Wednesday 19 April 2017

WN Fliquet and Batterie Haeseler


WN Fliquet/Flicquet

(never did work out whether the C is required or not, although recent roadsigns suggest no C)
This was located in the peaceful bay...

.. behind St.Catherine's breakwater.

The Resistance Nest was tasked with defending the island from a liberating invasion as always, and also to protect the building housing the Jersey end of a telegraph cable to France which was still operational and useful to the occupying forces.

The excellent jerseywartours.com WN Fliquet page (I can't compete without a drone!) tells us there were two machine guns, a mortar, a 10.5cm field gun and a small searchlight here.

A truncated Conway tower (1780s) was put into use by the Germans - spot the door a little stronger than the original 18th century ones!







.. and another doorway on the inland side.
Just to the left...






.. an entrance to a shelter.
And up on the bank there...
.. this.
A little way up the lane is the cable house. Someone doesn't want you to look inside.



On the other side of the tower is this small concrete structure...
.. but it's not worth borrowing their garden for a few moments, as there's nothing much to see up there.
Next, we headed up the hill.
"What an anchor", she mumbled. I may have misheard.


A little higher, we had a view of the sealed up top of the tower, that requires no drone to see :)






Batterie Haeseler

Again, do check out jerseywartours.com Batterie Haesler for information on"14./ HKAR 1265" and its 4 x 15cm K18 field guns with a 15.5 mile range, and the multi purpose defence gun now on display outside the Jersey War Tunnels.

The battery was situated in fields on the headland between Rue de La Coupe and Rue de La Perruque, to deal with any threat coming from the nearby French coast from the summer of 1944 onwards. Until August '44 the batterie had been in Guernsey (Batterie Scharnhorst). There were 2 heavy and 4 light machine guns to defend the battery, along with 3 x 5cm mortars and 2 x 2cm Flak 38 guns, also a 1.1m searchlight.
  
Locations of all the bits and pieces. The obs post looked like it might coincide with a structure I found on an old map, the site of a promising bulge in the hedge seen on aerial maps like this. We decided to pay a visit so that you don't have to...
.. and found just wooden ruins of an old shed! Didn't spot anything else of interest...
.. except nice views of the breakwater...
.. closer.

So, this is one of those batteries where there's no point 'trespassing' (we broke no laws) because there's not a lot to see!





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2 comments:

Shane said...

Great photos and great information.

crapaudmatic said...

Thank you Shane, good to hear from you! I might publish some more, now :)