discussion WW2 German Bunkers

[Peter Gillson]

Steve - glad you find them interesting.

Here is the last batch of photos;

2 part, stable door type of armoured door (Panzer tur) The red ring refers to gas lock instructions. the small panel would slide to the left to open the gun port/peep hole. like the gun port in an earlier photo it was lined with felt so that when the 2 knobs were tightened, it would be a gas proof seal.
View attachment 319811
next a 1 piece armoured door.
View attachment 319816

Instructions above a number of doors “No light when opening the door”.

View attachment 319817

Instructions above doors “Under gas attack all slides closed and red knobs tightened” or entrance defence gun ports.
View attachment 319818

Above the door into room 15 “Entrance Defence”.
View attachment 319819

And finally. - somebody decided the bunker would make great foundations ...

View attachment 319820

Peter

 

[Guest]

2 part, stable door type of armoured door

The reason for being two-part is so that if rubble gets into the entrance corridor (outside the door), the top half could still be opened. You didn’t show the most ingenious part of the door, by the way: it would normally be placed so that its outer edge reaches to the corner of the entrance corridor if the door is open, but that corner is cut away. This is in case of an explosion nearby: the blast will (should?) catch the edge of the door and push it shut, protecting the bunker’s occupants.

 

[Guest]

Peter.
Absolutely fascinating read. When the Germans built something they certainly put some thought into it. Take the ventilation system for an example, having that standby hand operated pump in case of power failure. Nothing left to chance. Thank you for spending so much of your time bringing this to the forum.
John.

 

[Guest]

If you’re interested in these kinds of details, let me quickly advertise something I put together about 15 years ago:

 

[Peter Gillson]

Following on form the MNO HQ I thought some may be interested to know a little more about some towers which were unique to the Channel Islands, these were naval range finding towers.

Unlike along the rest of the Atlantic wall, where the seaborne enemy would only come from one direction, Guernsey, being an Island could be attacked from any direction. Therefore all of the coastal defence artillery were established in open positions so that they had a 360° field of fire. A complication of having such a field of fire was that batteries were expected to fire over the Island and onto targets which were out of sight of the batteries themselves.

The solution to this problem was a number of buildings unique to the Channel Islands, the Marinepleilstanden und Messstellen,navel direction and range finding positions – known as MP towers. The intention was to build a number of towers around the Island and work started in 1941 to full fortress standard, i.e. walls of steel reinforced concrete at least 2m thick.

Here is a photo of one of the towers:



Each level of the tower has a front observation room while the rear part formed the stairwell and landing, each floor providing ranging for a specific battery, below is the same photo as above but with the internal room structure.



All of the towers were all under the control of the Kapitan Steinbach the Kommandant der Seeverteididung Kanalinsen (Naval Commander in Chief, Channel Islands), “Seeko-Ki” stationed at the MNO bunker in St Peter Port, see the previous photos. It was his role to ensure they all operated in a co-ordinated manner.

The towers were ideal for sighting and ranging for batteries which would provide general barrage fire on target areas, such a landing grounds, however for specific naval targets it was a little more complicated. Although the towers were fitted out with equipment which could determine the range and bearing of the target this was not immediately useful to batteries which were situated some miles away since the range and direction would need to be adjusted to compensate for the different locations. The intention was for the towers to be used in conjunction with each other and the battery, if possible. Readings from two towers would be taken, these sent to the battery were the mathematics to determine the range and triangulate the bearing from the battery guns was calculated by the Langbasis Kleingerat – the Long Base Small Apperatus.

The intention was to build 7 towers but only 4 were built, this was mainly due to the general reduction of building works from 1943, and partly due to the doubts Kapitan Steinbach had regarding the operational efficiency of the towers, especially when trying to co-ordinate on multiple targets, preferring the use of direct observation and the use of radar for gun-laying which had become available.



Over the next few days I'll post some photos of the inside of the tower MP4 which has been restored and is open to the public.

 

[spanner570]

Thanks for posting your photos Peter.
They brought back great memories both to me and my wife of the magic holidays we have had on your beautiful Island. She even put up with my 'Bunker Hunting' of which we visited many.
We stayed at the Blue Horizon Hotel overlooking Moulin Huet Bay.

 

[Peter Gillson]

Ron - glad it brings back some good memories. Moulin Huet was also a favourite of Renoir.

Starting with some ground floor photos:

In the entrance defence room, the air pump and filter, electrically operated it could be operated manually by turning the handle. I'm not sure if anybody makes a model of this, but it should be reasonably easy and add interest to any bunker diorama.



There is not a lot in the other ground floor rooms - some storage, so it is up to the first operational level (e) for a wood burning stove and telephone. Each level had its own stove and connected to one of two chimneys rising through the walls to the roof. These were a common feature in nearly all bunkers in Guernsey.

Note the ranging diagram above the window.



alongside all of the stoves would have been instructions, which I will leave to somebody else to translate!

 

[Peter Gillson]

moving up to the next floor - which was the ranging floor for the Battery Radetzky and a double telephone fitting.

“Achtung! Feind Hort Mt” translates to “ Attention! The enemy may hear”.

and this floor also had it's own stove ...



Kein licht bel offener Tur” translates to “No lights when door are open”, referring to the metal door which would each have ad their own gas seals. sadly only the hinges remain.



Peter

 

[Guest]

alongside all of the stoves would have been instructions, which I will leave to somebody else to translate!

Not going to bother with all of it, but for interest, the headers translate as:

I. Lighting the stove
II. During heating
III. Extinguishing the gas-tight and pressure-proof stove Wt 80 without or Wt K 80 with cooking plate
IV. Miscellaneous maintenance
V. When to put out the stove
VI. Heating at night
VII. Carbon monoxide (CO) danger

“Achtung! Feind Hort Mt” translates to “ Attention! The enemy may hear”.

More closely, “Caution! The enemy is listening in"

 

[Guest]

Great posts Peter, just caught up from when I last posted.
From the way the Germans constructed certainly didn't look as if any thing was temporary.

 

[Guest]

I don’t think they felt these were short-term–only defences, no. There’s probably also a bit of spiralling almost out of control going on, so that the works became ever more elaborate simply because if you’ve done A, B and C, not doing D, and then not doing E, etc. doesn’t really make sense. For example, once you’ve made the building bomb-proof (walls and roof 2 metres thick were considered bomb-proof), you’re also going to have to install a good ventilation system else people will probably suffocate inside eventually. But wait, what about poison gas? Et cetera.

 

[Peter Gillson]

They were definantely not temporary. Hitle described the Islands as his 'battleships of concrete and steel'with the frontline fortifications, such as these being builtto full fortress standard - the same a in Normandy.

Peter

 

[Guest]

A great thread Peter. I explored a number of the towers when I visited Guernsey many years ago - so common that they're almost emblematic of the island. A lot were built on top of Napoleonic Martello towers I remember.

 

[spanner570]

This is one of those towers Peter. Snapped on my holiday on the Island. The Germans just encased them in concrete.

I hope this is correct Peter G.


Cheers.
Ron

 

[Mini Me]

Very nice presentation Mr. Gillson. Thank you for sharing this with the forum. I'm sure it will be invaluable if I should decide to do a complex in the future. Cheers, Rick H.

 

[Guest]

This is one of those towers Peter. Snapped on my holiday on the Island. The Germans just encased them in concrete.

I hope this is correct Peter G.
View attachment 338608

Cheers.
Ron

You'll tell us next that Ian took the photo. :smiling2:

Yours 453.
Notcatchingeoutagin
.Mongolia

 

[monica]

Following on form the MNO HQ I thought some may be interested to know a little more about some towers which were unique to the Channel Islands, these were naval range finding towers.

Unlike along the rest of the Atlantic wall, where the seaborne enemy would only come from one direction, Guernsey, being an Island could be attacked from any direction. Therefore all of the coastal defence artillery were established in open positions so that they had a 360° field of fire. A complication of having such a field of fire was that batteries were expected to fire over the Island and onto targets which were out of sight of the batteries themselves.

The solution to this problem was a number of buildings unique to the Channel Islands, the Marinepleilstanden und Messstellen,navel direction and range finding positions – known as MP towers. The intention was to build a number of towers around the Island and work started in 1941 to full fortress standard, i.e. walls of steel reinforced concrete at least 2m thick.

Here is a photo of one of the towers:



Each level of the tower has a front observation room while the rear part formed the stairwell and landing, each floor providing ranging for a specific battery, below is the same photo as above but with the internal room structure.



All of the towers were all under the control of the Kapitan Steinbach the Kommandant der Seeverteididung Kanalinsen (Naval Commander in Chief, Channel Islands), “Seeko-Ki” stationed at the MNO bunker in St Peter Port, see the previous photos. It was his role to ensure they all operated in a co-ordinated manner.

The towers were ideal for sighting and ranging for batteries which would provide general barrage fire on target areas, such a landing grounds, however for specific naval targets it was a little more complicated. Although the towers were fitted out with equipment which could determine the range and bearing of the target this was not immediately useful to batteries which were situated some miles away since the range and direction would need to be adjusted to compensate for the different locations. The intention was for the towers to be used in conjunction with each other and the battery, if possible. Readings from two towers would be taken, these sent to the battery were the mathematics to determine the range and triangulate the bearing from the battery guns was calculated by the Langbasis Kleingerat – the Long Base Small Apperatus.

The intention was to build 7 towers but only 4 were built, this was mainly due to the general reduction of building works from 1943, and partly due to the doubts Kapitan Steinbach had regarding the operational efficiency of the towers, especially when trying to co-ordinate on multiple targets, preferring the use of direct observation and the use of radar for gun-laying which had become available.



Over the next few days I'll post some photos of the inside of the tower MP4 which has been restored and is open to the public.

this one,I think i ,have seen up for sale,and with some others as well,

 

[Peter Gillson]

Peter - glad you enjoyed your visit - yes they are quite embematic of the occupation. You are right that some were build on Victorian fortifications. When the Germans arrived they quickley realised that the Victorians had already built fortifications on the key coastal site (against the French) so had to build on the same sites. Sometimes next to the Victorian buildings, sometimes on them.

Their advance across France and occupation of Guernsey was so fast that when they arrived they didn't have any maps so had to buy (yes buy!!) some tourist maps. Apparently the original strategic plans for defensive fortifications were drawn on such a tourist map which is held by the Bundesarchive.

These 2 photos are of MP 2 which is on a Victorian site:





Monica - The 3.5 acre site which includes the tower other bunkers including a searchlight bunker and a 5 bedroom house is for sale - £4.5million.

The next photo is of MP 5 which was built on top of an existing mill:




Ron - close but not quite right. A peculiarity of the way the German Army organised their artillery is that the arm of service it belonged to depended on what the targets were, so batteries with the primary purpose of firing on seaborne targets were naval batteries, land based targets were army and anti aircraft were Luftwaffe. All coming under ultimate naval control.

Artilery firing on ships had to triangulate onto the targets, hence the building of the multi-level MP towers where each floor ranged for a specific battery. Land based targetting was controlled differently, each beach was split into a number of zones, perhaps 9 or 12. The artillery bateries were all pre-targetted to each of the zones and so only had to be told the beach and the zone to be able to lay down concentrated fire. They could be re-directed from one zone to another as the battle progressed. Presumably the same system was used elsewhere, but I do not know for sure.

The tower in Ron's photo was an army observation tower. Officially designated Army observation post - M5, it is known as Le Prevost tower after the name of that area of the cliffs. Because it did not need to triangulate onto specific targets it did not need to have specific floors linked to specific batteries which is why it has only two floors.

Interestingly Ron was wrong about the encasing in concrete. It was designed to look like a disused windmill and was the normal concrete construction but unusually encased in granite. After the war some locals 'liberated' the granite to use in the building of a house!

Rick - glad you are enjoying the postings.

I'll post some more internal photos tomorrow.
Peter

 

[Guest]

A peculiarity of the way the German Army organised their artillery is that the arm of service it belonged to depended on what the targets were, so batteries with the primary purpose of firing on seaborne targets were naval batteries, land based targets were army and anti aircraft were Luftwaffe. All coming under ultimate naval control.

This wasn’t the case everywhere. Here on Walcheren, there were both air force and navy AA batteries, for example, though IIRC coastal artillery was all navy-operated (IIRC in Normandy, there were also army coastal batteries).

 

[Peter Gillson]

Jakka - interesting how command and control varied.

As a slight aside, here is a copy of a map showing the Army artillery locations on the Land and an example of how the beaches were sub-divided in to target zones, as taken form German records.