Gunning position: The location of the Nazi gun battery was long disputed
Posted on 01/04/2008 10:08:40 AM PST by Stoat
A baffling mystery of the D-Day landings was solved by an amateur historian - after he found a crumpled map at a fair in Stockport.
Experts have long disputed the location of the main Nazi gun battery which caused carnage on Omaha Beach, in terrible scenes which were recreated for the Hollywood film Saving Private Ryan.
The Germans had built a decoy gun emplacement overlooking the area while the location of the real guns which blasted the beach, where 2,000 men lost their lives, remained unclear.
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Gunning position: The location of the Nazi gun battery was long disputed
But Gary Sterne, a publisher and collector, stumbled on the answer as he browsed through items at a Stockport militaria fair and a piece of paper fell out of a pair of US serviceman's trousers.
It turned out to be an invasion map for Omaha Beach, which included an area marked Area of High Resistance he thought could be the "lost" Nazi gun emplacements.
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Amateur historian Garry Sterne tracked down the 'lost' gun emplacements after finding a tattered map
"It sparked my curiosity, because that area was previously thought to be just fields," he said.
The 43-year-old father of two from Cheadle Hulme travelled to Normandy to examine the area - and bought it.
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The headquarters of the 'lost' Nazi gun emplacements. Mr Sterne bought the site bit by bit from 32 different landowners
He spent thousands buying the 40-acre site bit-by-bit from 32 different landowners, and two years excavating trenches and bunkers to reveal the 'Maisy Battery'.
Mr Sterne believes this was responsible for the brutal bombardment of Omaha on D-Day and for days afterwards until its capture on June 9, 1944.
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Sterne spent two years excavating the trenches and bunkers at the site
Now Mr Sterne plans to open a museum on the site and the battery will be featured in a documentary for the BBC Timewatch programme.
Mr Sterne has contacted veterans of the US 5th Ranger Battalion, who confirmed taking Maisy Battery from the Germans.
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The radio room at the site, believed to be responsible for the brutal bombardment of Omaha on D-Day
The Timewatch documentary, Bloody Omaha, is presented by Richard Hammond on BBC2 on Sunday at 9pm.
What do you think? Have your say.
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Thousands of American troops were gunned down as they landed at Omaha beach on D-Day
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How the carnage was captured in Saving Private Ryan
Nazis' secret base found (Omaha Beach battery contains 40 buildings untouched since D-Day)
An essential, related thread
Dedication of New Normandy American Cemetery Visitor Center Set for June 6, 2007
ping
I’ve always wanted to own a bunker complex.
Hubby is always pondering what realtor a person contacts to buy a bunker. Or a compound. He's pretty sure there's some sort of "Bunker/Compound Real Estate Agency" that he's woefully unaware of.
(I think it's the diesel fumes talking...)
A WARTIME bunker used by Nazis to bombard Allied troops during the D-Day landings has been unearthed untouched — after 60 years.British treasure hunter Gary Sterne found the base exactly as it was when German troops fled after the Normandy invasion in June 1944.
Gary, 41, said: “It’s truly incredible. Apart from damage to the radio room, the whole place seemed to escape bombing unscathed.”
The bunker sprawls over 20 acres and is thought to be the hidden German battery that decimated US soldiers at Omaha Beach, seven miles away.
The encampment contains 40 buildings — including a field hospital.
Some of the offices contain army papers — as well as radio equipment.
Amateur historian Gary found it in dense undergrowth after buying a German army map at a French car boot sale.
The dad of two, from Manchester, kept it secret for three years so he could buy the land near the village of Grandcamp-Maisy.
He now plans to open it as a tourist attraction this year.
gnip...
They also revealed that they found $4.2million worth of French francs, which was shared among the men.
Sounds more like Kelly’s Heroes than SPR.
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It would indeed be fun, providing you have MANY millions of dollars to renovate your new home :-)
Especially useful in the event of a Hillary administration...
I get goosebumps every time I think of the bravery of our troops that day on the beach.
Fascinating. Thanks for the article.
The scene from Private Ryan was poor. The gate on the landing barge goes down just 75 yards directly in front and 5 yards beneath an MG-42 in a hardened emplacement. No one could have gotten off the boat without being hit but sure enough, the shakey handed LT. and his men make it to the beach and take out the pillbox.
Good stuff all around!
I was a (almost) teenager during this time. ;)
I turned 14 in Oct of ‘44.
"No WMD in Iraq," has now achieved Urban Legend Status, just like "Al Gore's Stolen Victory." It's going to be mighty hard to break the newly established myths after the MSM has literally invested itself and many millions in establishing them.
For example, how many Americans know that advanced Iraqi fighters were found buried in the sand ...completely by accident? It's a very big country, of which we have dug up very little.
BTW, now that Clint Eastwood and Steven Spielberg have discovered WWII, are we going to be treated to a WWII "Disneyland," in which factual data that doesn't fit the fantasy is going to be ignored in some sort of faintly disrepectful, if not to say unpatriotic, revisionist history? I.E., will it turn out that the Waffen SS, or the Japanese who used American prisoners for bayonet practice were reacting to some racist imperialistic American crime?
Well if they didn't there would have been no movie!
;-)
In all seriousness someone had to have made it..somewhere... I guess they just took a little literary liberty there.
I want the one that has the small, modest house on top and the runway out back.
Sounds more like Kelly’s Heroes than SPR.
Wait a minute- that's not 4.2 million...it's 42 MILLION!
[actually, 1.6/16 mill....] -Crapgame
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