German fortification, Normandy, World War II (photo)

imgur.com ^ | 5/15/19 | Imgur username nallex

[ransomnote]

German fortification, Normandy, World War II.

 

 

[ransomnote]

I'd never seen anything like this photo and found the comments attached to this image on imgur (see link) interesting.

Some comments compare this fortification to a chocolate cake, note how loud it must have been to be inside the thing, and disagreement as to teh caliber of shell could do that damage.

Here's another pic for scale.

[2banana]

Great German steel...

[PLMerite]

Looks like maybe 75mm from a Sherman, but that’s an unsupported guess.

And, yeah, I bet it was LOUD inside. At least until the flamethrower guy got there.

[Paladin2]

Somebody was ringing the bell....

[SMARTY]

Krupp’s stahl (sp?)

[mfish13]

Looks like 5 inch shells from a destroyer. I did not see this one, but saw another that was taller and not as wide in a private museum on the western exit from Omaha Beach. They said it was 5 inch shells from a destroyer.

[L,TOWM]

Some of the smaller ones could be 40mm or Ma Deuce hits, too. But yeah, with the guy next to the structure, it sure looks that thing got hit by quite a few 75 or 76MM Sherman cannon shots.

[rktman]

More 🐄 🛎

[BenLurkin]

Looks like somebody was using it for target practice.

[dfwgator]

[real saxophonist]

My dad was a 22 year old LT (j.g.) in charge of an LCT on Utah Beach. He had an Army engineer company, with bulldozers and TNT. I have a picture of him and his crew posing with a captured German 88.

Don't have it here handy, it's in a storage unit back in Georgia.

[pfflier]

They said it was 5 inch shells from a destroyer.

I can't imagine ship fire being this accurate. It is more likely 75 MM from Shermans particularly considering the concentration of hits near the aperture.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

That was the first thing that occurred to me -- can you imagine how DEAFENINGLY LOUD it must have been when the shells hit that turret?

The second thing that strikes me is how fluid the steel was when it was hit. It must almost instantaneously melt when struck by the shells. The steel is very ductile, not brittle.

The third thing that strikes me is that this might have been a test article for the Allies examining the quality of German armor. Would such a fortification actually taken that many hits during battle? The Russians and the U.S. in particular were interested in learning about German armor and frequently tested captured armor.

See "On German Armour" for one interesting take on this.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Or maybe it was being subjected to engineering tests of German armor. Lots of reverse-engineering was going on to determine how good German armor was and how to defeat it.

[Kommodor]

I wonder how much of that was day of, and how much was target practice afterwards.

Either way, pity it didn’t take some 8 or 14 in. artillery. That would be spectacular.

[Dan in Wichita]

Pluskat spotting the Allied fleet at Normandy. From the great movie "The Longest Day".

Pluskat, vas is los? Translation: Pluskat, what's wrong?

[OKSooner]

Oh yeah. The Navy ships came in close, in the shallow water to provide direct fire support.

They could hit that thing all day long. Besides, the supposedly amphibious tanks went straight to the bottom when they were launched, unfortunately with their crews, all lost.

Tanks didn’t make it to the beach on day one.

[Leaning Right]

I assume all that pitting is due to Global Warming.

[brownsfan]

“Here’s another pic for scale.”

imgur? Shouldn’t there be a banana for scale?

[Clutch Martin]

“...note how loud it must have been to be inside the thing”

The ring of the Ruhr!