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Heritage classified

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Origin and history

The Muschel battery, also called the Gironde battery, was built between 1943 and 1945 by the German army in the Coubre forest near La Tremblade. Built into the Atlantic Wall, it was to house four 240 mm marine guns, recovered from a French Danton-class battleship. Only two blockhouses were equipped before the end of the war, the others remaining unfinished or equipped with fake guns.

The battery, codified Stp 50 and led by the German Navy (Marine-Küsten-Batterie Gironde), was oriented towards the Gironde estuary to control its access. The cannons, mounted on S542-type reinforced concrete housings, could rotate at 360° and were protected by 6-20 cm thick breastplates. Their shooting was guided by telemetry and radio, with a nearby Mirador serving as command post.

In April 1945, when Royan's pocket was released, the battery was bombed and destroyed by French troops. The remains, listed as historical monuments in 2002, now include the four concrete structures, without their cannons. The site was defended by a minefield (Muschel) and anti-aircraft facilities, reflecting its strategic role in German coastal defence.

The construction, started at the end of 1943 by the Todt organization, mobilized about 80 German gunners under the command of Kapitänleutnant Werner Schmidt-Tebelmann. Despite its incompleteness, the battery illustrates the Nazi military effort to control the French coast during the Second World War. The cannons would come from the battleship Condorcet, disarmed in Toulon in 1943.

Blockhouses, 250 metres apart, were numbered from I to IV. Only I and II received operational guns, while III and IV provided lures. The site, surrounded by barbed wire and integrated into a defence network including a night radar, was abandoned after German surrender on 17 April 1945.

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