[HN Gopher] A Brief Introduction to Military Pillboxes
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A Brief Introduction to Military Pillboxes
Author : chippy
Score : 95 points
Date : 2023-10-20 10:24 UTC (2 days ago)
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| Blackthorn wrote:
| How useful would they have really been? #2 seems to imply it's to
| defend a road or transit point, no? But it's hard to see what a
| single pillbox would do against a column.
| shaftoe444 wrote:
| They were usually placed along with anti tank defences and/or
| natural barriers. In truth any land fighting in England would
| have been a desperate last ditch defence after air and sea
| defences had been overwhelmed.
| newsclues wrote:
| Look at what's happening in Ukraine, a trench with logs and
| sandbags is a serious fortification.
|
| Artillery is very dangerous in war and a concrete bunker
| enables a team to work an anti tank weapon or machine gun and
| hold a position.
| Modified3019 wrote:
| They absolutely make assaulting the location harder, forcing
| the enemy to bring to bear the correct tools and tactics in
| order to take them out if they don't want to take exaggerated
| losses. This slows down the enemy, buying time.
|
| These are not intended to be used like a video game static
| defense that you just plop down and it'll take care of small
| stuff all on it's own. They _must_ be used in conjunction with
| other forces in the area.
|
| Like all military efforts, how effective they are is based on
| the context in which they are used.
| ranger207 wrote:
| A single pillbox would cause the column to fall out and go into
| battle formation, taking time and energy, and would likely be
| able to call in the column to headquarters to bring in
| artillery, airstrikes, or reinforcements. Even if it's taken
| out, single pillboxes are uncommon, so the enemy column would
| need to scout for other pillboxes nearby. Pillboxes deployed in
| groups would have overlapping fields of fire that would make it
| difficult to isolate and destroy any single pillbox, requiring
| more effort and inflicting more casualties on an enemy column.
| mandevil wrote:
| A pillbox by itself is not worth much. A pillbox is, however, a
| key part of a network of defense.
|
| This really all got mapped out during the First and Second Big
| Mistakes back in the 20th Century. You have your individual
| defensive positions (a quick foxhole if you are just going to
| be here 1-2 nights, a wood covered, protected hole in the
| ground if you are going to be here a week, concrete pill-boxes
| like these if you are not in enemy contact and don't expect the
| battle lines to changes quickly). But each position- no matter
| what it is made of- has a limited field of view, it can only
| protect a certain area. So the soldiers have to rely on each
| other- you build a network of these positions, with overlapping
| fields of view/fire, and connect them via buried telephone wire
| to each other and to friendly artillery and reserves and you
| have a formidable defense network: a machine gun in this
| pillbox makes all of the attacking infantry hug the ground,
| while the pill boxes next to it keep the enemy infantry from
| crawling up in your blind spot and throwing a grenade into your
| pillbox, and your artillery behind hits the enemy infantry
| while they are out in the open, crawling along the ground, and
| then your reserves launch a counter attack and push the enemy
| infantry back to their start point.
|
| The German solution[1] to this defensive network in World War
| One was to empower small groups of soldiers to move completely
| on their own, to find the dead ground where no gun could hit
| them, then get as deep as possible- looking to cut telephone
| wires, to attack the enemy artillery and command posts, and let
| follow-on waves isolate and destroy individual pill-boxes. As
| part of a network of soldiers the pill-boxes were difficult to
| defeat. If you could isolate them and turn them into a couple
| of armed dudes they can be defeated, as you note.
|
| The Germans adopted these tactics en masse for the so called
| Kaiserschlact- the "Peace Offensives" of 1918 where they tried
| to knock France and Britain out of the war before the US Army
| was fully ready to fight. It failed, in part because the
| infantry moved forward at the rate of march, while the infantry
| reinforced on defense at the rate of a train, and also once the
| attackers went over the top they could no longer communicate
| and coordinate with each other. If they couldn't find any dead
| zone, if they were caught by enemy artillery, they couldn't get
| any help from their comrades- then they were just a couple of
| armed dudes and no longer soldiers part of a larger team. After
| the war ended, a German named Heinz Guderian looked at that
| experience and realized if he got a whole bunch of tanks and
| could put the rest of the army (all the different types-
| artillery, infantry, anti-tank guns, engineers, etc.) onto
| vehicles and tie them together with radios he could fix both
| problems, and boom, you have Blitzkrieg tactics. (He used a
| different term for it in his book _Achtung, Panzer!_-
| Blitzkrieg was more of a PR term than a term used by
| professionals. His word for it was some German word that
| literally translates to "Attacking every level of the enemy
| defense simultaneously," which somehow did not catch on the way
| that Blitzkrieg did.)
|
| [1]: The British and French came up with a different solution,
| relying more on heavy planning and staff-officer work and not
| empowering their junior leaders as much, because of industrial
| (the Germans had ~0 tanks in WW1, the UK/Fr had thousands) and
| cultural differences between the armies.
| Someone wrote:
| > But each position- no matter what it is made of- has a
| limited field of view, it can only protect a certain area. So
| the soldiers have to rely on each other- you build a network
| of these positions, with overlapping fields of view/fire,
|
| That we knew centuries earlier. See for example
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastion_fort.
|
| The movable version probably also is way older than World War
| One. The phalanx is an example. Of course, that's quite
| different in looks from a modern squad of soldiers, but they
| still make sure there are eyes and weapons directed in all
| necessary directions.
| philwelch wrote:
| FWIW, it's worth digging into other sources when it comes to
| Guderian. His postwar memoirs were notoriously self-
| aggrandizing.
|
| Also, the German term you're looking for is possibly
| "Bewegungskrieg", which translates literally to "maneuver
| warfare". That terminology did catch on. Interestingly, the
| Soviets developed a very similar doctrine during that period
| and called it "deep battle". Unfortunately for the Soviets,
| the general who developed that doctrine, Tukhachevsky, was
| executed in the purges.
| baud147258 wrote:
| I'm not fully certain, but didn't Germany and the Soviets
| worked together when developping the maneuver doctrines
| they would be using in WW2, with German officers training
| in tank usage in the USSR (since they weren't supposed to
| have tanks)?
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kama_tank_school
|
| Hitler and Stalin were allies: https://en.wikipedia.org/w
| iki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pac...
| hermitcrab wrote:
| At least some of the German 'bliztkrieg' tactics were based
| on the work of a British soldier and military theorist,
| Fuller. he found the Germans were much more receptive to his
| ideas than the British Army. He was an occultist and fascist.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._F._C._Fuller
| vkou wrote:
| It's not going to stop a column, but it's going to delay it,
| prevent freedom of movement unless destroyed, and allow
| defenders to maneuver around a delayed enemy.
| shaftoe444 wrote:
| Funny I wasted a few hours today on this map of Second World War
| defences, pillboxes and all. https://edob.mattaldred.com/map/
| Xiol32 wrote:
| The part of my town where I grew up was built on the grounds of a
| WWII ordnance factory. Used to walk past an old pillbox daily on
| the way to school.
|
| http://www.2eimages.co.uk/places/birchwood/rof/remnants.htm
| shaftoe444 wrote:
| > ROF Water Supply Reservoir Number 2.
|
| The romance of history! That's an interesting page though I
| love how much of this stuff is documented.
| chris_st wrote:
| Really wish they'd photographed people next to these... I can't
| guess how large they are.
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| About as tall as an ordinary storey of a house for the larger
| ones, and has short as stooping height for the shorter ones, in
| my experience.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| It varies. But typically 3 - 5 metres in the longest dimension,
| and not high enough to stand up in. The smaller they were the
| cheaper they were to make, the harder to see and the harder for
| artillery to hit.
| chrononaut wrote:
| I can't imagine what it would be like to discharge a firearm
| without hearing protection in one of those.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Deeply unpleasant, but far superior to the other available
| defensive fighting positions.
| sobriquet9 wrote:
| The muzzle is outside the enclosed space, so I don't think it
| should be particulatly bad.
| swayvil wrote:
| No eyeball bleeding per se but yes, I predict that you would
| definitely sustain a significant amount of hearing damage.
|
| My dinky 9mm leaves my ears ringing shooting it just once,
| without protection, in a grassy field. So I'm drawing from
| that experience.
| paulcole wrote:
| My brief introduction to military pillboxes came by playing Bolo.
| jacurtis wrote:
| I was introduced to them by playing Command and Conquer.
| amatecha wrote:
| I was going to say the same!! Such a great game. <3
| 01100011 wrote:
| Reminds me of the fortifications you still find all over coastal
| WA state which were built to defend the waterways during WWII
| from a feared Japanese invasion. I loved running around them as a
| kid.
|
| https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/camp-hayden-abandoned-ww...
| evil-olive wrote:
| many of the fortifications date back even farther, to the late
| 19th century
|
| Triangle of Fire - The Harbor Defenses of Puget Sound
| (1897-1953): https://www.historylink.org/file/7524
|
| Fort Worden State Park in Port Townsend is the one I'd
| recommend visiting if you could only see one.
| swayvil wrote:
| I would totally live in one of those. Do you think they have a
| vibe? Haunted?
| hermitcrab wrote:
| The vibe is small, dark, damp and with a strong smell of urine.
| Each to their own!
| hermitcrab wrote:
| BTW Any self-respecting British ghost hangs out in a castle.
| Not a pillbox.
| Fluorescence wrote:
| As a British kid who would play around such things the vibe is
| crack-den / toilet. Expect graffiti, ancient garbage, drug
| remnants, poop. The ones in the link are like the stately homes
| of pillboxes!
| hermitcrab wrote:
| You see pillboxes all over the place in England. I guess they are
| just too much effort to get rid of.
|
| It must have been terrifying to be in a pillbox if the enemy
| managed to get close enough to throw grenades in or, even worse,
| if they had a flamethrower.
|
| BTW analysis after the war showed that the Germans had pretty
| zero chance of a successful invasion of the UK in WWII (Operation
| Sealion), even if they had managed to gain air superiority. The
| Royal Navy was too strong and the Germans had no amphibious
| landing ships. They were considering towing flat bottom barges
| full of troops and equipment across the channel. Probably 3+
| barges per towing ship, at near walking speed. It would have been
| suicide.
| WalterBright wrote:
| If the Luftwaffe had air superiority, the Royal Navy was in big
| trouble. Big navy warships are extremely vulnerable to air
| attack. Plenty of examples in WW2.
|
| Destroying the Luftwaffe was a huge priority prior to D-Day,
| and they succeeded. The Luftwaffe was not a factor in the D-Day
| invasion.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| >Big navy warships are extremely vulnerable to air attack.
| Plenty of examples in WW2.
|
| That's true. But there were also plenty of British
| submarines, destroyers, gunboats, MTBs and other smaller
| ships. Also Germany didn't have much in the way of
| specialized maritime attack aircraft (IIRC because Herman
| Goering didn't want any competition from the German Navy).
|
| The RN certainly would have taken heavy losses from German
| aircraft, submarines and naval mines (which were planned to
| be sown both sides of the invasion corridor). But it's hard
| to imagine that they could have landed enough troops and
| supplies against a far superior naval force without proper
| amphibious landing ships. Imagine trying to get tanks and
| artillery ashore from a barge.
| WalterBright wrote:
| A Stuka sank a Soviet cruiser with one bomb. The Bismarck
| was crippled by one torpedo fired by a stringbag.
|
| Besides, I never heard anything about the British defenses
| against an invasion. The D-Day shore defenses were epic,
| but breached in a day.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| There were pillboxes, tank traps, barbed wire and
| minefields. Both on the coast and inland. For example
| there were defensive 'stop lines':
| https://www.hiddenwiltshire.com/post/wiltshire-walks-
| along-t...
|
| But it wasn't on the scale of the 'Atlantic wall'.
|
| Trivia fact. They removed road signs during the war, to
| make it harder for an invading force to work out where
| they were. It also made it harder for British people to
| get around!
| gonzo41 wrote:
| In theory. You're meant to have your mortars sighted in with a
| danger close fire mission right in front of your forward
| defensive line to avoid people getting that close. And stacks
| and stacks of razor wire. It's kind of crazy this sort of
| fighting is happening right now around the world.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I recently reread _The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich_. It 's
| really worthwhile and there's a lot of stuff people have
| forgotten.
|
| For a month or two in 1940, Hitler was pushing his military for
| invasion plans for England. They dutifully came up with
| "plans." We know it never happened, of course. There was a lot
| of discussion among the staff.
|
| The staff battles were about the width of the beachhead. Too
| narrow and the English could overwhelm it before they could
| break out; too wide and the Germans didn't have the naval
| forces to defend and resupply it.
|
| Eventually, Hitler decided they could starve out / bomb out
| England, plus he wanted to invade Russia.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| > plus he wanted to invade Russia.
|
| Which worked great! I think WW2 was the first great example
| of how wars have become unwinnable; Germany had success
| conquering large swathes of Europe through sheer force,
| overwhelming odds and not enough time to prepare, but they
| couldn't make it to the UK, and Russia was just too large,
| too long a distance, and too harsh a climate to have any
| chances.
|
| More recent examples; Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq,
| Ukraine. None of which ended up in a decisive victory.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Things in Russia could have gone the other way, and I
| believe nearly did due to Stalin's paranoid purges of the
| officer corp and his unhelpful interference in military
| matters.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Also 'lend lease' was a big factor in Russia's victory
| (in addition to Russian bravery and their climate and
| geography).
| hermitcrab wrote:
| >The staff battles were about the width of the beachhead.
|
| There were similar arguments about how many beaches they
| should attack on D-Day.
| imadethis wrote:
| Where I lived in (western) Germany, there were still loads of
| pillboxes and bunkers from the war. The ones they did have to
| destroy often required ridiculous amounts of explosive to have
| any effect. I went on a tour of the area once and the guide
| mentioned how they had needed to flood some of the bunkers with
| water first to increase the efficacy of the explosives.
| oooyay wrote:
| > It must have been terrifying to be in a pillbox if the enemy
| managed to get close enough to throw grenades in or, even
| worse, if they had a flamethrower.
|
| Terrifying yes, but what this article doesn't mention is that
| you generally have a hole for kicking grenades into. You do
| this when you dig foxholes as well.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Still pretty terrifying and you're not going to hear the
| second one falling in after your eardrums are gone from the
| first bang in such an enclosed space :(
| hermitcrab wrote:
| First I heard of this. Is it a common feature in British
| pillboxes?
|
| Apparently some of the German pillboxes/bunkers had a fake
| ventilation duct. If you put a grenade in, it appeared back
| at your feet!
| choeger wrote:
| The initial landing would have been successful, assuming German
| air superiority and an actual will to execute it, of course.
| There's simply not enough time for the Royal Navy to interrupt
| the landing unless they're already assembled so close to the
| beachhead that they'd risk getting taken out before D-Day by
| the Luftwaffe. Also, the landing would have involved plenty of
| paratrooper and airborne infantry as a first wave.
|
| The big question would have been resupply. Germany didn't have
| the mulberry harbors and thus would have been forced to capture
| a port and ferry supply and reinforcements through it. _That
| 's_ when the Royal Navy could have run interference and I have
| no idea how that would have turned out.
|
| So in the end, I think that the Royal Airforce saved the
| island.
| Doxin wrote:
| > You see pillboxes all over the place in England. I guess they
| are just too much effort to get rid of.
|
| There's a full-ass bunker in the city center where I live.
| Right in one of the main shopping streets. It's the storage
| space for a flower shop now. The sheer quantity of concrete in
| these things is absurd.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> I guess they are just too much effort to get rid of._
|
| To an extent - as we've seen in Ukraine, farmers know a thing
| or two about removing abandoned military hardware from their
| fields.
|
| The costs of removing a pillbox were PS40-PS120 at the time
| (US$1572-US$4719 in 2023 $)
|
| According to [1] after the war the military could either
| demolish the defences and restore the land, _or_ they could pay
| compensation to the landowner. And as there was a lot of
| reconstruction to be done and a shortage of labour, paying
| compensation was often the preferred option.
|
| [1] https://chriskolonko.wordpress.com/2021/11/19/pillbox-
| myth-4...
| jeffrallen wrote:
| Lots of Swiss pillboxes are still visibile on the Toblerone line:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toblerone_line
|
| There's one with 2 dramatic sightlines down a country road
| outside of Bassins: https://maps.app.goo.gl/8MvLfAEJkt5vW9ak6
| igammarays wrote:
| These are on almost every road in Ukraine, manned and stationed.
| Can't speak to its effectiveness, but wouldn't want to be without
| any.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Tragic that pillboxes are still being used in 2023.
|
| "He reckons that all declarations of war ought to be made into
| a kind of festival, with entrance tickets and music, like they
| have at bullfights. Then the ministers and generals of the two
| countries would have to come into the ring, wearing boxer
| shorts, and armed with rubber truncheons, and have a go at each
| other. Whoever is left on his feet, his country is declared the
| winner. That would be simpler and fairer than things are out
| here, where the wrong people are fighting each other." -- Erich
| Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front
|
| Slava Ukraine.
| sillywalk wrote:
| "Concrete military bunkers are a ubiquitous sight in Albania,
| with an average of 5.7 bunkers for every square kilometer", with
| 750,000+
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunkers_in_Albania
| hermitcrab wrote:
| That is a crazy statistic. Imagine if they had put those
| resources into something more useful, like housing or
| hospitals.
| theoldlove wrote:
| I'm surprised how many of these pillboxes are scheduled monuments
| (i.e. preserved for historical value). Seems like it's worth
| keeping one or two around, but I'm not seeing the historical or
| aesthetic value in preserving many of them in perpetuity.
| bman_kg wrote:
| these pillboxes are very interesting thing, why to destroy them.
| Instead they should exist as they are, they serve as remainder of
| past history for coming generations. My grandfather was from
| Soviet Army, he went till Berlin. He was wounded to his
| leg...unfortunately very little information left about him and
| his military history. Maybe one can find information about him
| from archive. Often case old Soviet documentaries portray USSR as
| victor of WWII, I think that can partially true. Thus, I was
| wondering whether any one of you could suggest documentaries on
| WWII, so called Western view of the war, I would appreciate it. I
| can find documentaries by myself, but often war connaiseurs know
| best docs on this topic.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| The BBC 'World at war' is an absolute masterpiece. A contender
| for greatest documentary ever made. It is obviously UK-centric,
| but well worth anyone's time to watch.
| jlengrand wrote:
| Interesting to see it focused on England. As a kid, I was very
| used to seeing them in Northern Normandy as well as North of
| France. Moving to the Netherlands, I also saw them a lot in the
| fields, much further away from the see. It's only when I traveled
| to the North of Norway that I realized how gigantic of a front
| WW2 was, and the sheer amount of land to be protected.
|
| Just like anthills being connected to each other across
| countries, pillboxes are a huge, cross-country remnant of our
| common history.
| dotancohen wrote:
| More interesting than the pillboxes is the coastal erosion in
| some places on which the pillboxes once stood. It looks like some
| places have experienced ten or more meters of erosion since the
| pillboxes were built eighty years ago - thats over 10cm per year.
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(page generated 2023-10-23 09:00 UTC)