Picture of the day

On the topic of coastal guns. Here are few snaps of 2 Vietnamese "Antiwarship Cannons" from vacation last year in Cat Ba.

I think its an old French fort, not sure when it was built, the guns are French, manufactured in 1910, the Japanese occupied it during WW2, and apparently the region saw action during the Vietnamese wars.

Bore 5.5" / 138MM
Range 40 KM

More photos here

Cannon 1

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The view from the fort.

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shredder said:
Those battleship guns (the Bismarck used 15" guns, I believe) would make one hell of a BANG!!! when fired.

I'd like to see it, but I don't think there's any ammo made, or even stored somewhere, for them. It would be a cast-iron b!tch to get 15" powder bags. The SHELL, OTOH, could probably be made out of junked cars.:D
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i wonder if any provision was made to store or maintain any of them, like the US made for the 16" guns on their mothballed BBs
 
scott585 said:
i wonder if any provision was made to store or maintain any of them, like the US made for the 16" guns on their mothballed BBs
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Well, I went to the "Gneisenau" link posted a few posts up. It linked to pictures of a couple Norwegian coastal defence forts that are now museums. However, according to the site, after the war was over, the Norwegians simply took over the 200 coastal forts the Germans had built along their coastline and maintained them. Norway was the only country after the war to have a ready-made coastal defence, and they maintained and operated the batteries until retiring them at various times between the 1960s and the 1990s (presumably when the Iron Curtain fell the last of the batteries were deemed redundant).

Most of the guns were smaller than those battleship guns - the triple turret from the Gneisenau mounted 280mm cannon (about 11", I think?).

But it's quite possible that the Norwegians might still have shells in storage even for the 15" guns, since the guns have been considered to be in active service much more recently than WW2.
 
r.fallon said:
I come across a paragraph awhile back that mentioned the Germans took one possibly two completed turrets from there proto-type E series tanks (E-100?) and installed them as coastal defense casements on the Norwegian coast. I have been unable to find any reference to this on the net, has anyone else heard of this instillation?

PS Don't let this thread die! I look forward to it everyday :)
cheers RF
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me too!..about not stopping.
I thought they only planted tank turrets in Italy?
 
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The French 138mm gun of 1910, Canon de 138 mm Modèle 1893 naval gun, had a range of 15,000 metres.
A range of 40,000 metres is the area of very specialized artillery.
Coastal artillery had very elaborate set ups for directing fire, not some guy with binoculars.
The museum staff has made a good effort though.
 
s_w01_99-02957.jpg

German Wehrmacht General Anton Dostler is tied to a stake before his execution by a firing squad in a stockade in Aversa, Italy, on December 1, 1945. The General, Commander of the 75th Army Corps, was sentenced to death by an United States Military Commission in Rome for having ordered the shooting of 15 unarmed American prisoners of war, in La Spezia, Italy, on March 26, 1944. (AP Photo)

DF
 
DragonFire said:
s_w01_99-02957.jpg

German Wehrmacht General Anton Dostler is tied to a stake before his execution by a firing squad in a stockade in Aversa, Italy, on December 1, 1945. The General, Commander of the 75th Army Corps, was sentenced to death by an United States Military Commission in Rome for having ordered the shooting of 15 unarmed American prisoners of war, in La Spezia, Italy, on March 26, 1944. (AP Photo)

DF
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The same thing should have happened to Kurt Meyer. I never understood why his death sentence was commuted and they he was released from prison after 8 years.
 
Yesterday's enemy is today's Valued Ally and Trusted Friend. Besides, he hated commies, and in the 1950's that made you an OK guy in a lot of folk's books.

Still sucks, and justice should certainly have been done - what's one more whacked Nazi? - but in this case I guess the powers that be determined he was more useful alive than dead.
 
DragonFire said:
s_w01_99-02957.jpg

German Wehrmacht General Anton Dostler is tied to a stake before his execution by a firing squad in a stockade in Aversa, Italy, on December 1, 1945. The General, Commander of the 75th Army Corps, was sentenced to death by an United States Military Commission in Rome for having ordered the shooting of 15 unarmed American prisoners of war, in La Spezia, Italy, on March 26, 1944. (AP Photo)

DF
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That, is the face of a man who is not mentally ready to meet his maker. Regardless of the crime, I hope he found at least a brief moment of peace before the end...he looks like he's about to piss his pants in fear
 
Dark Alley Dan said:
Yesterday's enemy is today's Valued Ally and Trusted Friend. Besides, he hated commies, and in the 1950's that made you an OK guy in a lot of folk's books.

Still sucks, and justice should certainly have been done - what's one more whacked Nazi? - but in this case I guess the powers that be determined he was more useful alive than dead.
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He didn't do anything of political value after his release. He sold beer and was active in the Waffen-SS veteran's organization. IMHO he should have been shot in 1946.
 
There is a book, "Meeting of Generals" about Major General Harry Foster and Brigadier General Kurt Meyer.
ISBN-10: 0595137504
ISBN-13: 978-0595137503
Summary:
"dual biographies of two WWII generals. Their troops meet in Normandy; the generals meet in a courtroom after the war. One sentences the other to death for war crimes. D-Day Normandy, 1944. Twenty thousand, five hundred strong, the 12th Waffen-SS Hitler Youth Division marched into battle against Allied Forces. They were the last cream of the German youth, 17- and 18-year-old lads trained and led by a cadre of battle-hardened officers and NCOs who had survived four years of war in Europe and on the Russian front. With only a year of training, they were nevertheless ferocious fighters. At one critical point in the battle the depleted 12th SS Division fought three Canadian and three British divisions to a standstill. Eighty-five days after the landings, at the Battle of Falaise Gap, less than 500 of the 12th Division's front line troops remained. The rest were dead, wounded or captured. Meeting Of Generals is the study of a terrible war viewed from the two sides of a battlefield on which different moral and political ideologies struggled to prevail. Parallel biographies trace Generals Meyer and Foster's careers--their youth, their ambitions, their sweethearts, their sorrows and personal tragedies--and show how each reflected the values of the nation that he served. In the end, both generals realize at Meyer's War Crimes court-martial that in war there are no winners or losers--only victims."

It is a while since I read the story but I remember that the sentence was death and that was changed because the ### the area made some kind of mistake which automatically changed the sentence to live in prison.
 
Which was commuted to 8 yrs?

Many of us know Panzermeyer's bio, his exploits and the hardships of the years leading to the tragic event in question; the question remains.

If this had gone down in Koenigsberg the point would be moot.

What happened and why?
 
Beats the hell out of me, mate. I don't imagine there's anyone left alive who knows why Meyer was dealt with so leniently while others just as awful were shot out of hand. The information is probably in a file folder somewhere in an archive, labelled "do not open until 2046". If we're lucky, we'll live long enough to find out.

Pictures. Today's arbitrarily selected theme: captured tanks.

m3-light-captured-north-africa-01.png


S35-01.jpg


firefly-30.jpg


Und a Freudetag fur der Kinder:

universal-50.jpg


PLENTY more where this came from at http://beutepanzer.ru/index.htm
 
One always has to remember about war stories, is that the winners were always hero's and the losers were war criminals.
 
Dark Alley Dan said:
Beats the hell out of me, mate. I don't imagine there's anyone left alive who knows why Meyer was dealt with so leniently while others just as awful were shot out of hand. The information is probably in a file folder somewhere in an archive, labelled "do not open until 2046". If we're lucky, we'll live long enough to find out.

Pictures. Today's arbitrarily selected theme: captured tanks.

m3-light-captured-north-africa-01.png


S35-01.jpg


firefly-30.jpg


Und a Freudetag fur der Kinder:

universal-50.jpg


PLENTY more where this came from at http://beutepanzer.ru/index.htm
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Thanks for the link :)

Cheers
Joe
 
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