Merville Gun Battery

The Merville Gun Battery is a German Atlantic Wall fortification built by Organisation Todt, comprising four concrete casemates originally armed with 100mm howitzers positioned to devastate Allied landing craft at Sword Beach on D-Day. In the early hours of 6 June 1944, the British 9th Parachute Battalion under Lieutenant Colonel Terence Otway stormed the battery in a desperate night assault — arriving with fewer than 150 of the planned 750 men, yet neutralising the guns before the beach landings began. The battery is now a classified French historic monument and open-air museum, with original casemates preserved intact, a display of period military hardware, and a Dakota transport aircraft on site as a memorial to the paratroopers who made the assault.