Coastal Gun Battery

The Gun battery stood ready at Sangatte, just west of Calais in 1942. The battery was named after Ernst Lindemann, who the year before had perished, as captain of the battleship Bismarck.

The three 406 mm. “adolf guns” were retrieved from Battery Schleswig Holstein in Poland. These guns had, using a shell of 1300 lb., A range of 35 miles. Standard grenade weighed 2250 lb. and here the range was 26 miles. The 65 feet long gunbarrel had a shelf life between 250 and 300 shots. The guns were mounted in separate pillboxes which was cast in reinforced concrete, up to four meters thick.

The guns shelled regularly south-east England and in the two years the guns were operational, over 2200 shots was send to England.

Battery Lindemann had the most powerful guns along the Atlantic wall and was therefore obviously a popular target for the Allies during their bombingraids and during the artillery duel on the English Channel. The allied bombs had no effect on the large bunkers, but 4th September 1944 on artillery shell from an English railway gun, hit right into one of the guns. 21 September 1944 the area was bombed by 400 to 500 Allied bombers and another one of guns were destroyed. Final 26th September the last gun were stopped when Canadian soldiers captured the battery.

In the 80s the area was used for backfilling of soil, under the construction of the tunnel under the English channel. The three massive gun bunkers were partly buried, but it is still possible to see traces of the battery and bomb craters after the many allied grenades and bombs.