German Searchlight Usage in Normany

[David Dunlop]

I was looking at a recent French Real Estate listing for the sale of the best preserved German Coastal Battery on one of the American Beaches. Built over top of a preexisting Napoleonic Era battery this site was off limits since the end of the war and still has much of it's interior electricals in place, generators and signage. Fascinating photos.

What I could not recognize, however were any noticible searchlight positions. Here in Canada, the coastal gun batteries like Pt. Grey defending the approachs to Vancouver utilized a pair of stand alone seachlight towers as part of the defensive system. Could not see anything llike that at Normandy. That got me wondering if Germany built any at Normandy, were they 'stand alone' like here in Canada, or more fully intergrated into the rest of the defensive structures such that they are not so easily identified today?

David

[Bruce MacMillan]

The searchlight towers in Vancouver at Tower beach and Wreck beach
were to detect Japanese surface vessels. That is why they are at the waters edge.

The Germans used radar like Freya and Wurzburg to do the same. Freya was able to detect RN destroyers at a range of 60 miles, far more distant than a searchlight. The searchlights used by the Germans were mainly for air defense and were located inland from the coast of France but closer to the coast in Belgium. It seems the flight paths of Bomber Command were over Belgium. In 1942 Hitler ordered most of the searchlights back to the German border as Allied bombing was having an effect.

There was a major effort just before D-Day to take out the coastal radar sites.

An excellent book covering this topic is "Most Secret War" by R.V. Jones. He was the British scientist involved in overcoming the German defenses.