Battery Moltke, German artillery fortification in Saint Ouen, Jersey.
Battery Moltke is an unfinished World War II coastal artillery battery built by Organisation Todt for the Wehrmacht on Les Landes, the heathland at the north end of St Ouen's Bay in Jersey. Its concrete structures include bunkers, gun emplacements and the seven-floor Marine Peilstand 3 tower, whose land-side entrance is on the third level. The site also holds Ringstände, small concrete Tobruk positions with a top aperture for a tank turret.
Battery Moltke was built by Organisation Todt for the Wehrmacht during the occupation of the Channel Islands, but it was left unfinished at the end of the war. Four captured French Canon de 155mm GPF guns, designated 15.5 cm K 418(f) by the Germans, were installed as a temporary measure; the intended four 15 cm SK C/28 naval guns never arrived. The battery's purpose was to defend St Ouen's Bay against an Allied amphibious assault.
The site's name comes from Generalfeldmarschall Helmuth von Moltke, following the German practice of naming batteries after military figures. The Channel Islands Occupation Society runs some of the bunkers as a museum, and the MP3 tower is one of only three completed towers of its nine planned type in Jersey, alongside MP1 at Saint Brelade and MP2 at La Corbière.
The exterior areas of the site are accessible at all times; the Channel Islands Occupation Society runs some of the bunkers as a museum. The gun emplacements can be visited freely, and the MP3 tower stands at the top of a steep, west-facing cliff, with its land-side entrance on the third level.
The two cannon barrels displayed in one emplacement were salvaged from the foot of the nearby cliffs and were not originally at Moltke; only one of the four French 15.5 cm K 418(f) guns installed here survives in its original position. The MP3 tower is one of nine planned Marine Peilstand observation towers in Jersey, and only three of that type were completed.
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