Berlin Battle damage

[AndyFettes]

Hi all,
This post came about when James asked about Building colours in Berlin way back in August, in the help me section, I had previously posted up this kind of info on the old TnT site but thought it may be an good idea to ressurect it here
So here we go.
I visited Berlin quite a few times over the past few years due to my Brother living there and instead of the usual touristy visits on my last visit we both did a battle damage tour around the city and took lots of pics of misc things but I want to concentrate on James` question
So here goes

This is one of my favourite subjects and this building is doors away from the German presidents home as you can see that Ive used googly-mapping to show the position and direction of attack by the 9th rifle Corps on the 28th April 1945
This area was defended by 11th SS Nordland Division so you can just imagine a machine gun nest firing from the window and in turn being attacks and the scars show that

As you can see in the last photo some wag has put the "red army was here" which I thought quite funny and NO it wasnt me

Seeing as I cant preview my post (moonpups!!) I shall bung this up now and do a second section when Ive fine tuned this
That looks ok to me so Ill continue
As you can see the stone of the building is a pinkish tan coloured sandstone but as you can see in one of the shots some of it was blackened due to the fire storms occured during Allied bombing raids and also intense artillary fire from the Russians. This smoke damage occured due to obvious fires and the stone work was forever stained when it rained and the colouring soaked into the building blocks.

 

[moon puppy]

You can Preview,

also if you roll your mouse over those icons it should give a little info on what the icon does.

Great stuff Andy. The State Capital of South Carolina has battle scars also from when some fella named Sherman came to visit. Nothing like this though...

 

[AndyFettes]

In this second part I have another building that I want to show you, this time its a very reddish sandstone
This is quite a strange building in that it stands on its own in the middle of wasteland, obviously the surrounding buildings have been demolished.
I like this particular building because it also tells a story and Ill try and explain that in the pictures.
here it is and you can see the colour that makes it quite striking, its a shame the the Grafitti merchants have been about but it doesnt detract from its appearance too much.

I shall now also put up another map to show its position and then explain what the circles mean

The purple oval is the location of the building the thin big yellow box is the location of,.............wait for it ,.........the Fuhrer Bunker !!!hmy:

The orange arrows denote the escape of the few remaining officials after the suicide of Hitler
There was a secret tunnel into the U Bahn system, the location of which I am unsure of but I do know that the entrance of the tunnel is where Ive put the light blue circles so you now see why that red Building is kind of special
if you look closely you can see a very thin brown arrow which donates the route underground to the Mohrenstrasse U Bahn station marked on the map with a "U" and from there they proceeded North via the tunnel network to Friedrichstrasse where they attempted to get over the river under intense fire.

Back to the building

Now these last tow photos are of particular interest well at least to me anyway
You can see two marks on the corner of the wall

Now you can see where those two projectiles hit the wall and they do match up perfectly and were fired from the corner of the street if you look back at the map

Last picture is the small car park which now lays over the Bunker, the bunker itself is still there but filled up with sand and can be accessed via a very small inspection hatch like a sewer cap but civvies are not allowed anywhere near that !

Here`s an interesting photo of Lead shuttering along one of the streets, the stonework another beige type has been repaired but the shrapnel holes in the lead remains

So that`s it for now I shall try and find more pictures of my travels but I think there are on my London computer so I cant access them until just after Xmas

Hope you enjoyed looking

Cheers, Andy

 

[Gene]

Thanks for posting!!!
Moon Pup, A guy named Sherman? was he driving an M4A3??:laugh:
Ooooops, wrong era!!!!!!

 

[AndyFettes]

LOL Gene

 

[AndyFettes]

Well I didnt know that Pups I shall try that feature out next posting

Sorry about having a Sherman in you back yard !!!!

 

[jknaus]

Awesome, Thanks a lot Andy.
James

 

[moon puppy]

Sorry about having a Sherman in you back yard !!!!

Not as much as we were...

 

[panzerace007]

ANDY,

Awesome stuff ! Great Shotz. I didn't realize how big th Furher Bunker was ! WoW !

ERIK

 

[AndyFettes]

To be honest Erik I don`t think its actually that big, I was using the box as a sort of proximity but it was connected to the Chancelry too ( !spelling! ) so who knows,....

Its something that I shall research !

 

[moon puppy]

I saw a discovery show about the bunker a while back, said that it was larger than they had originally thought. They had not turned up plans for it but aerial recon showed extensive construction going on at a point after then bunker was build initially.

 

[AndyFettes]

Cool !!

Theres some good stuff on youtube about Berlin

I thinks its Hitlers Berlin secrets or something like that

Another thing of note is that the new version of Google earth has now a zip back in time function as Ive just been looking at Berlin March 1943, very interesting !

 

[moon puppy]

Wonderful, something else that will get blocked by work! Can't wait to check that out, looking at old maps fascinates me. I'm easily entertained.

 

[Cheyenne]

Great pics. Andy , ......... thanks !!!

 

[panzerace007]

There is a show that comes on the History Channel - Cities of the Underground & They actually go to parts of the Bunker & the dude explores it with a miners cap. really cool stuff to see it now a days !

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e_qCGLn89Y&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Guyzl1y5XE&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7j73EtCbUog&feature=related


ERIK

 

[AndyFettes]

Hey thats my building in the first episode

 

[rob ferreira]

Very nice pics of the battle damaged buildings. A very good ref for those who build dios with buildings. And interesting story behind the lonely building.
Rob
www.scratchmod.com