Wn140 Morsalines Le Hutrel
Single bunker with lots to see
Wn140 site overview
What to see
This site consists of just one gun casemate but it's one of the most interesting ones to be found on the whole of the Utah Beach coast.
It's a H680 type gun casemate - with a 75mm Pak 40 type cannon inside - which was positioned to cover cover the roads inland of Morsalines to the south of the village, preventing access to the nearby port town of St Vaast la Hogue too.
This H680 is unique though having been squared off with extra concrete around the build. As you can see it's covered with an original ‘crazy-paving’ camouflage pattern on the outer skin.
Inside this casemate you can see two niches for storing the large calibre ammunition plus two, slotted concrete and steel lined sections on the floor where the trailing arms of the gun would be positioned to hold it in place during firing.
One remarkable feature is the casing for an extractor fan on the inner wall. Most bunkers were stripped of their metalwork for scrap purposes after the war but somehow this one has survived and is still connected to the air ducts which removed the harmful gases created when firing the cannon.