombed heavily itself, the infrastructure of Maisy Battery - or Grandcamp Maisy, as it was also known - remained largely intact. However, over the years it was lost as nature took hold, and it remained buried in French soil for more than 60 years.

Rumor has it that besides the above, the Americans filled it over to take the gloss of any nazi gloating about how much damage it had inflicted on the troops on the beach and maybe earse it's significance from history .If the commanders in charge had known how little damage was done to the german battery guns would they have allowed their troops to go ashore to be slaughterd ? porbably yes , there was no going back .

Mick86

latchyco wrote: »

Despite being bombed heavily itself, the infrastructure of Maisy Battery - or Grandcamp Maisy, as it was also known - remained largely intact. However, over the years it was lost as nature took hold, and it remained buried in French soil for more than 60 years.

The structure of most batteries remained intact AFAIK.



One of the Longues battery's guns today. Naval bombardment knocked out one of it's guns on D Day.

latchyco wrote: »

Rumor has it that besides the above, the Americans filled it over to take the gloss of any nazi gloating about how much damage it had inflicted on the troops on the beach and maybe earse it's significance from history .If the commanders in charge had known how little damage was done to the german battery guns would they have allowed their troops to go ashore to be slaughterd ? porbably yes , there was no going back .

Didn't the program say that the Maisy battery couldn't fire on Omaha?

Why erase the Maisy battery and leave the dozens of others?

I'm sure the generals knew exactly how little damage had been done to the defences and I'm quite sure they had to land anyway. They just didn't tell their men.

The Allies didn't try to cover up other D-Day fcuk-ups like landing the troops on Utah in the wrong place and attacking a battery of telegraph poles on Point du Hoc.

Apart from that the Nazis were too busy being defeated to gloat over the minimal casualties they caused on D-Day. In the scale of WW2, D-Day wasn't exactly Stalingrad. It's not as if the Germans had anything to gloat about. Thye thought the Normandy landings were a diversion and they allowed the invasion to proceed rather than wake Adolf.

Latchy

=Mick86;54861315]


Didn't the program say that the Maisy battery couldn't fire on Omaha?

Why erase the Maisy battery and leave the dozens of others ?

The tv programme never answered that question as i and others expected .Previous to the article from the 'telegraph 'which i posted about the tv programme i read another article in another daily explaining why it was considered the allies supposedly filled in over the Maisy battery and like croppy boy (below) i expeted more on the discovery /excavation of the Battery ,however i never kept the article .

Originally Posted by CroppyBoy1798
Seen the documentary, it was interesting, good watch.

I was a little dissapointed though that there wasnt much on the discovery/excavation etc of the Maisy Battery, it featured in the programme for what? 10 minutes?

I'm sure the generals knew exactly how little damage had been done to the defences and I'm quite sure they had to land anyway. They just didn't tell their men.

The men were off loaded onto the beaches approx 3 hrs after the bombing of the targets.The programme explained that the bombings made little or no difference to the german Batterys.The generals had to 'assume ' that enough damage was done , there was no way they could have a clear assesment of any damage in support of the landing troops .

The Allies didn't try to cover up other D-Day fcuk-ups like landing the troops on Utah in the wrong place and attacking a battery of telegraph poles on Point du Hoc.

Apart from that the Nazis were too busy being defeated to gloat over the minimal casualties they caused on D-Day. In the scale of WW2, D-Day wasn't exactly Stalingrad. It's not as if the Germans had anything to gloat about. Thye thought the Normandy landings were a diversion and they allowed the invasion to proceed rather than wake Adolf.

Yeah it's a well know fact that the nazis were not expecting the invasion to take place at Normandy but it did point out in the programme that it was troops who landed in the wrong spot that made the diference .They were the ones who were giving on order by an officer from another (heavly injured section ) to scale and ascend the cliff face which they did successfully .

Mick86

latchyco wrote: »

The tv programme never answered that question as i and others expected .Previous to the article from the 'telegraph 'which i posted about the tv programme i read another article in another daily explaining why it was considered the allies supposedly filled in over the Maisy battery and like croppy boy (below) i expeted more on the discovery /excavation of the Battery ,however i never kept the article .

Newspapers have a habit of sensationalising things in order to sell their product.

Latchy

Mick86 wrote: »

Newspapers have a habit of sensationalising things in order to sell their product.

Tell me somthing new like ' dont believe everything you read in newspapers ' .

Actually it wasn't the newspaper who sensationaliising anything , it was sombody who was quoted in the preview article but as another posters said ,there was little about the discovery of the battery in the tv programme to which this article in qestion was refering to .

Mick86

latchyco wrote: »

Actually it wasn't the newspaper who sensationaliising anything ....

Well if you go back to your first post which quotes the Telegraph article it's absolutely sensationalist and misleading. A bit of free advertising for Gary Sterne's proposed museum.

I think he's on a hiding to nothing there by the way. There's about a dozen museums along the length of the D-Day beaches already.

Latchy

Mick86 wrote: »

Well if you go back to your first post which quotes the Telegraph article it's absolutely sensationalist and misleading. A bit of free advertising for Gary Sterne's proposed museum.

I think he's on a hiding to nothing there by the way. There's about a dozen museums along the length of the D-Day beaches already.

I was under the immpression the tv programme was in the main about this Battery that was found and filled in by the Allies .

Mick86

latchyco wrote: »

I was under the immpression the tv programme was in the main about this Battery that was found and filled in by the Allies .

Me too. But I only found out about the program from IMO. And the Telegraph article says it was

the "lost" Nazi gun emplacements, which became buried by nature after the war and could not be located.

I think the conspiracy theory about the Allies hiding it is hilarious as is the notion that the battery (actually it was 2 batteries) was "lost". The place was built within living memory.

http://www.atlantikwall.org.uk/grandcamp_maisy.htm

Dummy

I've been enjoying the chat about Omaha but was really disappointed that I missed the program.

But I see the program is to be repeated on Sunday next 27th at 23:25.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctwo/listings/programme.shtml?day=sunday&service_id=4224&filename=20080127/20080127_2325_4224_18592_60