Heavily damaged artillery pillbox for two 76,2 mm guns.
These good quality weapons originated from the tank gun and were capable of firing at "soft" targets at a maximum range of 7.300 m. They could also use armor-piercing ammunition and had no problem with going clean through a 4,4 cm thick armored plate at a range of 2.000 m.
These type of pillbox would surely prove to be a tough nut to crack if used properly. Here, lack of time prevented the Soviets from installing the proper armament and just the armored housings for the guns were fitted. Once the front line moved far to the east, Germans scavenged the precious (3.689 kg each!) lumps of metal by blowing the entire front part of the pillbox.
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Tags: abandoned bunker derelict fortification history Linia Mołotowa military Molotov Line pentax pillbox shelter Soviet urban exploration urbex WW2 бункер заброшенные Wąsosz Podlaskie Poland POL decay Art Visualmanuscripts
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The region of Lithuania where today's borders of Poland, Belarus and Lithuania converge, heavily forested and dotted with lakes, hasn't changed much since 1941. The nature itself was a formidable obstacle for the advancing Germans and the lack of good roads was only adding to the trouble.
Should the Soviets had enough time to complete their massive defensive effort this part of the Molotov Line would be a tough nut to crack. There were 273 pillboxes in the Alytus Fortified Region which were counted as being “in various stages of construction” but only 20 were considered to be fully built. Yet “fully built” is not equal to “combat ready”. In the early morning of 21 June 1941 this category showed plain zero.
This particular pillbox, designed for three heavy machine guns has never had its belt-fed Maxims installed . Even though it's not standing on a hill it's clear that its would-be defenders would enjoy a perfectly clean field of fire should the attackers appear along the distant treeline. But to get there, they'd still need to cross a vast lake which is just behind the trees and there were other pillboxes in the area which task was to make such crossing impossible.
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Tags: abandoned bunker decay derelict fortification Linia Mołotowa military Molotov Line pentax Pentax Art pillbox shelter Soviet texture urban exploration urbex WW2 бункер заброшенные Kopciowo Okręg olicki Litwa LT Visualmanuscripts
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A heavily damaged, two-loophole artillery semi-caponier.
These type of artillery pillboxes, housing two 76,2mm guns as their main armament, were usually built on the flanks of the strongpoints. With a 7,3 km (4,53 miles) range of fire they were supposed to provide long range anti-tank fire as well as to suppress the efforts of enemy infantry to infiltrate the gaps between neighboring strongpoints.
Both armored housing for the guns were blown off and put to better use by the Germans – mind you, it was 3.689 kg of good quality metal - and that's for a single housing excluding the weight of the gun itself.
Huge chunks of concrete lying around give a clue to the amount of explosive material which had been needed to “gently” extract those heavy lumps of metal.
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Tags: abandoned bunker derelict fortification history Linia Mołotowa military Molotov Line pentax pillbox shelter Soviet urban exploration urbex WW2 бункер заброшенные Wąsosz Podlaskie Poland POL decay Art Visualmanuscripts
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A story of “The Norm”.
A pile of stones and some barbed wire, still remembering the summer of 1941.
Construction of hundreds of pillboxes of the Molotov Line required huge amounts of stone. It was crushed and mixed with fresh concrete. The best one was coming from the Caucasus Mountains – a long and expensive journey. So, inevitably, local stones were used on a massive scale. But they did not come by themselves.
Soviets, as mad and ruthless as they were, were also very precise and rigorous people. Not content with herding thousands of civilians into forced labor zones, they also came up with a set of precise rules, or “norms”, regulating who, how much, when and how was supposed to contribute to the overall effort of “defence works”.
It was carefully planned and calculated how many stones each local farmer had to bring to the building site. You've got a horse? Two? If two, then you need to bring more. It was that simple. No horse? You will dig foundation trenches then or, better even, endless anti-tank ditches. There were norms stipulating how many cubic meters of earth one needs to remove and what is the distance that removed portion needs to be moved away.
I always go around those remote, small villages asking about anti-tank ditches. As huge as they had been, they are hard to find today, most eaten up by forests and cultivated fields. But every piece of information is precious when drawing the maps of those forgotten strongpoints. I'm always very careful not to overuse the technical and military jargon – these are mostly simple people I talk to. But most often than not I found myself disappointed that they did not understand what I was asking about. It's a simple thing – an anti-tank ditch – even the name implies it, hey, it;s just a damn, deep ditch, that's all about it!
And then, to my horror, the answers started to pop out like a devil from the box. Of course they knew what an anti-tank ditch was! I was simply asking a wrong question... They had a different word for an anti-tank ditch. The one they remembered from their fathers and grandfathers, the one which which was so feared as it was hated, the one so horrible it stuck in the minds of simple folk for generations.
The called it “the norm”.
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Tags: abandoned bunker derelict fortification history Linia Mołotowa military Molotov Line pentax pillbox shelter Soviet urban exploration urbex WW2 бункер заброшенные podlaskie Polska PL decay Art Poland Visualmanuscripts
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In the opening hours of German-Soviet war Anusin strongpoint was manned by 1st company of 17th Machine Gun Artillery Battalion under the command of lt. I.I. Fedorov.
Some of the pillboxes, like the one shown on the photo (designed for two heavy machine guns) never had their armament installed. Such "dead spots" significantly lowered the intended effectiveness of the system of fire of the strongpoint. Still, Soviet defenders, clustered in the few combat-ready installations, showed much stubbornness and courage and continued their hopeless resistance for several days - not a bad feat considering the odds.
Most of them, including the company commander, died in their pillboxes.
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Tags: bunker fortification history military Molotov Line pillbox Piotr Tyminski Soviet ww2 Visualmanuscripts
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