Campaigners brand plans 'insult to memory of thousands who died there'
EDF hopes they will all be ready by 2015, generating six gigawatts a year
France is moving ahead with plans to 'desecrate' the World War Two D-Day beaches with a vast offshore wind farm.
The proposed 75 turbines each 100 metres high have been branded by campaigners as 'an insult to the memory of the thousands who died there'.
French electricity giant EDF aims to install the giant white towers - almost twice as high as St Paul's Cathedral - just eight miles offshore and easily visible from two of the five memorial beaches on the Normandy coast.
The turbines will be divided among five separate offshore wind farms along the coast, covering a total of 330 square miles and costing around ten million pounds.
One proposed site is a 48 square mile wind farm off the coast of the Courseulles-sur-Mer - home to Juno Beach where hundreds of Royal Marines commandos and Canadian Infantry perished during the June 6, 1944, invasion.
It would also be visible from nearby Omaha Beach, where US forces suffered more than 2,000 casualties during the operation.
EDF hopes the wind farms should all be operational by 2015, generating six gigawatts, or 3.5 per cent of France's energy needs, per year.
It is is part of a strategy to make renewable energy account for almost a quarter of France's needs by around 2030.
Opponent Claude Brevan, who is heading a campaign to axe the project, said Juno beach where Canadian soldiers landed would suffer the worst blight.
Sword, Gold, Omaha and Utah beaches where British and American troops landed would be less affected, she said.
But Jean-Louis Butre, president of the European Platform Against Wind Farms, said: 'We consider this project to be a sacrilege on the families of the 10,000 soldiers who sacrificed their lives to save France from tyranny.'
World War Two widow Gisele Forknall told a campaign meeting this week: 'We owe it to these soldiers, to these veterans who were dog-tired but had the courage to land, to respect the freedom that they gave us.
'Windmills are OK, but just not here. There has been too much blood spilt.'
Briton William Jordan, who offers guided tours of the area, said: 'To imagine the events of June 6, 1944 when thousands of Allied vessels arrived one needs an empty horizon like a painter needs an empty canvas.'
Opponent Karel Scheerlinck, who lives near Juno Beach, added: 'These beaches belong to history. It's from here that the liberation of the world began.
'It is an insult to the dead and don't think the Germans would permit the construction of a wind park next to the ruins of a concentration camp. These are sacred areas.'
But former local councillor Anne d'Ornano said she had met with Canadian veterans who were not opposed to the project.
She said: 'They believe in the future. They have offshore wind farms in their countries. They are thinking about future generations. They just want their regiment's insignia to be there somewhere as a sign of homage.'
And Adrian Cox, a British councillor in Arromanches-les-Bains, said: 'I have received outraged emails asking, 'How can they have windmills on the beaches?'
'But two years ago I met a veteran who looked around and then he said 'This is not my beach anyway. When I landed these buildings were not there'. Now my friends are buried underneath them'.'
Jacky Bonnemains, president of French ecological group Robin des Bois, said the project was launched two years ago: 'I find it extraordinary no one in government grasps that this will change forever the character of a place of sacred memory. They just don't seem to care.'
But EDF Energy insists the impact on the view from the Normandy beaches will be 'limited'.
It claims that a 525ft-high tower seen from almost ten miles away is equivalent to seeing a matchstick from a metre away.
A French government spokesman added: 'The whole project is being handled with the greatest sensitivity.'
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