A Broadsword Empire cannon recovered and destined for the Omaha Museum

On Friday, May 16, the trawler carrying Le Défi had put up a naval cannon in his nets. Daniel Tréfeu, curator of the Omaha Beach Memorial Museum in Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer, announced his identification and his arrival at the museum in early July, after restoration.

It was a four-inch, 102 mm gun, built by Vickers in 1913 and installed at the steer of the Broadsword Empire. The museum already had many documents on this ship as well as a 20 mm Oerlikon anti-aircraft gun from the board.

The article retraced the history of the building, built in the United States in 1942 and then sold to the British as part of the loan-lease. Presented as a Victory Ship, slightly larger than a Liberty Ship, it carried 1,500 men and their LCA barges. At the dawn of June 6, he had put his barges in the water in front of Hermanville to land the first wave of the British 3rd Infantry Division on Sword Beach. He then made four crossings to bring American reinforcements to Omaha.

On Sunday, July 2, 1944, after dropping off men at Utah Beach, he joined a convoy departing from Omaha. Around 6 p.m., in front of Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer, two mines had hit him. In a letter of June 30, 1945, the cannoner Jones described two explosions, the stay on starboard, the Bofors cannons and the four-inches passing overboard, and LCAs projected forty meters away. The newspaper reported that 170 crew members had been recovered and seven had perished.

Reconstructed or uncertain passages:
- The classification of the ship as Victory Ship, its course and the balance sheet of the shipwreck are those reported by the cut. The entrance to the museum is an announcement for July, without confirmation of its realization added to this rewriting.

Archive image: https://vierville.cordelle.eu/PhDoc13/2014Juin-Musee-CanonBroadswordL.jpg