(E) Batterie Gneisenau

Marine-Küsten-Batterie (E) Gneisenau was based in the Cherbourg area and used around the Anse du Brick area as a moving 15cm batterie of four guns. Once the engine has built up steam the batterie could be moved very quickly to a danger spot and give direct fire on any sea target.

The area the batterie once used. They may have arrived early in 1940 and then withdrawn. They arrived again and stayed here in 1942. Then they went off south to the Languedoc coast. Taken from "Randonnees Ferroviaires" website. During the second world war, the Germans closed the line to bring materials needed to the construction of the casemates of the Atlantic wall, then for a lesser-known historical episode: the installation in the Anse du Brick, of the heavy artillery battery on the railway Gneisenau. It was to protect the outskirts of Cherbourg from possible attack by sea. Unlike the other Heavy Railroad Artillery Batteries (ALVF) which were installed at fixed and definitive post on the Atlantic wall, the Gneisenau battery was a mobile backup battery likely to be called upon to intervene in various places. This particular specificity was linked to its weaponry. Indeed, it consisted of 4 guns of "small calibre ", 150 mm, quite old, built in 1937 among the first heavy weapons of the program German Sofort rearmament, from salvaged marine tubes mounted on a swivel mount and 20 m long low-frame wagon with a total weight of 74 tonnes. Therefore, this gun could fire shells of 50 kg over 360 ° up to 22 kilometres of range, at a rate of 3 rounds per minute. In addition to the locomotive and the 4 cannons, the accompanying train has 17 wagons: 3 wagons for storage of ammunition, 3 wagons for storage of shells, a kitchen wagon, 4 wagons for sleeping the troops, a light ammunition wagon (small arms and Flak), a wagon armoury workshop, 2 Flak wagons (anti-aircraft protection), a command wagon and a wagon telemetry. The battery strength is 4 officers, 23 non-commissioned officers and 118 men. The Gneisenau battery was first assigned to Ijmuiden in Holland. Then it joins the pointe aux Geese north of Boulogne until spring 1942, then Houlgate before moving again, towards the end of the year, east of Cherbourg, in the Brick cove.

15 cm SK L/45 guns practicing setting up. Krupp were asked to produce a railway gun train using their 15 cm SK L/45. There were four guns, three stores wagons, three ammunition wagons, one carriage fire control , four sleeping wagons, one kitchen wagon, two for Flak and a large locomotive.

A plan of a 15 cm SK L/40 railway mounted gun.

The 15 cm SK L/40 was a German naval gun that was used as secondary armament on pre-dreadnought battleships, protected cruisers and armoured cruisers of the Imperial German Navy in World War I. It was also used as a coast-defence gun during World Wars I and II.

Commanded by Oberleutnant M A Lieser. 145 Artillery men.

Anse du Brick

The jacks are out to take the weight of the gun firing.

Re loading.

Anse du Brick 1942.

Setting up.

 

Return to Pointe du Brick MENU