Bosses at a West Yorkshire firm felt they were re-enacting the Normandy landings when they delivered a huge boring machine to a southern seaside town.

For managers at R Collett & Sons, with divisions in Keighley and Halifax, prepared a military-style operation to bring a £6.5 million 580-tonne tunnel boring machine - nicknamed Jaws - onto the beach at Hastings. The last Normandy landings there had come in the opposite direction, under William the Conqueror.

The machine was bought from a German firm by Southern Water to dig a tunnel which would bring in storm prevention measures to cut flooding in the town.

The water company needed a reputable firm to deliver the goods. So they chose Colletts, who have years of experience transporting huge plant and machinery.

The German firm was due to send the boring machine to the UK in parts on a barge. But David Collett, one of the brothers in charge of the firm, was told by the police and the Department of Transport that it was too big to run on roads round Hastings.

So he sought the advice of local fisherman who said he should be able to land the boring machine on the beach.

Mike Thody, the firm's sales and marketing representative, said today: "The Department of Transport would not allow the machine's entry into any port and only limited movement on roads.

"The local fishermen convinced David Collett that the drilling machine could be brought to Hastings by sea.

"A great deal of expertise made it possible to load the machine onto Collett's trailers at a suitable nearby beach."

The barge landed on the beach at high tide at midnight with the huge cutter in pieces and Colletts was given permission to transport it half a mile to its temporary resting place in the town's Rock-a-Nore car park.

The spectacle brought out hundreds of people in the middle of the night to watch the operation which finished early the following day.

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