Overview of German WWII Gun Fortress

Do you know what's under this gun turret? If you don't, well, we invite you to something really special here today. Last finishing touch of the letters, the Arbeitbuch, the Dagger, the War Mary Cross. What is going on? Well, I'm working on a very special story that you're going to see later. It's about a German soldier named Otto. Welcome to the History Hunter. We do the research, travel, go out and find and share incredible World War II history. and that is exactly what it's going to be about today this is the incredible german world war ii gun fortress if you haven't seen part one we go inside you can definitely do that here where it says more just go there click on the there you'll find the link to part one see that first to get the full context i promise you you won't regret it the germans came they saw the potential of this being a gun fortress they blasted into the mountain different features being built inside to support 120-130 guys to be able to stay, live and work inside with one purpose only. And that's what we're going to see today, to serve that gun so that the gun with the three barrels of 28 centimeter in caliber could fire 42,600 meters out there to be able to protect themselves against the enemy, the allies coming in to attack the Atlantic wall. This is the day when we go inside that insane... gun turret and this time we have plenty of time and we wanted you to see as many details as we could because we've been there before but we were rushed through this time we stay there almost a whole day only for you guys are you ready just buckle up sit back and enjoy all right we are now heading from the living quarter area this is just a shaft where they have had Gears running up and down and let me see. There's actually cold pieces here, how cool is that? So now we are going to go up to the first part of the gun or operation of the gun and that starts right here and I'm not sure exactly we're going to go to this direction here. So inside here, this is where the first part of the activity of the gun takes place. And inside here, well, you can see for yourself what is here. I'm just going to adjust the light. This is where it all starts. And I'm going to try and take you into a little journey here, so you can follow one of these huge artillery shells from this room all the way up. to where you hit a button and then fire the gun. This wall here is very impressive. This is electronics that is routed all around the bunker complex, the mountain complex, and you can see that even today there is a lot of German writing and every one of these switches here still have the original Riding, stop, links, recht, senken, heben. That means it kind of does something. And I guess that something is to activate that hoist. I'm not sure. Nevertheless, I just want you to see some of the electronics that is involved with all of what you're going to see next. Because electricity was a key factor to many of the things that happened here. See here? If this worked... Elias will be able to control this system that actually lifts the cartridges or the artillery shell tips. And you can see here they are different colors. And my friend is going to explain to us now what the different colors are. They have basically yellow and blue. Yeah, so the yellow one is an explosive shell. If you know how it works, it's very simple. Once it hits the armor of an enemy ship, it explodes immediately. Yes. While the blue one is an armor piercing shell. It is heavier, it has more steel in the tip of it, and it's actually supposed to pierce the armor and explode inside instead. Now many might think that the blue one is perhaps better than the yellow one, but if you have a small ship for example, the blue one would just go straight through. And I think it has a lot of chance of recoil and everything as well, so you needed these two different types to adjust yourself of course. Yeah, so you have different type of munitions for different type of targets, and as he said, if you have a heavy duty armored... Vessel you kind of gonna go for the blue one and normal practice will be the other ones but you can also see here. This is where the journey of the cartridge starts it comes from the outside here and it's been hoisted through a very long channel from below and you could see where we saw the railroad track that is where they took in the wagons perhaps and transported them to this slot, hoisted them up here, rolled them onto these conveyor belts which kind of starts right here and then they could put them onto this table and this hoist here would take over, grab the artillery shell, grab it with this clamp here and you can see even there a lot of German writing. This clamp was activated by this panel here. This is like the control panel. No, it's not a remote that you use for your TV. You actually have to stand there and press these buttons and then the journey of the shell tip would start. So we're starting from this room here where they stockpiled the artillery shell tips and then they could go through the wall here and they're gonna go in here where Eloy is. Heading up into the wall or the roof and you can see the heavy duty doors that are here. Now we're getting in to what is called the gun platform. All that you see from now on is the actual gun platform and you can see from the side here this is where the conveyor belt takes in the artillery shell. It comes in from here goes on to this thing here and then it is conveyed. to this position here. When it's here you have the possibility to release it from this clamp, put it on to this table but then you suddenly have a little problem. Consider this, this whole turret is mounted on some huge ball bearings, we're going to show them to you later, and the whole turret here can turn. Maybe Eagle Eyes can turn the turret, just push this here over on this side. Push it very carefully this side here. Now Eagle Eye is turning the whole conveyor system so that it could line up with where you need the cartridge to go. Because what's going to happen now is that the cartridge is going to go into this elevator and that elevator is going to bring it up. towards the gun tower itself. So imagine this. The gun is actually turning in any given direction depending on where they want to fire. But you want to load... the elevators so you have to follow the turning turrets so what you do you load the shell from here onto that one and then onto this moving piece here and then you can push a little bit more eagle eyes because i will see if i can show them this let me see now you have to pull it backwards pull it backwards so now you can see eagle eye is lining up this wagon which now has the tip for the elevator so you see here so now eagle eye has moved all of this to this position and now the gun turret is standing still they have enough time to get it off there and then it is hoisted up with the elevator to the second floor there so my friend is telling me something interesting here there are three elevators you have left or right on there and you have this one that goes to the middle But tell us a little bit about how quick these guys could fire these rounds. So, you already showed this cart you could pull around of course. The gun charge could turn around and you would pull this cart to load the elevators. And because you had this cart, that meant the guns could point in either direction and you were able to load them at the same time. And because of that they got very efficient. In just one minute you could fire as much as three times from all the three. barrels at the same time. It was supposed to take just 16 seconds from firing one shot to you were ready with the next one. If you are a crew you must train of course. You imagine this guys? Firing one of these massive artillery shells every 16 seconds. That's right. That is impressive. And all of this due to this system. Maybe you can push it over to the side again, Iguelize? Yes. Yeah, just push it. You see here, one man, or this young boy, can actually push this over here now. And you can grab onto the machine there and push it to the left. Oh yeah, this way, this way, this way. Push, yeah. And now you can see he's pushing this all by himself. It is a bit heavy, but when it comes to this position here, you can then unload it, put it into the elevator and then get it up there. But have a look here, there's another one of the incredible telephones, Siemens. Can you see that? It's marked and everywhere you have the German writings. When we get further up you're going to see lots more of that because this thing is so complex, so high-tech, so we just wanted you to see some of the features here that are available for us to see. And I'm just totally blown away by all of the technical gear that is here. And you can see everywhere. It's amazing. It's just so much gear and just imagine guys All of this used to be on a ship. All of this is from Gneisenau and you can imagine how to get all of that gear from Germany to this position, install it inside a mountain and then make it fully functional and yes the Germans did fire it. So holy pancake! It is almost unbelievable to see how much gear there is in here. But now... we're going to take you to a very important position inside the mountain right there you have a test sample which they used for test firing and you can see here they could get the munition in there from here but what we're going to see now is one of the rooms which are very very important but i just wanted to see a couple of details here when we pass by see here huge huge ventilation system in this room here it looks very very original can you see that you have pipes everywhere this huge valve you have the heater it was heated with warm water can you see that and it says called and warm that heated the whole bunker's complex i look at that what is that is that a one cylinder diesel engine Kulditze Maschinenfabrik Kulditz Baujahr 1943 That was built in 1943 guys, can you see that? I haven't got a clue about what that is. Is this a steam machine? That is absolutely crazy And again, all of the ventilation equipment is still here here and even an old switch on the wall. Before we enter the room of the gunpowder and all that we just want to show you this this is a winch that is attached in the roof more German and you can see it actually hoists the gunpowder something like that 10 meters there's a 10 meter drop under that lid and it just shows you how intricate this is and everywhere around us on this floor there are different types of rooms and everyone just tells the story everything is rusted everything is kind of really really old. You have this room here, a huge storage. This is for the gunpowder. Again, oven, hot water kept this place dry. And see here, some of the original toolboxes. Oh here, he's crazy. All of this and there are some of the slings, the lift slings, original ones. Some gear here. Astonishing to see this. That my friend is a German WW2 S-Mine display and we create and give them away to our Patreon team members. This is a German Soldatenheim little shadow box. This is a 9mm munition box. Everything here is original. These are artifacts from the Second World War and we give them away to our Patreon team members. If you want to check out how to become a Patreon team member there's a link here in the video description where it says more. Just click that, then you click the link for the Patreon, and then you'll see how you can become a Patreon team member, and you will in the end end up with something absolutely spectacular, some small artifacts from the Second World War, and we will share history in a very special way together. Now, guys, we come to one of the most important rooms here. There was very, very, very strict rules of how to operate this room. There was not even electricity here when they used it because of the danger of what is in there. They had gunpowder storage here but also some of the different type of cartridges that they used to load the gun. But my friend is going to tell you a little bit more about the room itself here. Containers like the ones you see over there being shut at each end and you can see how this room is built as well If you see ceiling for example, it's built with thick steel. The doors are made of thick steel and could be closed quickly and you notice the thickness of the walls around us. There are one meter or more of concrete walls surrounding this room because the Germans were so afraid of one little mistake having large consequences. and spreading to the other parts of the fortress. Yeah, so basically this room is a little fortress by itself. And you can see even by the openings and shadow here that what it was afraid of is the one little spark here and this room went like boom. It wouldn't damage the rest of the fortress. So it's a separate little fortress inside the fortress with heavy-duty walls. And as far as I've learned, they couldn't have electricity in here because there was so much water. so afraid of sparks going off. So they sent these cartridges in and out from here in total shot rooms and you can see the very heavy duty doors they used to shot these rooms with. But now we're going to go into the second level of the gun mount itself. The gun construction itself. This room here is not as complex as the other room. It's more like a manual kind of working procedure. So you have secondary gunpowder charges here. You have main gunpowder charges there and on this side and the smaller ones here so what happens here is they can actually use these manual hoists that they attach to the different cartridges and they can slide them back and forth forth here everything now is still about getting the chargers and the the the artillery tip up at this with the same elevators to that floor up there and that is where all the real serious stuff starts to happen and when you come along this room you can see it's all about the very very thick walls you can see here it's extremely thick walls the germans were totally crazy about safety here because they knew if one of these room blue there's nothing left there's nothing there so that is why it was so insanely secure and they practiced no sparks nothing that could use or do a spark and you can see this is where they transported them back and forth these are the rods that kind of is being used to shove the charges in and out of these openings now eagle eyes is climbing up to this floor and the I have to be very careful, but I just want you to see this. That right there is another one of the incredible phones. And you can imagine Hans here. Oh, come on. Fire. They're too slow. But everywhere again, German writing, German writing, German writing everywhere. And this is a manual speaker. You can actually talk in here. And the sound will be transferred to the other floors. So. switches here still works just switch them like that it is totally impressive to see that it's been kept in such good condition so manual telephones right there now i'm gonna see if i can get my old fat body off this insane thin little hole in the top there so we came up from here and now we are in a you could call it like a little control room with a lot of hydrogen hydraulics and inside here is where they could The different hydraulics have different colors this red from the left hand barrel center barrel right hand barrel I'm not sure if that is the correct position here And you can see again a ton of different things written in German here. Each and every operation here. This reminds me when I was serving on a submarine as a sonar operator. I know a lot of valves you could say and this reminds me very much of that. different kind of hydraulics here, but I wanted to see something here. This thing here is that if you manually had to turn the turret, you could turn it by cranking this handle. And the reason why you could do that, is because the whole turret is based upon some huge rollers, some steel balls. And here you can see the turret is now directing at 240 degrees. And this thing here is where you can actually override the hydraulics and manually crank the turret around. How simple, but such a very efficient way that if the hydraulics disappeared, you could still direct the tower where you want it to be. This... This is one of the steel balls. How many were up there? How many of the steel balls? 240 to 250. 240. 250. 240, about there, 250 of these, to hold the whole turret and make it turn. So this is a steel ball that it kind of rolls on. The whole thing that was inside now. turns. Everything here just turns. And you can imagine how skilled you must have been to be able to operate all of this. And also, if one of the persons or crews here had a problem, they would have to take over, so they would have to know. multiple things to do. Then you can see also I'm not sure is this for elevation or something? hydraulics okay this hydraulics for the tubes or the the barrels to go up and down and you can see again manual a kind of old style you can scream into this and then you can give orders all over the place of the turret and you can see there are some heavy-duty gear here and the axle shaft to turn the whole thing is up here but again tons and tons and tons of different hydraulics and fixtures with one purpose only and that was to make sure that this thing turned around and the barrels could go up and down wow there are so many gauges meters functions and you can see here this steer here was never here this is to make it accessible for now and peace times. But I just want you to have a little sneak peek around here. I just got another phone call. Heinrich? No, Adolf is not here. He's at the tea house. Leave me alone. See, they bug me all the time. Just kidding. You can see everywhere you go. Remember, this is all taken from a vessel. All of this stuff here used to be inside a vessel. So all of this was in a vessel. with Kriegsmarine crews operating it. You see? Everything here is not something they built here. They transported it and set it up here and used it here. It is absolutely crazy, guys. So now we're heading up to the last part. This is the gun turret itself with all of the details that is here. Here we are. The caliber of this gun is... 283 mm. Three barrels, and each of these could fire every 16 seconds. And this is the backside of one of them. To be very, very honest, this is truly spectacular. And... I think that's where they threw down the spent rounds, I'm not sure. I want you to see something on the back here. See here? Friedrich Krupp, Essen 1936, number 246. And that is just... Insane. So this gun was actually just fired once during wartime because the Germans were so confident that they would be able to say, this works no matter what. But there's a lot of stuff going on. If you wanted to fire this, you had to... Evacuate the whole area. All the windows must be kind of taken care of. All of the stuff because this sent out some insane pressure waves. Really really really dangerous pressure waves every time they fired it. I wanted you to see this thing here. Can you see that? See how complex this scale is. It is unbelievable to see that and also not just that they actually see there 28 cm of all of this see here better like that all of this the scale here was made with a purpose it's insane to see the detail of that thing here and here you can see something that's supposed to line up There's a heater in there and this is as far forward as you can get. Up there, that is the outside. And again just tons and tons and tons of different kind of features here. But I just loved to see that very very detailed scale there right now eagle eye is actually looking out the Periscope. Yeah, it had a periscope and it actually works so you can see the full terrain even today and i have to also say i am so incredibly impressed with what you see here this is where the spent rounds would go out this shoot here and then it would just go boop out that way there so you can see that one of the charges are already here available to be put into the gun and this is where what happened it came kind of like in and then out and then next and then shut the bridge and then boom fire how did you fire this well we're definitely going to show you that further back here this periscope here actually works and look at the very special lamp there on earth all day that is very very special but you can see here these two here I'm actually going to put my face into it now. Wow, it's very... It's not clear. Let me see. I can see the horizon, but the optics are very, very bad. So I guess they're not working as good as they should. should but you can actually see the horizon and you can turn it wow how crazy is that guys that is fantastic okay let's have a little look around this gun tower here this is where the first step would be ram that huge shell tip into the gun and then you take one of the secondary charges and then this huge here so first this one this one and then this one and then boom by the way this thing here was this was operated hydraulically yeah so this would ram this all the way in there and that is the bridge that is huge but I go all the way to the frontier and you can see this is the bridge oh my goodness that is a heavy-duty built piece of metal metal see how far it is down there There is still gear down there that is crazy. I want you to see this control room here. Again all of this gear operated by the very very highly trained people manning this gun. I might be running out of battery here soon but I'll do my very best. Look at this thing here. There are so many levers. so many different features. Could you even see out there? I haven't got a clue. That looks like you actually could see out there. See here? All these. Langsamlegen, recht and links probably to turn the turret in a circular manner. Again, telephone It is very... Very impressive to see all of this gear here really really cramped together and god knows how many thousands of hours they spent creating this thing and then converting it and putting it on top of a mountain. Everywhere you see, you see gear that is one purpose only, and that is to make sure that this gun could fire these rounds. And in a way, it's very special because it was only fired, was it once in wartime? Only fired once in wartime and a few times after that in peacetime post-war. And for what? All of this took millions and millions of Reichsmarks and all of that. And in the end, to fire a couple of rounds. How crazy is that? So let's see how you fire this thing. When everything is ready, everything is made and set up, there's a firing solution coming. in the crew is ready everything is prepared and then suddenly up there that is where the lights would light up and that would tell if the gun was ready or not and if all of that sequence was correct was only one last thing to do so now the light is lit the crew is finished everything is ready to fire and now it might be that the last little command could come from here and let me take that yeah yes Yes, Adolf, we are going to fire. So now it's Eagle Isis. He is ready. And all he has to do now is to actually pull the lever. So when the order comes, fire! That is all it takes. And when everything is finished, fertig. That lever is being raised. And now the whole crew has one task. That's get rid of all that is not... needed and then the whole process starts again and can you imagine guys they're doing this every 16 seconds so this little pull down of the lever that is the firing and yes we are allowed to pull the lever so every 16 seconds these guys were working hard to make sure that each and every one of these machines did it exactly what it was supposed to do, that the hydraulics worked correct, the communication went back and forth, all the munitions were stored safely, all the crews had a good night's sleep in the sleeping quarters and they came up here, they were ready, they were prepared, and in the end all of that with hundreds of guys and millions of Reichsmarks spent to have this gun here, all it took was one lever, damn, boom, that's it. That is pretty spectacular if you ask me. I was expecting a much more complicated thing but in the end it is to pull the trigger. And at this place the trigger was just that switch. Wow, what a spectacular German World War 2 location. If you enjoyed that, if you like to, you can consider to help us with a little donation here on our Super Thanks feature. basically your opportunity to help us out to just get some gasoline into the fuel tank of the campervan and then just go out and share even more very exciting world war ii history with all of you also if you want to we have this paypal donation thing here you can find the link for it here where it says more just click that and then you'll find the link for the paypal donation thing and boom you are helping us out to go out and find and share with even more people as you saw we have the patent feature and every month we give away to our patron team members really beautiful world war ii artifacts and the link for that is also there for your eyes only videos you know travel vlogs projects special things for your eyes only so you can check that out if you want to um i'm so happy we had the opportunity to go back to this place and i must say what a absolutely fascinating installment the germans did there and to be able to be inside there for such a long time to see all that me and elise did that day well it's thanks to each and every one of you and the great support that you give us so we can actually find and share these very very special locations um i'm going to continue with my little project for the soldier named auto something really special that we caught upon on the eastern front You're going to see that later. It's going to take some time to put everything together. But that's been a very special story for me to follow. All right. Thank you, each and every one of you, for being here. Thank you for supporting us. And before you know it, we will be out there in a next adventure. And remember, history is actually everywhere. So go out and find yours and enjoy it. Bye-bye.

What is going on? Well, I'm working on a very special story that you're going to see later. It's about a German soldier named Otto.

Welcome to the History Hunter. We do the research, travel, go out and find and share incredible World War II history. and that is exactly what it's going to be about today this is the incredible german world war ii gun fortress if you haven't seen part one we go inside you can definitely do that here where it says more just go there click on the there you'll find the link to part one see that first to get the full context i promise you you won't regret it the germans came they saw the potential of this being a gun fortress they blasted into the mountain different features being built inside to support 120-130 guys to be able to stay, live and work inside with one purpose only. And that's what we're going to see today, to serve that gun so that the gun with the three barrels of 28 centimeter in caliber could fire 42,600 meters out there to be able to protect themselves against the enemy, the allies coming in to attack the Atlantic wall.

This is the day when we go inside that insane... gun turret and this time we have plenty of time and we wanted you to see as many details as we could because we've been there before but we were rushed through this time we stay there almost a whole day only for you guys are you ready just buckle up sit back and enjoy all right we are now heading from the living quarter area this is just a shaft where they have had Gears running up and down and let me see. There's actually cold pieces here, how cool is that? So now we are going to go up to the first part of the gun or operation of the gun and that starts right here and I'm not sure exactly we're going to go to this direction here.

So inside here, this is where the first part of the activity of the gun takes place. And inside here, well, you can see for yourself what is here. I'm just going to adjust the light.

This is where it all starts. And I'm going to try and take you into a little journey here, so you can follow one of these huge artillery shells from this room all the way up. to where you hit a button and then fire the gun. This wall here is very impressive.

This is electronics that is routed all around the bunker complex, the mountain complex, and you can see that even today there is a lot of German writing and every one of these switches here still have the original Riding, stop, links, recht, senken, heben. That means it kind of does something. And I guess that something is to activate that hoist. I'm not sure. Nevertheless, I just want you to see some of the electronics that is involved with all of what you're going to see next.

Because electricity was a key factor to many of the things that happened here. See here? If this worked... Elias will be able to control this system that actually lifts the cartridges or the artillery shell tips. And you can see here they are different colors.

And my friend is going to explain to us now what the different colors are. They have basically yellow and blue. Yeah, so the yellow one is an explosive shell. If you know how it works, it's very simple. Once it hits the armor of an enemy ship, it explodes immediately.

Yes. While the blue one is an armor piercing shell. It is heavier, it has more steel in the tip of it, and it's actually supposed to pierce the armor and explode inside instead.

Now many might think that the blue one is perhaps better than the yellow one, but if you have a small ship for example, the blue one would just go straight through. And I think it has a lot of chance of recoil and everything as well, so you needed these two different types to adjust yourself of course. Yeah, so you have different type of munitions for different type of targets, and as he said, if you have a heavy duty armored...

Vessel you kind of gonna go for the blue one and normal practice will be the other ones but you can also see here. This is where the journey of the cartridge starts it comes from the outside here and it's been hoisted through a very long channel from below and you could see where we saw the railroad track that is where they took in the wagons perhaps and transported them to this slot, hoisted them up here, rolled them onto these conveyor belts which kind of starts right here and then they could put them onto this table and this hoist here would take over, grab the artillery shell, grab it with this clamp here and you can see even there a lot of German writing. This clamp was activated by this panel here.

This is like the control panel. No, it's not a remote that you use for your TV. You actually have to stand there and press these buttons and then the journey of the shell tip would start.

So we're starting from this room here where they stockpiled the artillery shell tips and then they could go through the wall here and they're gonna go in here where Eloy is. Heading up into the wall or the roof and you can see the heavy duty doors that are here. Now we're getting in to what is called the gun platform.

All that you see from now on is the actual gun platform and you can see from the side here this is where the conveyor belt takes in the artillery shell. It comes in from here goes on to this thing here and then it is conveyed. to this position here. When it's here you have the possibility to release it from this clamp, put it on to this table but then you suddenly have a little problem. Consider this, this whole turret is mounted on some huge ball bearings, we're going to show them to you later, and the whole turret here can turn.

Maybe Eagle Eyes can turn the turret, just push this here over on this side. Push it very carefully this side here. Now Eagle Eye is turning the whole conveyor system so that it could line up with where you need the cartridge to go. Because what's going to happen now is that the cartridge is going to go into this elevator and that elevator is going to bring it up. towards the gun tower itself.

So imagine this. The gun is actually turning in any given direction depending on where they want to fire. But you want to load... the elevators so you have to follow the turning turrets so what you do you load the shell from here onto that one and then onto this moving piece here and then you can push a little bit more eagle eyes because i will see if i can show them this let me see now you have to pull it backwards pull it backwards so now you can see eagle eye is lining up this wagon which now has the tip for the elevator so you see here so now eagle eye has moved all of this to this position and now the gun turret is standing still they have enough time to get it off there and then it is hoisted up with the elevator to the second floor there so my friend is telling me something interesting here there are three elevators you have left or right on there and you have this one that goes to the middle But tell us a little bit about how quick these guys could fire these rounds. So, you already showed this cart you could pull around of course.

The gun charge could turn around and you would pull this cart to load the elevators. And because you had this cart, that meant the guns could point in either direction and you were able to load them at the same time. And because of that they got very efficient. In just one minute you could fire as much as three times from all the three.

barrels at the same time. It was supposed to take just 16 seconds from firing one shot to you were ready with the next one. If you are a crew you must train of course.

You imagine this guys? Firing one of these massive artillery shells every 16 seconds. That's right. That is impressive.

And all of this due to this system. Maybe you can push it over to the side again, Iguelize? Yes. Yeah, just push it.

You see here, one man, or this young boy, can actually push this over here now. And you can grab onto the machine there and push it to the left. Oh yeah, this way, this way, this way.

Push, yeah. And now you can see he's pushing this all by himself. It is a bit heavy, but when it comes to this position here, you can then unload it, put it into the elevator and then get it up there. But have a look here, there's another one of the incredible telephones, Siemens. Can you see that?

It's marked and everywhere you have the German writings. When we get further up you're going to see lots more of that because this thing is so complex, so high-tech, so we just wanted you to see some of the features here that are available for us to see. And I'm just totally blown away by all of the technical gear that is here. And you can see everywhere. It's amazing.

It's just so much gear and just imagine guys All of this used to be on a ship. All of this is from Gneisenau and you can imagine how to get all of that gear from Germany to this position, install it inside a mountain and then make it fully functional and yes the Germans did fire it. So holy pancake!

It is almost unbelievable to see how much gear there is in here. But now... we're going to take you to a very important position inside the mountain right there you have a test sample which they used for test firing and you can see here they could get the munition in there from here but what we're going to see now is one of the rooms which are very very important but i just wanted to see a couple of details here when we pass by see here huge huge ventilation system in this room here it looks very very original can you see that you have pipes everywhere this huge valve you have the heater it was heated with warm water can you see that and it says called and warm that heated the whole bunker's complex i look at that what is that is that a one cylinder diesel engine Kulditze Maschinenfabrik Kulditz Baujahr 1943 That was built in 1943 guys, can you see that? I haven't got a clue about what that is.

Is this a steam machine? That is absolutely crazy And again, all of the ventilation equipment is still here here and even an old switch on the wall. Before we enter the room of the gunpowder and all that we just want to show you this this is a winch that is attached in the roof more German and you can see it actually hoists the gunpowder something like that 10 meters there's a 10 meter drop under that lid and it just shows you how intricate this is and everywhere around us on this floor there are different types of rooms and everyone just tells the story everything is rusted everything is kind of really really old. You have this room here, a huge storage. This is for the gunpowder.

Again, oven, hot water kept this place dry. And see here, some of the original toolboxes. Oh here, he's crazy.

All of this and there are some of the slings, the lift slings, original ones. Some gear here. Astonishing to see this. That my friend is a German WW2 S-Mine display and we create and give them away to our Patreon team members. This is a German Soldatenheim little shadow box.

This is a 9mm munition box. Everything here is original. These are artifacts from the Second World War and we give them away to our Patreon team members.

If you want to check out how to become a Patreon team member there's a link here in the video description where it says more. Just click that, then you click the link for the Patreon, and then you'll see how you can become a Patreon team member, and you will in the end end up with something absolutely spectacular, some small artifacts from the Second World War, and we will share history in a very special way together. Now, guys, we come to one of the most important rooms here.

There was very, very, very strict rules of how to operate this room. There was not even electricity here when they used it because of the danger of what is in there. They had gunpowder storage here but also some of the different type of cartridges that they used to load the gun. But my friend is going to tell you a little bit more about the room itself here. Containers like the ones you see over there being shut at each end and you can see how this room is built as well If you see ceiling for example, it's built with thick steel.

The doors are made of thick steel and could be closed quickly and you notice the thickness of the walls around us. There are one meter or more of concrete walls surrounding this room because the Germans were so afraid of one little mistake having large consequences. and spreading to the other parts of the fortress.

Yeah, so basically this room is a little fortress by itself. And you can see even by the openings and shadow here that what it was afraid of is the one little spark here and this room went like boom. It wouldn't damage the rest of the fortress. So it's a separate little fortress inside the fortress with heavy-duty walls. And as far as I've learned, they couldn't have electricity in here because there was so much water.

so afraid of sparks going off. So they sent these cartridges in and out from here in total shot rooms and you can see the very heavy duty doors they used to shot these rooms with. But now we're going to go into the second level of the gun mount itself.

The gun construction itself. This room here is not as complex as the other room. It's more like a manual kind of working procedure.

So you have secondary gunpowder charges here. You have main gunpowder charges there and on this side and the smaller ones here so what happens here is they can actually use these manual hoists that they attach to the different cartridges and they can slide them back and forth forth here everything now is still about getting the chargers and the the the artillery tip up at this with the same elevators to that floor up there and that is where all the real serious stuff starts to happen and when you come along this room you can see it's all about the very very thick walls you can see here it's extremely thick walls the germans were totally crazy about safety here because they knew if one of these room blue there's nothing left there's nothing there so that is why it was so insanely secure and they practiced no sparks nothing that could use or do a spark and you can see this is where they transported them back and forth these are the rods that kind of is being used to shove the charges in and out of these openings now eagle eyes is climbing up to this floor and the I have to be very careful, but I just want you to see this. That right there is another one of the incredible phones.

And you can imagine Hans here. Oh, come on. Fire. They're too slow.

But everywhere again, German writing, German writing, German writing everywhere. And this is a manual speaker. You can actually talk in here.

And the sound will be transferred to the other floors. So. switches here still works just switch them like that it is totally impressive to see that it's been kept in such good condition so manual telephones right there now i'm gonna see if i can get my old fat body off this insane thin little hole in the top there so we came up from here and now we are in a you could call it like a little control room with a lot of hydrogen hydraulics and inside here is where they could The different hydraulics have different colors this red from the left hand barrel center barrel right hand barrel I'm not sure if that is the correct position here And you can see again a ton of different things written in German here.

Each and every operation here. This reminds me when I was serving on a submarine as a sonar operator. I know a lot of valves you could say and this reminds me very much of that. different kind of hydraulics here, but I wanted to see something here. This thing here is that if you manually had to turn the turret, you could turn it by cranking this handle.

And the reason why you could do that, is because the whole turret is based upon some huge rollers, some steel balls. And here you can see the turret is now directing at 240 degrees. And this thing here is where you can actually override the hydraulics and manually crank the turret around. How simple, but such a very efficient way that if the hydraulics disappeared, you could still direct the tower where you want it to be.

This... This is one of the steel balls. How many were up there? How many of the steel balls? 240 to 250. 240. 250. 240, about there, 250 of these, to hold the whole turret and make it turn.

So this is a steel ball that it kind of rolls on. The whole thing that was inside now. turns.

Everything here just turns. And you can imagine how skilled you must have been to be able to operate all of this. And also, if one of the persons or crews here had a problem, they would have to take over, so they would have to know.

multiple things to do. Then you can see also I'm not sure is this for elevation or something? hydraulics okay this hydraulics for the tubes or the the barrels to go up and down and you can see again manual a kind of old style you can scream into this and then you can give orders all over the place of the turret and you can see there are some heavy-duty gear here and the axle shaft to turn the whole thing is up here but again tons and tons and tons of different hydraulics and fixtures with one purpose only and that was to make sure that this thing turned around and the barrels could go up and down wow there are so many gauges meters functions and you can see here this steer here was never here this is to make it accessible for now and peace times. But I just want you to have a little sneak peek around here. I just got another phone call.

Heinrich? No, Adolf is not here. He's at the tea house.

Leave me alone. See, they bug me all the time. Just kidding. You can see everywhere you go.

Remember, this is all taken from a vessel. All of this stuff here used to be inside a vessel. So all of this was in a vessel. with Kriegsmarine crews operating it. You see?

Everything here is not something they built here. They transported it and set it up here and used it here. It is absolutely crazy, guys.

So now we're heading up to the last part. This is the gun turret itself with all of the details that is here. Here we are. The caliber of this gun is... 283 mm.

Three barrels, and each of these could fire every 16 seconds. And this is the backside of one of them. To be very, very honest, this is truly spectacular.

And... I think that's where they threw down the spent rounds, I'm not sure. I want you to see something on the back here.

See here? Friedrich Krupp, Essen 1936, number 246. And that is just... Insane.

So this gun was actually just fired once during wartime because the Germans were so confident that they would be able to say, this works no matter what. But there's a lot of stuff going on. If you wanted to fire this, you had to...

Evacuate the whole area. All the windows must be kind of taken care of. All of the stuff because this sent out some insane pressure waves.

Really really really dangerous pressure waves every time they fired it. I wanted you to see this thing here. Can you see that? See how complex this scale is.

It is unbelievable to see that and also not just that they actually see there 28 cm of all of this see here better like that all of this the scale here was made with a purpose it's insane to see the detail of that thing here and here you can see something that's supposed to line up There's a heater in there and this is as far forward as you can get. Up there, that is the outside. And again just tons and tons and tons of different kind of features here. But I just loved to see that very very detailed scale there right now eagle eye is actually looking out the Periscope. Yeah, it had a periscope and it actually works so you can see the full terrain even today and i have to also say i am so incredibly impressed with what you see here this is where the spent rounds would go out this shoot here and then it would just go boop out that way there so you can see that one of the charges are already here available to be put into the gun and this is where what happened it came kind of like in and then out and then next and then shut the bridge and then boom fire how did you fire this well we're definitely going to show you that further back here this periscope here actually works and look at the very special lamp there on earth all day that is very very special but you can see here these two here I'm actually going to put my face into it now.

Wow, it's very... It's not clear. Let me see. I can see the horizon, but the optics are very, very bad.

So I guess they're not working as good as they should. should but you can actually see the horizon and you can turn it wow how crazy is that guys that is fantastic okay let's have a little look around this gun tower here this is where the first step would be ram that huge shell tip into the gun and then you take one of the secondary charges and then this huge here so first this one this one and then this one and then boom by the way this thing here was this was operated hydraulically yeah so this would ram this all the way in there and that is the bridge that is huge but I go all the way to the frontier and you can see this is the bridge oh my goodness that is a heavy-duty built piece of metal metal see how far it is down there There is still gear down there that is crazy. I want you to see this control room here.

Again all of this gear operated by the very very highly trained people manning this gun. I might be running out of battery here soon but I'll do my very best. Look at this thing here.

There are so many levers. so many different features. Could you even see out there?

I haven't got a clue. That looks like you actually could see out there. See here?

All these. Langsamlegen, recht and links probably to turn the turret in a circular manner. Again, telephone It is very...

Very impressive to see all of this gear here really really cramped together and god knows how many thousands of hours they spent creating this thing and then converting it and putting it on top of a mountain. Everywhere you see, you see gear that is one purpose only, and that is to make sure that this gun could fire these rounds. And in a way, it's very special because it was only fired, was it once in wartime?

Only fired once in wartime and a few times after that in peacetime post-war. And for what? All of this took millions and millions of Reichsmarks and all of that.

And in the end, to fire a couple of rounds. How crazy is that? So let's see how you fire this thing.

When everything is ready, everything is made and set up, there's a firing solution coming. in the crew is ready everything is prepared and then suddenly up there that is where the lights would light up and that would tell if the gun was ready or not and if all of that sequence was correct was only one last thing to do so now the light is lit the crew is finished everything is ready to fire and now it might be that the last little command could come from here and let me take that yeah yes Yes, Adolf, we are going to fire. So now it's Eagle Isis.

He is ready. And all he has to do now is to actually pull the lever. So when the order comes, fire!

That is all it takes. And when everything is finished, fertig. That lever is being raised. And now the whole crew has one task. That's get rid of all that is not...

needed and then the whole process starts again and can you imagine guys they're doing this every 16 seconds so this little pull down of the lever that is the firing and yes we are allowed to pull the lever so every 16 seconds these guys were working hard to make sure that each and every one of these machines did it exactly what it was supposed to do, that the hydraulics worked correct, the communication went back and forth, all the munitions were stored safely, all the crews had a good night's sleep in the sleeping quarters and they came up here, they were ready, they were prepared, and in the end all of that with hundreds of guys and millions of Reichsmarks spent to have this gun here, all it took was one lever, damn, boom, that's it. That is pretty spectacular if you ask me. I was expecting a much more complicated thing but in the end it is to pull the trigger.

And at this place the trigger was just that switch. Wow, what a spectacular German World War 2 location. If you enjoyed that, if you like to, you can consider to help us with a little donation here on our Super Thanks feature.

basically your opportunity to help us out to just get some gasoline into the fuel tank of the campervan and then just go out and share even more very exciting world war ii history with all of you also if you want to we have this paypal donation thing here you can find the link for it here where it says more just click that and then you'll find the link for the paypal donation thing and boom you are helping us out to go out and find and share with even more people as you saw we have the patent feature and every month we give away to our patron team members really beautiful world war ii artifacts and the link for that is also there for your eyes only videos you know travel vlogs projects special things for your eyes only so you can check that out if you want to um i'm so happy we had the opportunity to go back to this place and i must say what a absolutely fascinating installment the germans did there and to be able to be inside there for such a long time to see all that me and elise did that day well it's thanks to each and every one of you and the great support that you give us so we can actually find and share these very very special locations um i'm going to continue with my little project for the soldier named auto something really special that we caught upon on the eastern front You're going to see that later. It's going to take some time to put everything together. But that's been a very special story for me to follow. All right.

Thank you, each and every one of you, for being here. Thank you for supporting us. And before you know it, we will be out there in a next adventure. And remember, history is actually everywhere. So go out and find yours and enjoy it.

Bye-bye.

Transcript for:Overview of German WWII Gun Fortress

Transcript for:
Overview of German WWII Gun Fortress