Wednesday 21 August 2013

Atlantic Wall Pointe de Raz








Another day out with the family, this time to the Pointe de Raz, which is the French equivalent of Lands End. I'd been there several years ago but this time I brought the camera for some clandestine bunker hunting. The weather was fantastic, unlike the last time, so I got some fairly decent pictures without getting soaked. 

There was an extensive radar set up on the headland including a Flensberg mast, a couple of Wurzberg radars and a gigantic Mammut long range radar array, all of which were protected by flak positions and controlled from heavy communications bunkers.

The on-site museum did a very good job of explaining everything and included extensive information panels on the whole system, one of which included details of a strike on the radar installations on the 9th July 1944 by fighter bombers flying from Predannack in Cornwall.

A bit of a google and this turned out to be not the expected Mosquito or Beaufighter effort but a divebombing (!) attack by Spitfire Vb's (!!) of No234 Squadron, using ventral 500lb bombs (!!!), cannons and machine gun strafing.

A Bag the Hun scenario in the making perhaps, with a very original twist and a successful outcome, as the big Mammut was effectively put out of action for the rest of the war. I have other Bag the Hun things in the offing, however, so this one will have to wait a little longer.

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