Coastal Gun Battery Vogelnest

The Germans started work on the gun position at Oksbøl in July 1944 and the guns were scheduled to be operational by September 1945. The gun battery was armed with two reserve turrets from the battleship Tirpitz, both equipped with two 380 mm. guns in double gun-mountings. (Tirpitz was sunk just four months later in the Norwegian Håkøybotn west of Tromsø). The guns were identical to those that were installed in the Gun battery Hansthom, but in Oksbøl they where planned to be mounted two apiece in armoured turrets. With a special 495 kg shell the guns had a range of 55 km., the standard shell was 800 kg. With a range of 42 km.

By the liberation both the large pillboxes were almost finished, while the four 110-tonne gun barrels were still lying in a railway station south of the battery, because they were two heavy for one of the bridges over the Varde river. Today there is a museum in the southern pillbox.