Cointet-element

The Cointet-element, also known as the Belgian Gate, is a heavy steel anti-tank obstacle roughly three meters wide and two meters high, built as a mobile fence-like frame mounted on rollers so that it could even be towed by horses. It was designed in 1933 by the French officer Leon-Edmond de Cointet de Fillain for the Maginot Line, and Belgium adopted a modified version in 1936, ordering 77,000 of them to form the K-W Line defending against a German invasion. After the German victory of 1940 the obstacles were captured and renamed C-elements, and roughly 23,408 of them were deployed along more than 4,340 kilometers of the Atlantic Wall coastline by 1944 to obstruct the Allied landings in Normandy.