World War Two: Evidence of damage/stuff left over now.

[Tickle]

BryanC said:

Fascinating stuff.

I think I picked this link up on here with lots of 'then and now' pictures from WWII. Very thought provoking.
http://www.faehrtensucher.net/#!then-and-now/c18y8

I also selectively purchase 'After the Battle' magazine which again shows lots of comparative photos and have several of their excellent books.
https://www.afterthebattle.com/index.html
Try 'Panzers in Normandy - Then and Now' by Eric Lefevre, many of the villages you drive through saw some incredible damage yet not realised from a cursory glance.

Thanks for posting the above links, very interesting imagery and reading.

[Alpacaman]

sleep envy said:

Alpacaman said:

I was working with an American in the London docklands, he was planning to drill some boreholes, I said you are checking for unexploded bombs aren't you? He said this area wasn't bombed. When I stopped laughing, I took him to the entrance of the site and showed him the memorial to the people killed in a factory which took a direct hit right where he was planning to start work. Can't remember the exact location.

Anyone with half a brain would have an unexploded ordinance survey carried out if you're digging any reasonable depth in London.

I had assumed that was what he was going to do, but I just thought I would check, but he was convinced that somehow the London Docklands had avoided any bombing. I had to show him the memorial at the entrance to convince him. He was making some urgent phone calls when I left.

[CaptainSlow]

[loafer123]

I have a copy of the London Bomb Damage maps which shows the extent of damage caused by bombs in Greater London during WW2 and the location of each V2 rocket landing.

Absolutely fascinating.

[mcelliott]

Here are a few pics of my tool shed- it's also a German bunker. It housed a large gun battery and is interlinked with two others either side of it. The gun had a range of roughly 6 miles, and the German troops who operated the bunker lived in accommodation across the road, the foundations of which are still visible.

Edited by mcelliott on Friday 11th September 21:08

Edited by mcelliott on Friday 11th September 21:08

[wack]

There's a scout hut in penketh that used to be a WW2 POW hut

Just outside penketh there's a water tower , on the site was the pow hut and an anti aircraft battery that protected buttonwood airforce base and the run up to Liverpool

I live on an estate that's built on burtonwood airforce base, up to a couple of years ago the runways and hangers were still there , they've built an industrial estate on most of it now

[GOG440]

The Don of Croy said:

Gargamel said:

All along the North Downs from Box Hill to Farnham are a numerous WW2 pill boxes - most of which are open.

We have oodles of 'em here in East Sussex too - originally the powers that be planned that the River Medway would be a line of defence and thus they built loads, with extra ones if there was a railway line nearby (usually with a bigger aperture for an anti-tank gun or field artillery type thingy.

Have a look for book called 'Defence of the Realm' which details all sorts of features from Napoleonic times to the Cold War (I picked up a copy at Duxford).

Down on the beach at Cuckmere Haven you can make out the gun emplacements facing the open Channel and potential invaders, made of earth embankments. If we pop over to walk there soon I'll take the camera.

Less obvious - but very interesting - was Monty's wartime HQ underneath some nice villas on the south side of Tunbridge Wells. Nearby was a separate tunnel network the proposed use of which has never been explained;

http://www.courier.co.uk/mystery-lies-underneath-f...

My (sadly deceased) ex father in law grew up in Sussex during WW2, he told us about a network of pipes along the beach at Seaford (and around that area), in case of an invasion the pipes were to dump petrol onto the beach and fry the Germans

[kuro]

My other half did a skydive at Perranporth airfield last week. A former spitfire base that remains pretty much unchanged.

[Tango13]

The Don of Croy said:

We have oodles of 'em here in East Sussex too - originally the powers that be planned that the River Medway would be a line of defence and thus they built loads, with extra ones if there was a railway line nearby (usually with a bigger aperture for an anti-tank gun or field artillery type thingy.

Have a look for book called 'Defence of the Realm' which details all sorts of features from Napoleonic times to the Cold War (I picked up a copy at Duxford).

Down on the beach at Cuckmere Haven you can make out the gun emplacements facing the open Channel and potential invaders, made of earth embankments. If we pop over to walk there soon I'll take the camera.

Less obvious - but very interesting - was Monty's wartime HQ underneath some nice villas on the south side of Tunbridge Wells. Nearby was a separate tunnel network the proposed use of which has never been explained;

http://www.courier.co.uk/mystery-lies-underneath-f...

Have you any more details of this book? Author or ISBN? I've had a quick google and most of the results are to do with MI5. Thanks in advance

We still have what I believe are tank obstacles nearby, I'll get some pics tomorrow if I remember.

[Quhet]

CaptainSlow said:

I was just about to post this.
There's also Coventry Cathedral

[RB Will]

Will try to contribute propery at some point but have a few things here in swindon,
The Honda factory is built on a WW air field, we have Wroughton airfield, some ruins of old railway lines used for supplies and a troop camp, most local to me but I will have to double check is an old tree with a big split in it which I was brought up being told was where a plane crashed into it, they have just put in a war memorial 50ft away from it so sounds plausible.

[southendpier]

mcelliott said:

Here are a few pics of my tool shed- it's also a German bunker. It housed a large gun battery and is interlinked with two others either side of it. The gun had a range of roughly 6 miles, and the German troops who operated the bunker lived in accommodation across the road, the foundations of which are still visible.

Edited by mcelliott on Friday 11th September 21:08

Edited by mcelliott on Friday 11th September 21:08

That is pretty fascinating

[Berooo]

Chris Type R said:

Someone found a secret german bunker in their garden

I wondered how far down I'd have to read until someone mentioned this

[theshrew]

wack said:

There's a scout hut in penketh that used to be a WW2 POW hut

Just outside penketh there's a water tower , on the site was the pow hut and an anti aircraft battery that protected buttonwood airforce base and the run up to Liverpool

I live on an estate that's built on burtonwood airforce base, up to a couple of years ago the runways and hangers were still there , they've built an industrial estate on most of it now

Its very rare I go over that direction, Earlier in the year I was driving down the motorway and I was banging on about how I was going to show my daughter where a WW2 air base was. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Not that you could see much anyway but I felt a bit sad it had all gone.

I live about 10 min from Stretton Air Base https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNAS_Stretton_(HMS_B...

Edited by theshrew on Friday 11th September 23:18

[Morningside]

Pillboxes are everywhere. There are some at Southwold, Walberswick and Blythburgh.

At Southwold there are also some very large concrete tank traps and Blythburgh still floods on purpose to stop a land invasion. Oddly at Southwold on Mights Bridge there is one hidden on the Reydon side.

[MitchT]

opieoilman said:

I grew up at Upton Towans near Hayle and the towans area was a massive dynamite factory during WW2. Our house is about 1/3 of a mile from the entrance to the towans and I remember my gran telling me about the windows getting blown out when there had been accidents at the factory.

Unfortunately, these are just photos I could find on google as I'm at work. A friend of my Gran's was very into the history of the dynamite works and some of the pictures he's managed to dig up are brilliant, but I've lost touch with him.

This was when it was producing explosives. Odd to see it like that now as that I where I often take the dogs and used to ride my bike there. That bit is also brilliant for sliding down when it's been snowing.



This is a good view of the towans as it shows the squares, which I think were storage bunkers for the explosives and materials. Or for parties, when I was a teenager.


The stack at the entrance to the towans, visible for quite a distance.



One of the few remaining buildings. This one overlooks the sea, I'd love to be able to convert it into a cabin, but it's a protected area now.


I haven't seen them for a while, but during the war the beach was covered with wooden posts to prevent planes landing. I remember some still being there when I was a kid. I used to be a bit careful about coming off my board when I surfed there.

That's amazing! I was visiting my parents last weekend and looking at a giant poster that they have of an area stretching from St Ives on the left to Upton Towans on the right and I noticed the squares and grew quite curious, so much so that I was going to start a thread on here and post a screen grab from Google Maps to ask what those squares are, but this answers it. I'm from Yorkshire but I've stayed in Carbis Bay many times and explored many of the surrounding areas - I love the whole area and would love to move there one day.

[Quhet]

Bournville railway and canal bridge quite close to me was bombed in the war.


And you can still see where they patched it up

[Mr Happy]

I'm sure that this building in Hull was left as it was when it was hit by one of the hundreds of bombs dropped there during WW2.

[Condi]

I used to farm outside Hull and we had lines of bomb holes in the fields. Usually when the bombers came under attack they would just dump them bombs for extra speed, and so the landscape was full of them.

[Beati Dogu]

CaptainSlow said:

That's in Plymouth isn't it?

What the Germans didn't destroy, the post war utopian planners did.