The Nazi guns behind Bloody Omaha
THE Normandy landings of the Second World War are the background to a story being told on BBC Two's Timewatch series this weekend.
Bloody Omaha tells of the D-Day landings in June 1944 and focuses on the battle at Omaha Beach, which saw thousands of men lose their lives in a matter of hours.
But why it proved so difficult for the soldiers to land on the beach has only just been uncovered, and the tale of a captured German map and the excavation of fields overlooking the beach will be told by Richard Hammond this Sunday.
The story can be traced back to a military fair in Stockport, where collector Gary Sterne found a map which featured notes about a gun emplacement that until then was believed to be just fields.
He decided to investigate further and slowly pieced together the story, buying up plots of land in the area and eventually uncovered trenches and bunkers to reveal the 'Maisy Battery' which is believed to be the machine gun nest that cut down so many soldiers.
The Timewatch programme gathers together this evidence and speaks to some of the US servicemen who were amongst the first to land on Omaha Beach.
BBC 2's Timewatch: Sunday, January 6 (9pm - 10pm)
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