Hello everyone, and welcome to my 4th installation in my bunker safari thread series. I realise most of you that are here now were not around when I posted the original threads (found here: http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=136724 and here: http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=138464), but there seemed to be a certain amount of interest around the topic back then, so today while being bored (I have a week off uni) I thought I'd create another thread with pictures from Festung Norwegen, the Norwegian part of the Atlantic Wall that the German ***** regime created all along the coast of Europe. Short Wiki quote: I may add that the pictures are nearly 3 years old and of questionable quality (taken with my mates shaky HP digicam - we're better suited today!). I don't know why I didn't post these when they were fresh, and I don't know if there's any interest for it today, but hell, it's the pub, it doesn't matter, right? There's also been a fair amount of threads around other things people are interested in (cars, bikes etc), so I thought I'd share my other passion apart from computers; bunkers/fortifications and WW2 history! So anyway, on to the pictures. This was the first sight that "greets" you when you arrive at Batterie Laukvik. It's the living quarters and HQ of the soliders stationed here. The area is shaped like a hill, and all along the side facing away from the sea, there's holes like this one. The entire hill is made hollow and was used for storing ammunition to the guns this fortress housed. All around the area are small regelbau bunkers used for various things. This is the inside of one of them. As you can see, the walls are painted white. In one of these regelbaus, we found some crates. As you can see, they're dated 1927. The outside of said regelbau. Notice the doors. Laukvik was equipped with 6 x 15,5 cm K416(f) guns, with a range 17 000 m. It was built to defend a narrow fjord called "Folda". This is one of the 6 mounts for the guns. Each gun emplacement was connected to the underground storage rooms for ammunition. This is where the ammo came up. They used an elevator system that I will show you later. All these guns needed a view post, and this was put on top of the hill with great view of the entire fjord. Close up of above command bunker Inside the command bunker View from the command bunker. Now obviously, all the gun emplacements relied on information from the command bunker. This was done with a telephonic communication system. All the wires led up to the command bunker. Air cleaning system. To this unit there was attached filters, so in a case of gas attack, they could still breathe clean air. Command room.
From the command bunker there were stairs that lead directly down to the ammo storage inside the mountain/hill. Inside the storage We found a crate of empty wine (?) bottles down here. They were all dated pre-1939. Okay, here is the elevator system I mentioned earlier. This was used to transport shells up to the guns. Shaft leading up to the top. Backside of the main command bunker. Anyone want to take a guess at how much this lump of concrete weights? That was about it for now. I hope you found the pictures interesting and didn't think it was too boring.
Cool pictures... I love seeing things like this. One question though, what are the wires surrounding the command bunker (seen the picture "Close up of above command bunker")? Were those there originally or were they put there to keep pieces from falling, or what?
I remember your last posts. Cool pictures. The wine bottles are the most interesting for me. Some one just put them down all that time ago.... who were they, what were they thinking... are they still around. It's like finding a roman coin or something. Some one dropped it, the location hasn't changed, that means it's just been sitting there. Weird.
It's part of the camouflage. They would attach things for camouflage (trees etc) to this to make the concrete blend into the terrain. They're original and has been there since it was built in the early 40's. The fortress was ready in may 1942. Also, interesting story: there's a beach close to this fortress where they built some simple docks for unloading ammo and supplies. One time they must have miscalculated, as a supply boat packed with ammo got stuck. Somehow the boat was about to roll over, so all the cargo was dumped straight into the sea. There's still ammo, mines and other explosives washing ashore in the area!
Pretty interesting John. One question though, were those bunkers cleaned out/set up for tourist attractions or museums, or are they just abandoned (like not maintained for historical purposes) and you had to go hiking and find them?
Amazing John, thanks.I had the same question as above;They let the general public in them?I'm surprised they aren't sealed off to prevent kids from using them as party shacks, and to preserve the history. I wonder if this kind of stuff is visible on Google earth?
No, Laukvik is not set up for tourists and is sort of hidden away for people who don't know about it. You actually have to cross a fair bit of private property to get to it. The only people visiting these are people interested in them, and to me that's a good thing. We have quite a bit of fortresses that are made available for the public (Batterie Dietl is a good example, where one of the bunkers are made into a museum, see link in the first post), and these are filled with German tourists during the summer months. Nothing wrong with that, it's important that people get to see and learn about this stuff, but I personally perfer to explore bunkers that are more... untouched by the public. It's much more exciting, and you never know what you might find.
Yeah, some of the larger ones are. I mentioned Batterie Dietl earlier, here's what that looks like on google earth: Unfortunately no higher resolution available. There's alot of pictures from this huge fortress in my second post on the subject, if the image links still work, that is. Here: http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=138464
4296.9115kg I'm hoping this is one of those things where you'll go back, figure out some way to weight it and then ultimately..... I'll win something.
Thats awesome! In the USA, almost everything with any historical value is turned into some sort of money-making tourist attraction. It's really a shame . You Europeans are really fortunate to live in such a historically rich area.
I'm willing to be that it weights alot more than 4200 kilos. I saw a much smaller chunk (though thicker) of concrete being cut out of a u-boat bunker (Dora 1), and that weighted 15 tons! Nah, ze Germans sure knew how to build heavy. But then again it was built to withstand allied bombardment...
Well I guesstimated. Looks 1 foot high.. about 8 foot square (guessing it's square) If all of it is in the picture... Concrete weights about 2400kg per cubic metre. Punched some numbers..... Ding! That was the answer that popped up.
Wow, hell of an interesting past time. I guess this explains the images from the guru3d faces thead. Quite a rarity I guess to find it almost untouched after this amount of time, very rarely find that kinda stuff here. Good job
I'll try to find pictures but we have similar gun batteries that were mostly sealed off in the 90's that were built to defend the California coast against Japanese invasion. When I was a kid we used to go all through them, they were sealed because they became party places and places for homeless to encamp.
Glad you liked it. Seeing the response here makes me want to upload pictures from some of the other many trips me and my mate have had over the years. There's thousands of these bunkers still intact along the coast of Norway, so we'll probably never run out of new places to visit. Every summer we try to visit as many new places as we can It's a really nice hobby, I can tell you that.
Please do, I for one would love to see the whole album.I'm kind of a history junkie, and this is the kind of stuff you just don't get every day.
That's a great hobby. TimeTeam recently dug up a bunker here in the UK used by the national guard during WW2. This country is so crowded it's hard to find any old WW2 defences as the land is often grabbed to build on.