Sorry for all the posts in here guys, but it would only let me do like 15 pictures per post so I had to cut the whole thing up into sections.
My family inherited a house on the isle of Jersey which is one of the three channel islands. During WWII they were occupied by the Germans and Hitler declared them to be his "concrete battleships" and thus they became the most heavily fortified part of the entire Atlantic seawall defensive system. They were the only British territories ever occupied by the Germans during the war and actually didn't officially surrender until several days after the fall of Berlin and the German surrender that followed.
While I was here visiting they opened up several of the restored bunkers for museums and tours and I went through and took plenty of pictures for you guys to see and I'll be describing the bunkers and stuff with each picture. I also went over and spent two days in France to go see the Normandy memorials, I have pictures of it, but there's not a lot I can say about it because neither words nor pictures can even remotely begin to describe what it was to be there.
The two major islands, Jersey and Guernsey were heavily fortified with anti-shipping and anti-tank guns all around the perimeter of the islands with airports, anti-air guns, and infantry bunkers in the interior. Every single approach to the islands was covered from several angles by all manner of defenses, but that wasn't enough for the Germans, they placed enormously large artillery pieces on the island that could fire between the islands and as close to the coast of France as possible, the guns had the ability to range from 2-3 miles all the way out to 45 miles. This allowed the islands to be used in an offensive nature because they could be used to disrupt shipping and sink invasion forces that would head towards the coast and attempt to invade via southern France.
This first set of pictures is from a large naval cannon bunker which was used to interdict shipping.
"Work is the adornment of the citizen. Blessing is the reward for toil."
This is an ammunition elevator which would raise ammunition from the ready-bunker up into the gun's firing position.
These are flamethrower mines. Yeah, I'm not kidding. They would be burred like that and rigged to an electronic detonator inside the bunker. When this detonator was tripped, it would cause a small explosive to go off inside the mine, releasing the fuel and catching it on fire to spray the area up to 20ft away. They were emplaced on the approaches to the bunkers themselves.
This is a light tank turret, they would place an MG-42 inside the turret and then put in the bunker's roof as an armored machine-gun nest.
My family inherited a house on the isle of Jersey which is one of the three channel islands. During WWII they were occupied by the Germans and Hitler declared them to be his "concrete battleships" and thus they became the most heavily fortified part of the entire Atlantic seawall defensive system. They were the only British territories ever occupied by the Germans during the war and actually didn't officially surrender until several days after the fall of Berlin and the German surrender that followed.
While I was here visiting they opened up several of the restored bunkers for museums and tours and I went through and took plenty of pictures for you guys to see and I'll be describing the bunkers and stuff with each picture. I also went over and spent two days in France to go see the Normandy memorials, I have pictures of it, but there's not a lot I can say about it because neither words nor pictures can even remotely begin to describe what it was to be there.
The two major islands, Jersey and Guernsey were heavily fortified with anti-shipping and anti-tank guns all around the perimeter of the islands with airports, anti-air guns, and infantry bunkers in the interior. Every single approach to the islands was covered from several angles by all manner of defenses, but that wasn't enough for the Germans, they placed enormously large artillery pieces on the island that could fire between the islands and as close to the coast of France as possible, the guns had the ability to range from 2-3 miles all the way out to 45 miles. This allowed the islands to be used in an offensive nature because they could be used to disrupt shipping and sink invasion forces that would head towards the coast and attempt to invade via southern France.
This first set of pictures is from a large naval cannon bunker which was used to interdict shipping.
"Work is the adornment of the citizen. Blessing is the reward for toil."
This is an ammunition elevator which would raise ammunition from the ready-bunker up into the gun's firing position.
These are flamethrower mines. Yeah, I'm not kidding. They would be burred like that and rigged to an electronic detonator inside the bunker. When this detonator was tripped, it would cause a small explosive to go off inside the mine, releasing the fuel and catching it on fire to spray the area up to 20ft away. They were emplaced on the approaches to the bunkers themselves.
This is a light tank turret, they would place an MG-42 inside the turret and then put in the bunker's roof as an armored machine-gun nest.
