Thread for discussion of random facts and idle speculation from (military) history,
Not the Newman & Baddiel sketch…
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Partner and I are off to Jersey in the Channel Islands at the weekend, was there last year, and it was amazing the number of bunker sites and concrete emplacements and gun sites on the Islands constructed under what was called Hitler’s Island madness.
Last year, I went to a set on the waterfront between St Helier and St Aubin, an amazing complex which unless you knew it was there it is difficult to see. This time I’m going to visit the newly restored complex at St Catherines.
Previously I went to the underground hospital not far from the airport, which was used after the Normandy invasion but looking to how it’s constructed and at least one book written about Jersey I do wonder if the UK had been conquered it would have been used for far more deadly uses than a hospital.
Literally one of my favourite places. If it wasnt so god damn hard/expensive to move there i would
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You’re always welcome to come over!
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Likewise.
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One of the boys at my work is restoring it, I haven’t been yet, but they have just installed a periscope.
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They are amazing complexes, destroying them would probably be impossible, as the U Boat pens in France and Norway or the Berlin Flak towers. Despite the attention given to the ones at IIRC Lorient with 617 Squadron Tall Boys they are still standing.
Just waiting for the DFDS circus to release its schedule then coming back over! Will pop in for a brew
I mean i can take you over and back most weeks if you want 
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Despite the attention given to the ones at IIRC Lorient with 617 Squadron Tall Boys they are still standing.
On various occaisions in the 1980s I worked in the former U-Boat pens at Lorient. At that time they housed Comesoulant, the French conventional submarine squadron headquarters. By that time they weren’t really fit for purpose, there had been minimal investment in those in use and in most respects must have been much as the Germans left them. Operationally it was like stepping back at least a decade.
exmpa