F

Although it had been heavily bombed in the pre-invasion bombardment such was the thickness of the bunkers that it had hardly been scratched and was still 100% operational.

Shortly after dawn on June 6th 1944 it opened fire on the Allied ships laying off of Gold. Its targets were the American battleship Arkansas which was anchored 5km out to sea. The battleship and its two French cruisers escorts returned fire and the battery shifted its fire to HMS Bulolo (the command HQ ship for the British landings on Gold) which was 12km of off the coast. The Bulolo was forced to change position rapidly as the German shells were landing very accurately.

To her rescue now came a formidable opponent. HMS Ajax now began a ship to shore duel with the battery. Ajax was one of three cruisers which had fought and won against the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee in the South Atlantic on 13th December 1939.

Ajax lay 11km off of the battery but her fire was so accurate that within 20 minutes 2 of the battery's guns had fallen silent. Although not destroyed, the weight of fire falling on their position and the concussion it caused made the German gun crews flee their position.

On the third position Ajax scored a critical hit. Although nobody knows exactly how it happened (everyone within the emplacement was blown to atoms), from what you can still see today evidently the Ajax managed to put a shell straight through the embrasure. This detonated a round or rounds being loaded into the 155mm cannon and blew it to pieces (see the pictures for pieces of the gun strewn all over the site). Immediately the blast from this hit the bunkers magazine (whose blast door must have been left open) detonating all of the 155mm shells stored there. This tore the massively thick roof clean off and anihilated the position.

And that was the end of the Longues Battery as an offensive unit.