A few kilometers east of the small fishing port of Grandcamp, the Normandy coastline in northern France, juts into the sea forming a sheer promontory called Pointe du Hoc that towers thirty meters above a narrow pebble beach. It was here the Germans had built one of the strongest forts in Hitler’s Atlantic wall during the second World War. This was also the highest point between two sections of the beach, codenamed Utah and Omaha, where the Allied forces planned to land during D-day invasion on June 6, 1944.

Pointe du Hoc held six 155mm artillery guns in heavily reinforced concrete bunkers that were capable of hitting either beach with their big shells, as well as the thousands of ships of the invasion fleet anchored off the shores of Normandy. The destruction of these guns was important if the invasion was the succeed.

Photo credit: www.survoldefrance.fr