WW2 Pillboxes UK

[Bishop]

I look forward to seeing your pics Foxylady. That reminds me I must whack a few shots of some of the Minehead area defences up at some point, theres some rather odd stuff down there, camouflaged, gabled roof etc.

B

 

[Bishop]

Uploaded a few snaps to the gallery of some of the Minehead area pillboxes and defences, most of the pics are taken by Krela.

Blue Anchor near the station, according to the Somerset Pillboxes website this pillbox was camouflaged to look like a railway signal box.

Beach defence variant between Blue Anchor and Dunster.

Beach defence pillbox, this one was camouflaged to look like a railway platelayers hut (outside would have been probably covered in wooden boards or railway sleepers).

Platelayers pillbox embrasure, metal plate could be closed to defend against grenades, flamethrowers etc.

Platelayers pillbox interior.

B

 

[krela]

Some nice pillboxes there

 

[Foxylady]

Aren't they just! Nice photos too. Particularly like the one with the chimney (presumably part of the camouflage).
Cheers
Foxy

 

[Bishop]

Hey Foxylady I'm glad you like the platelayers pillbox, got to say I'm rather fond of it myself. I've seen a few pillboxes but without a doubt this badboy pictured below has to be my favourite so far, if this came on the market with an acre or two then I'd be very tempted.

Its camouflaged to look like a farm building, the roof is original (1939). Its at the back of a farm just to the north of Dunster, (Minehead area). Few more pics of it in the Pillboxes gallery.

B

 

[Foxylady]

Hey Foxylady I'm glad you like the platelayers pillbox, got to say I'm rather fond of it myself. I've seen a few pillboxes but without a doubt this badboy pictured below has to be my favourite so far, if this came on the market with an acre or two then I'd be very tempted.

I've got to say I agree with you. It's gorgeous. If only to have the opportunity, and the cash of course!
Cheers
Foxy

PS, A bit late with my photos of the one I found in Seaton. Need to go back & take some close-ups, plus there's another one to check out & I'm going to try & get into the former lifeguard one to see if there's any evidence it was once a pillbox.

 

[nizzer]

As i said in my intro profile, there is a good complex of three or four octagonal, grey concrete pillboxes ( not sure what type, but with eight gunslits each and an offset z shaped entrance) just outside mitford (near morpeth, northumberland) near the remains of mitford castle across the road from the parrish church. They give excellent interlocking fields of fire down to the river, covering a wide pasture. However, pardon the pun, they could easily be taken from behind as they are on the lower slopes of a hill with no obvious positions other than the hillcrest to protect them against infantry assault. Maybe i'm missing something. Also Spurn Point on the humber estuary is a vast complex of mg and rifle pillboxes, and three vast heavy anti shipping gun emplacements, as well as three lighter anti shipping emplacements. the former fire out to sea, and the latter fire across the mouth of the estuary. There are also huge ammunition storage bunkers, barracks remains, air raid shelters, anti aircraft emplacements and the remains of a light railway running out from the mainland to the north. The majority of the original road laid by the millitary remains. All in all it is a major installation which is sadly threatened by erosion and the deposits of sand at it's tip (natural i must add) for example, have extended it's length by some distance in the years since it was last manned, and the shifting dunes now completely obscure the line of sight from the smaller anti shipping guns aiming across the estuary. I can't think anyone would want to fire a three or four inch gun at a bunch of invading germans from twenty feet away! Out in the estuary itself are two napoleonic era forts which were modernised in ww1 and ww2. In ww2, crew were under instruction to pretend they were unoccupied, but some trigger happy aa gunner let rip at some luftwaffe on their way to or from hull docks and received several hundred kilos of bombs for his troubles. DOH! Up the coast a few miles north is the Godwin Battery, another very large coastal defence location, with various pillboxes, emplacements for larger weapons and accomodatio etc. Not been there yet so can't comment. Have a search fo it on the web, there are various sites with varying quality of photos. Have just realised i'm rambling and have gone off the topic rather! Also apologise for lack of photos, need to replace camera sharpish! Salut, nizzer/ rich

 

[Bishop]

Hey Nizzer if you'd like to more about your local pillboxes then have
a look on the Defence of Britain database, I just searched under
Mitford and five results came up.

http://www.britarch.ac.uk/projects/dob/index.html

Nizzer wrote.

However, pardon the pun, they could easily be taken from behind as they are on the lower slopes of a hill with no obvious positions other than the hillcrest to protect them against infantry assault.

Ah the attack on the flank trick, to counter this you need infantry dug in near your pillboxes to protect the flanks, its rare to see remaining trenchs these days but pretty much all pillboxes would have had an extensive trench system so the defenders could move between pillboxes safely and also use the trenches as fighting positions. If a group of pillboxes can cover each other and have a good trench sytem then they'd be a swine to attack.

With a static line of defence it would be wise to keep a few hundred troops to the rear to use as a quick reaction force, basically beef up sections that are struggling to counter an assault.


B

 

[nizzer]

Bishop, i did just that after having notced a link by the brigadier. They aren,t exactly local to me but near where my dad used to live. As far as i can tell from other searches, the government never got as far as building a great deal in west yorkshire where i actually live. I assume either the threat had receeded somewhat, or they would have had to concede defeat by the time any invading force got this far north and inland. Or it was a case of, Bradford? Where's that!

 

[Bishop]

Sorry to hear there aren't many pillboxes in your neck of the woods Nizzer. Your thoughts on the vulnerable pillboxes at Mitford got me thinking about how the enemy would have attacked pillboxes/defensive positions. The link below is an article on German engineer assault tactics from prisoner of war interviews in Tunisia, 1943.

http://www.lonesentry.com/articles/engassault/index.html

b

 

[King Al]

Good idea these forgotten land marks deserve to cataloged and respected I know of a few and would be happy to help with project. these relics need to be protected "lest we forget"

 

[nizzer]

Bishop. re lone sentry..an old friend of mine! It has to be the best site on tactics, contemporary accounts of ww2 combat. I'd go for mortars and panzerschrecks to keep heads down, mg fire and a flanking decoy and then in with flamethrowers and satchel charges once within 20 metres .Though to be honest i'd rather leave it to someone else.

 

[Bishop]

Nizzer wrote.

Though to be honest i'd rather leave it to someone else.

Lol


Link I stumbled across whilst digging around on the net, rather nice 6 pdr gun emplacement variant at Inskip, Lancashire. Odd for a 6 pdr emplacement to have an anti aircraft position.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~rwbarnes/defence/inskip.htm


Added a few more pics to the Pillboxes gallery of Type 28 anti tank pillboxes in west Wiltshire (most of the pics taken by Krela). Also added a few snaps of the 2 pdr gun.

Type 28A Semington, Wiltshire.

B

 

[nizzer]

Bishop. like both the pic on our site and those on the link. On the link, it's an odd emplacement i agree, but for me for different reasons than those you cite, at least as far as tactical reasoning goes. The front of the emplacement seems very vulnerable, particularly as it is on high ground, and it doesn,t appear to be part of a chain and could therefore be easily bypassed..remember the maginot line! Admittedly there could be further emplacements nearby which are not shown on the site. This must be an early emplacement as 2 pounders were ineffectual post 1941 due to german tank armour developments. The inclusion of an aa emplacement on such a small structure must make the position very cramped and busy, with extra potential for ammo explosions. On the plus side you have aa defence, which would prove useful when the stuks were called in. Depending on the angle of depression of the aa gun, it would also be a fantastic anti personnel weapon due to velocity, range and rate of fire typical of aa guns. Equally, there are many records of aa guns as low as 20mm calibre, particularly the quad barrelled wirbelwind of the wermacht being successfully used as anti tank weapons, mostly to jam turrets and disable track systems on afvs. That's all!

 

[nizzer]

bishop. crap, got confused. 2pounder rubbish. 6pounder good!

 

[krela]

This must be an early emplacement as 2 pounders were ineffectual post 1941 due to german tank armour developments. The inclusion of an aa emplacement on such a small structure must make the position very cramped and busy, with extra potential for ammo explosions.

Hrm, pretty much all civil and home defence positions were constructed winter 1939 - autumn 1940. The only stuff built later than this were the anti-tank islands surrounding strategic positions following a major change in defensive thinking.

To give these pillboxes some context I'll quote something I wrote for another website:

In May 1940 General 'Tiny' Ironside took command of home defences. By this time the german Blitzkreig tactics had been witnessed and analysed when the Germans Panzer divisions overthrew the Maginot line which had been defended by 80 French and British divisions. Ironside had 400 miles of exposed coastline to protect (twice the length of the Maginot line), with only one weak, ill equiped armoured division and 15 half strength, young and inexperienced infantry divisions with very little serviceable equipment and virtually no field guns.

Because of the lack of both fire and manpower Ironside came up with an unusual anti-invasion plan, one that involved delay and irritation tactics. The plan was to create a series of beach defences that would make it hard for any enemy beach landing, along with a series of inland anti-tank (AT) lines which would delay and hinder any enemy progress inland. This delay would allow a single mobile reserve force to muster and counter-attack.

Ironsides plan involved using natural obstacles where possible (canals, rivers, railway embankments, etc), and where these weren't available hundreds of miles of AT ditches were dug, this created long stretches of land where the Panzer tanks would be severely hindered. These AT lines were backed up with a network of thousands of pillboxes from which the home defence forces could attack enemy invaders with a variety of weapons from 6" AT guns through to medium machine guns or rifles. In addition to these 'stop' lines many key bridges were armed with explosives so they could be destroyed to halt enemy progress if necessary, and many thousands of anti-tank 'cubes' and rail obstructions were used to further hinder tank progress.

A number of major stoplines were constructed over the summer of 1940 including the GHQ Blue and GHQ Green lines which were designed to stop invasion forces moving north towards london from the south coast, and the GHQ East line designed to stop invasion forces moving towards the midlands from the east, and the Taunton line which would stop invasion forces moving towards Bristol from the west. Many other cities also recieved specific protection from smaller stoplines.

By July 1940 Churchill was disillusioned with what he considered the 'old fashionedness' of his generals compared to the performance of the German generals and replaced the mostly WW1 experienced Ironside with General Sir Brooke who had experience of modern warface in france. Brooke believed in a more pro-active form of home defence and made a number of changes to the planned defence of Britain.

Firstly he constructed a large number of AT islands around strategically important places giving them more depth of defence, these AT islands used the same technologies of AT ditches, pillboxes and tank traps as the stoplines. Brooke also believed that rather than having one mobile force that would be redirected to wherever needed, it was necessary to have an effect reserve force covering a large area of coast.

These changes caused many problems with resources. There were not enough troops to provide the cover Brooke required, and planned deployments of troops to the far east had to be delayed so the troops could provide home cover. In addition to this much of the armies motorised transport had been captured in the invasion of France so local buses and coaches had to be requisitioned to move troops around. Brooke also came to realise that the permanent manning of isolated and vulnerable pillboxes wasn't sensible and this combined with a scarcity of resources lead to a slowing in the building of pillboxes.

By mid 1941 the majority of the construction work was complete, and with the establishment of an organised civilian 'Home Guard' much of the responsibility for home defence was taken away from the Army allowing them to concentrate on other things.

 

[Lightbuoy]

Hi all!

For anyone who's interested, see below for aeriel views of some WW2 pill boxes / gun defences, which I've known about for years, but had forgotten until now!
Couldn't say what type they are though, other than they are re-inforced concrete & I wouldn't fancy having one fall on me head!!
The ones at Walton-on-the-Naze used to be about 50 feet higher up until the 1970's, but the soft cliffs have been erroded and they took a tumble down onto the beach! Also at the Naze is the Navigation Tower (early form of Lighthouse), built by Trinity House in 1720. This had a radar installed on the roof during WW2, and formed a communication chain with Bawdsey Radar Station further up the coast. This tower is open again from Easter -well worth a visit. You can even become a "friend" of the tower (no, this doesn't mean you have to hug it!) Excellent views from up top too!

Lb

Naze Tower & Pill Boxes on the beach................
http://www.flashearth.com/?lat=51.865196&lon=1.290525&z=18&r=5&src=msl

Pill boxes at Chappel (under Railway viaduct) & anti-tank blocks?................
http://www.flashearth.com/?lat=51.922187&lon=0.756845&z=19.8&r=5&src=msl

Pill box next to Cowdray Avenue, Colchester........................
http://www.flashearth.com/?lat=51.896558&lon=0.91348&z=18.8&r=5&src=msl

 

[Bishop]

Interesting stuff Lightbuoy, I'd love to see some pics of these pillboxes.

I searched Walton-on-the-Naze on the Defence of Britain database, I like the sound of this one. Weirdie pillbox variants yeah. I'll have to read up about the other pillboxes/defences you posted on the DoB database when I get the chance.

Concrete type 22 pillbox with additional rectangular anti-aircraft well attached to the side (west side). AA well can be entered from an internal entrance in the pillbox. Around the outside is a wide skirt of concrete up to the embrasures added as reinforcement. This is now breaking away from the pillbox.

Type of site PILLBOX (TYPE FW3/22)
Location On sea shore, Walton-on-the-Naze
Area Frinton and Walton, Essex, England
Grid reference TM 2666 2366

b

 

[Foxylady]

Went out this afternoon to get some close-ups of the filled-in embrasures of the pillbox I found in Seaton.
Whilst I was there I walked further up the cliff path & found what appears to be another one, albeit much smaller. Only the top part is showing, the earth built up with a concrete apron and landscaping around it. Opposite that, on the other side of the path some of the turf has fallen away from a concrete plinth, exposing a hole beneath it. Underneath the plinth is some lead reinforcing. As far as I know there haven't been houses in that exact spot, but if there were it may just be a cellar. There are houses not too far away, though' so it could be an old shelter.
When I looked at ArchSearch, I found a pillbox right next to the Harbour bridge, so I decided to look for it. Couldn't find anything by the bridge, but when I stood for a breather & looked into the field opposite I found it, partway into the hedge. To get there I had to walk up a private drive to a very grand house, so I decided to ask permission, but there was no-one home so I got as close to it as I could & took some photos. I think it's a Type 24 (forgot to check it out for certain on the Defence of Britain site).
Sent the film off today for developing so will post the pics as soon as I receive them, sometime next week.
Cheers
Foxy

P.S. Just checked on the site & I'm pretty sure it is a Type 24. In fact there's a photo on there of one in Hampshire partway in a hedge & it's almost the spitting image.
FL

 

[krela]

Underneath the plinth is some lead reinforcing.

Surely you mean iron? Lead not being known for it's strength