Remains of Mulberry harbour breakwaters "Phoenix"

France / Basse-Normandie / Arromanches-les-Bains /
 Second World War 1939-1945, military
Reinforced concrete caissons constructed by civil engineering contractors around the coast of Britain, collected and sunk at Dungeness, the Cant and Pagham, and then later re-floated and towed across the channel to form the "Mulberry" harbour breakwaters together with the "Gooseberry" block ships.
One of the most closely guarded secrets of WWII. It was a NEED TO KNOW basis if you did not need to know then you did not find out. Even some of the builders did not know what they was to be used for.

This site has photos of Normandy in 1944 and Now some great photos.

blogs.denverpost.com/captured/2009/06/05/the-65th-anniv...
Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulberry_harbour#Phoenix
Nearby cities:
Coordinates:   49°21'3"N   -0°36'48"E

Comments

  • these look like remnants of mulberry harbors used after the normandy invasion in ww2. the same things found just to the left of here.
  • Parts of Mulberry harbour at Arromanches
  • This is whats left of the British Mulberry B harbor. The large blocks visable in the picture are the floating concrete cassons which where towed across the channel and sunk in place to form the harbor break water. The British followed the engineer's instructions in setting up and assembling thier harbor and as a result it was the only one useable by the allies after the disaterous storm that hit the invasion beaches shortly after the D day invasion. The remaines of the American Muberry A harbor can be seen just to the left of this photo, closer to the Omaha Beach landing zone. During the assembly of Mulberry A, the Americans opted to hurry thier assembly of the harbor components and in doing so failed to properly anchor the floating docks and roadways the ran from the harbor facilities to the beach. Thus when the worst storm in a century broke upon the invasion beaches, the Mulberry A harbor was almost completely destroyed and rendered un-usable. Only by salvaging usable parts from it and using them to repair the more stable British Mulberry were the allies able to use the harbor facilities at all after the storm had passed.
This article was last modified 14 years ago