Merville battery

[GD485]

Hi,

Can anyone help? I caught the tail end of a movie, some time ago, that seemed to be about a raid on a gun battery in Normandy during operation Overlord. I think Sean Connery was in it playing a commanding officer.

On a recent visit to the D-Day beaches I was reminded of this film where 150 men out of the intended force of 650 managed to take the heavily protected gun emplacements.

I think this may have been the operation Tonga under the command of Major Terrace Ottway and a depleted force of the 6th Airborne/Para's.

I've tried searching the interwebnet but haven't found anything, maybe it was a TV film or .......?

[Son of a gun-ner]

You may be getting mixed up with The Guns of Navarone, which wasn't a Normandy film, and didn't have Sean Connery in it.
Sean Connery has done A Bridge Too Far as a Major General, and The Longest Day as a private.

[jarndice]

The only film that includes Sean Connery and the attack by Airborne forces on the Merville Battery (Members of 2 Para delight in telling anyone who will listen the cockup was not their operation .) was "The Longest Day".
EDIT if you want text book airborne operations I would refer you to 2nd Battalion the Parachute Regiments assault upon the Bruneval Radar station,
This was so successful in the very early days of Allied airborne operations that Airborne forces within the British army became firmly established and expanded.