15 May Durban Gun Batteries
Whilst I am often on the beach front, I have often walked past the Natal Command façade but never noticed the two gun emplacement positions directly adjacent to Pirates Lifesaving club.
These Batteries were two of many gun emplacements constructed during WWII to protect Durban in the event of attack(which never happened).The other emplacements were on the Bluff at the harbour mouth, Kings Battery at the harbour mouth (recently demolished) and in Durban North, which still exist on the land side of the M4 freeway and between Beachway and Virginia offramps.
What is little known is that over 100 Allied ships were sunk by German & Japanese submarines within a radius of 500 km from Durban from October 1941 and August 1943. (Ref: Gavin Foster – Facts about Durban)