What & Where?

[RBWhite]

????

[Terminus]

A Berlin flak tower?

[RBWhite]

Close enough, Vienna[:)]


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/flak_tower

[Marc von Martial]

Which I'm going to visit this year [;)]

[Raverdave]

So what was the idea behind the flack tower? Seems to me like a lot of effort when you could simply mount units on top of buildings[&:]

[Terminus]

They were built to carry the really heavy flak guns (128mm and dual 128mm) which you might not be able to mount on top of a normal house. Plus, they were also meant to be strongpoints if enemy ground forces attacked the city they were in, as their guns could be trained downwards as well.

[Marc von Martial]

ORIGINAL: Raverdave

So what was the idea behind the flack tower? Seems to me like a lot of effort when you could simply mount units on top of buildings[&:]

Flak battery and shelter strongpoints, these things were like a fortress. Absolutely undestroyable ammo storage for the battery hosted in the tower (at least not destoyable through bombings), hospital, military and civilian air raid shelter (they provided space for 10s of thousands), shelter for a couple of administrative things, radio and signals etc. etc. etc.. They were pretty much autarkic, with kitchen(s), mess rooms and the usual stuff you need. All pretty much "untouchable".

A "Flakturm" allways consists of two towers, you have the command tower and the actuall Flak tower where the fighting part of the battery is hosted. The commands towers held extremly long ranged Radar and acoustic systems to locate planes. The fighting towers not only held the most biggest Flak guns but also a pile of smaller AA, like 2cm quad and 3.7cm guns.

The usage was not only to attacks bombers and other planes but also to block complete paths and areas of the cities for bombers, Actually this was considered to be one of the main reasons for their constructions, and it worked pretty well.

On top of this they had an extremly good field of fire right inside a city. Just think of the very limited field of fire and vulnerability if the battery was ground based inside a major city. The battery could only be knocked out (and then only parts of it) due to a direct bomb hit on the roof itself (pretty rare).

[RBWhite]

They were almost indestructable & it was not feasable to try and remove them after the war, most are now Apartment Buildings.

[Terminus]

Those Germans... They sure knew their reinforced concrete!

[Marc von Martial]

ORIGINAL: RBWhite

They were almost indestructable & it was not feasable to try and remove them after the war, most are now Apartment Buildings.

Where did you read that?

Those still standing (the Berlin ones for example are grounded, one in Hamburg is grounded and of another one there`s only the facade left) house museums, libraries, media agencies / companies, or in case of one in Vienna are used for the military.

There are some "Hochbunker" though that are used as apartments, but these are not of the size of a Flakbunker

[Marc von Martial]

ORIGINAL: Terminus

Those Germans... They sure knew their reinforced concrete!

Check of what the foundation of the Statue of Liberty is made from . Dyckerhoff cement, which is famous worldwide.

[RBWhite]

Mark

Check the link I provided about 7 posts above.

[Marc von Martial]

ORIGINAL: RBWhite

Mark

Check the link I provided about 7 posts above.

Oh, you mean the Heiligengeistfeld bunker. Well "residential" building is a bit exagerated here. It houses a big club in the 4th floor, called "Bunker Hamburg" and a lounge in the 5th floor, the rest is used by media agencies. But you said "most", in fact it 0.5 out of 16 [;)]

[RBWhite]

Fractions????

No Math Please[:D]