Stützpunkt X M – Marine Seezielbatterie ‘Hors’ [Navy Coastal Battery]

As early as mid-1940, the Germans started construction of a battery on and around the former Dutch 1e Batterij 12L. 40. They named this new battery Südbatterie. 
Initially, the battery was made up of rather provisional structures, but in the course of the war sturdier and bombproof bunkers were added. 
An early Südbatterie site plan, dating from 1942, indicates three pieces of 12-cm artillery, all of them salvaged from the Dutch battery in the area. One of these 12-cm cannon was later replaced with a newer 15-cm cannon. Not only the Dutch weapons were reused, so was a wooden building that served as a mess hall.

The guns remained mounted on their original Dutch emplacements until about mid-1944 but on October 30th of that year, the new 671 S.K. artillery bunkers had been completed. Four 671 S.K. bunkers were built, three of which had a primary function. The fourth 671 S.K was a secondary artillery bunker with a flanking wall.

Another flanking bunker in the battery was a regular type 612.

The regular 612 was positioned such that it was virtually impossible for hostile fire to directly target the assault guns in the three primary bunkers.

After October 30, 1944, fire control continued to be directed from a wooden fire control post or Leitstand. It is assumed that range finding was conducted in the measuring post of the former Dutch 2nd Batterij 15L. 35. There have been plans for the construction of a proper fire control post, but it seems that these were never carried out. One of the last construction drawings shows the foundations to an M262 bunker having been poured in March of 1945, but no such bunker is included in the post-war inventory of the Bureau Registratie Verdedigingswerken (Office for the Registration of Defense Works).

Like in the Noordbatterij, the fire control post was supported by radar, here a FuMO 214 ‘Würzburg Riese’, capable of accurately locating targets in the air and at sea. This Würzburg Riese was code-named Franziska.

After the war, many bunkers were simply abandoned in the dunes and on the beach. Slowly but surely, erosion and surf caused the bunkers to subside and more of them to migrate to the beach. Some found a useful second life as a bicycle storage shed for the many vacationers, but authorities removed most of the bunkers in the mid-fifties because they had become a hazard to embankments that protected against flooding. A big storm in the nineteen-seventies uncovered several more bunkers, which fell victim to the wrecking ball soon thereafter. One bunker has meanwhile slid to the bottom of the sea and sometimes its roof can be seen at low tide.