Battery »Hanstholm I«

German 17 cm coastal battery. The battery was the first permanent fortification that the Germans established at Hanstholm.
Already during the night of 9 April 1940 – the day of the German occupation of Denmark – the German navy planted sea mines in the Skagerrak to block the access for Allied ships to the Kattegat and the Baltic. At the coast, there was a ten miles wide opening without mines for German shipping to use.
The opening in the mine barrage was guarded from land by this battery, which was armed with old 17 cm ship guns.
At first, the guns were placed in the open, and the crews lived in wooden huts. From the summer of 1942 on, construction of bombproof bunkers with 2 m thick walls and ceilings began. The position contains 19 of these large bunkers.
The battery had a crew of ca. 150 soldiers.