Wissant, the fortifications that were the target of a large deception operation

@ElentirENG ES 12·26·2023 · 23:05 0

During World War II, the coasts of countries occupied by nazi Germany were fortified from France to Norway.

Maisy: the German Normandy battery that was mysteriously buried by the US
The accidental discovery of a WWII bunker in which the electrical installation still works

Hitler knew that the Allies would end up landing somewhere in France. The German intelligence services set themselves the challenge of finding out where this invasion would take place. The Allies launched the so-called Operation Fortitude, a major deception operation to convince the Germans that they would cross through the Pas de Calais, the narrowest point between the coasts of France and England.

One of the stratagems was to put the famous General George Patton in charge of a fictitious army group, for which inflatable tanks were created in order to deceive German reconnaissance planes. A Spaniard working as a double agent, Juan Pujol, completed the operation, providing false information to Germany.

One of the places where this landing would have occurred was Wissant, a French coastal town located in the Pas de Calais. While waiting for a landing that finally took place on June 6, 1944 in Normandy, 250 km away, the Germans fortified the beaches of Wissant with some bunkers that still exist today. KM Military History has shown them in two interesting videos:

You can see some screenshots of these videos here. Here we see a personnel bunker that looks like it is stranded in the sand. It belongs to the 119 Preussen group of fortifications and its current state is due to the displacement of the sand, which ends up overturning some of these old bunkers.

An observation bunker, also from the 119 Preussen group. It is very inclined forward, due to the movement of the terrain.

These bunkers were large and were abandoned in the area, surely, because their demolition would have been extremely expensive. Today they are a magnet for tourists.

A machine gun bunker, smaller in size than the others.