Fire and Rubble Update

[DesertFox]

5 minutes ago, Vacilllator said:

I like your map, I was too lazy to check distances .

So they would (I think) have been firing above horizontal to reach out that far (let alone the 13km range mentioned from the book above)?  If so perhaps it was possible? 

Must try maximum elevation on my Tiger gunsights in Tank Crew and see what that looks like...

This one shows one of the four twin 12,8 gun emplacements in February 1945. 

http://theelephantgate.weebly.com/uploads/1/8/8/7/18876276/8111704_orig.jpg

This one is earler. Still with single 10,5cm Flak

http://theelephantgate.weebly.com/uploads/1/8/8/7/18876276/5460904_orig.jpg

Tower/Steeple in the back of above pic seems to be the "Siegessaeule" in the central of the Tiergarden. Distance from Flaktower to that is about 1800 metres. You also see the seperate Flak command bunker.

 

[Vacillator]

From this picture below I'm still not so sure, does the twin gun mounting tilt upwards as the elevation depresses?

I have to say, looking at all of these photos I can't really imagine what it would have been like being on/in the tower at the time.

[Commanderski]

2 hours ago, DesertFox said:

Yep, I read that too. But I don´t see how that could be physically possible unless they somehow managed to elevate the gun platforms enough to allow for direct fire. 

Distance from the Flaktower to Moltke Bridge and Reichstag was about 3000 metres.

A lot of the buildings in between were more than likely destroyed or reduced to where they had a line of site if the smoke wasn't too bad. 

[Commanderski]

       Double post

Edited December 20, 2020 by Commanderski
Double post

[Glubokii Boy]

Looking at the pictures...one would think that atleast those 12.8 cm guns would be very vounrable to things like 120mm mortars...

[Vacillator]

3 hours ago, RepsolCBR said:

Looking at the pictures...one would think that atleast those 12.8 cm guns would be very vounrable to things like 120mm mortars...

Agreed. I would have thought the guns themselves (but not the tower) would also be vulnerable to aircraft, either high or low level, although I wouldn't like to try it myself.  As the areas with towers were bombed like everywhere else, I assume bombs could/would have fallen on the gun platforms and the 'bolted in place' guns?  Do any of the various books discuss this, or am I mistaken?

[Lucky_Strike]

2 hours ago, Vacilllator said:

Agreed. I would have thought the guns themselves (but not the tower) would also be vulnerable to aircraft, either high or low level, although I wouldn't like to try it myself.  As the areas with towers were bombed like everywhere else, I assume bombs could/would have fallen on the gun platforms and the 'bolted in place' guns?  Do any of the various books discuss this, or am I mistaken?

I recall reading, but not sure where, that the Berlin towers, along with those in Hamburg and Vienna, were very rarely hit during the bombing raids, though some hits were recorded. The towers were built to provide mutual support/cover and with each tower able to put up something in the order of 1000 various calibre rounds per minute over a 10km area it's likely the allied bombers just went round them. After all only the Hamburg towers protected what the Allies were really after - industry and logistics - the Berlin and Vienna towers mostly covered the government centres.

Of course by the time the Soviet forces entered Berlin much of the city was already ruined, but the towers were very much in operation. Not sure why the Soviets had trouble lobbing shells onto the upper decks, maybe they couldn't get close enough to achieve the correct trajectory. Also, sensibly, they just avoided them, the towers were impregnable to their largest calibre bunker busters so assaulting them would have been incredibly costly.

A few more images:

The Zoo tower - given it's about 40m tall and surrounded by parkland we can see it has a relatively clear field of fire.

Post-war it was used by convalescing British troops. The twin 12.8cm guns still in place.

Twin 12.8cm post war again, here the guns are practically level resting on the parapet. I'm sure I read somewhere that this was how they were fired at ground targets, only a low railing being removed from the top of the parapet, and their repercussion being felt through the whole building.

Poor Hitler Youth crew member. The gun barrels are level here and a railing can be seen on the parapet. 

Apparently the 12.8cm Flak 40 could be depressed to -3 degrees. They didn't have any direct sights since they were putting up general fire under instruction from a separate control tower equipped with range finding and spotlights etc. They must have just fired over open sights at ground targets. I'm sure that once they'd been ranged-in the amount of fire that they could put out must have been pretty horrifying. 

 

[Commanderski]

The only book I found and is more than likely the only book available is The Flak Towers: in Berlin, Hamburg and Vienna 1940-1950 (Schiffer Military/Aviation History) (Schiffer Military Aviation History (Paperback))  (https://www.amazon.com/Flak-Towers-1940-1950-Schiffer-Paperback/dp/0764303988). It's only 48 pages and most of the book is pictures. You would think that with all the books on WWII there would be more written on this.

[Thomm]

Something to pass the time. Pretty grim, though.

BERLIN 1945 | ArmA III Machinima

Best regards,
Thomm

Edited December 21, 2020 by Thomm

[ASL Veteran]

I have read a first hand account or two of what it was like in the towers during the battle for Berlin.  From what I can tell it was utter chaos in and around them IIRC.  The towers had no windows and all the levels below the roof were filled with civilians and soldiers in various states of combat worthiness.  Wounded were all over the place mixed in with crying babies and a lack of food and water etcetera.  Just going from memory though.

[Commanderski]

1 hour ago, Thomm said:

Something to pass the time. Pretty grim, though.

BERLIN 1945 | ArmA III Machinima

Best regards,
Thomm

After reading Bloody Streets this is pretty close to the way it probably looked.

[Vacillator]

38 minutes ago, ASL Veteran said:

The towers had no windows

From what I remember of my daring exploits in Sniper Elite 2 they had windows closed off with metal shutters?

1 hour ago, Thomm said:

Something to pass the time. Pretty grim, though.

BERLIN 1945 | ArmA III Machinima

Yes pretty grim, reflects the futility of war in real life.  Did a KV2 actually make it to Berlin other than in the captured variety ?

Edited December 21, 2020 by Vacilllator

[ASL Veteran]

2 hours ago, Vacilllator said:

From what I remember of my daring exploits in Sniper Elite 2 they had windows closed off with metal shutters?

Yes pretty grim, reflects the futility of war in real life.  Did a KV2 actually make it to Berlin other than in the captured variety ?

It's entirely possible there were steel shutters - I'm not exactly sure since I'm going from memory of the account.  I seem to recall that the accounts would also relate that when the guns on the roof fired it would send a concussive shock down into the tower that was very uncomfortable to everyone huddled inside.

[Warts 'n' all]

7 hours ago, ASL Veteran said:

I have read a first hand account or two of what it was like in the towers during the battle for Berlin.  From what I can tell it was utter chaos in and around them IIRC.  The towers had no windows and all the levels below the roof were filled with civilians and soldiers in various states of combat worthiness.  Wounded were all over the place mixed in with crying babies and a lack of food and water etcetera.  Just going from memory though.

There was a three-part documentary on the BBC recently, that showed scenes like the one you're describing with the flak towers being used as shelters.

[Lucky_Strike]

15 hours ago, ASL Veteran said:

From what I can tell it was utter chaos in and around them IIRC.  The towers had no windows and all the levels below the roof were filled with civilians and soldiers in various states of combat worthiness.  Wounded were all over the place mixed in with crying babies and a lack of food and water etcetera.  Just going from memory though.

15 hours ago, Vacilllator said:

From what I remember of my daring exploits in Sniper Elite 2 they had windows closed off with metal shutters?

Yes, the Flaktürme seem to have had plenty of steel-shuttered windows perhaps because of the extra facilities they housed. At the height of the Battle for Berlin the Zoo tower was said to have sheltered about 30000 people in a space meant for 8000. The towers were each equipped with a water source/well, but with that amount of souls they would have exhausted their supplies in no time, and God knows what the sanitary conditions were like.

One of the Berlin towers, the shuttered windows seem to be on fours levels. That item being lifted up is one of the massive armoured ammunition elevators covers.

Armoured shutters on one of the control towers

Inside one of the towers, the window and armoured shutter.

The towers bristled with other smaller calibre AA which also looked like it could provide fire directed at ground targets:

Dual 37mm on a lower platform of the Zoo tower, the control tower in the background.

One of the many quad 20mm mounts, again with control tower in the distance.

17 hours ago, Commanderski said:

The only book I found and is more than likely the only book available is The Flak Towers: in Berlin, Hamburg and Vienna 1940-1950 (Schiffer Military/Aviation History) (Schiffer Military Aviation History (Paperback))  (https://www.amazon.com/Flak-Towers-1940-1950-Schiffer-Paperback/dp/0764303988). It's only 48 pages and most of the book is pictures. You would think that with all the books on WWII there would be more written on this.

For our German speaking colleagues there are a few others titles:

https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Flaktürme.html?id=g6JzAAAACAAJ&redir_esc=y

There are few others on that page as well.

 

[Vacillator]

Excellent photos, I particularly like the internal shot showing the concrete thickness.

[Erwin]

Great videos...  Thanks Thomm.

[Lucky_Strike]

3 hours ago, Vacilllator said:

Excellent photos, I particularly like the internal shot showing the concrete thickness.

Walls about 2.4m thick, roof 1.5m thick apparently

[ASL Veteran]

I decided to try and dig up my first hand accounts - here is part of one

 

Quote

The zoo bunker was the most comfortable of the three big flak towers in Berlin.  It was well equipped with the best available materials.  The zoo bunker’s equipment consisted of four twin 128mm guns on the upper platform and a gallery about five meters lower down with a 37mm gun at each corner and a twin barreled 20mm gun in the center of each side flanked by solo 20mm guns left and right.  The twin 128s were fired optically whenever the weather was clear enough, otherwise electronically by remote control.  The settings came from the small flak bunker nearby, which only had light flak on its gallery for its defense, but was especially equipped with electronic devices.  A long range Blaupunkt radar was installed there and our firing settings came from a giant Wurzburg radar as far away as Hannover. 

 

We suffered no casualties from air raids, but comrades were killed by gun barrels exploding and recoils.  The shells for the 128s relied on the radar readings for their settings and were moved centrally on rubber rollers up to the breech.  If there was the slightest film of oil on the rollers, the already primed shell would not move fast enough into the breech and would explode.

 

When we were on the gallery below with the 37s or 20s driving off low flying aircraft we would hear the din and have to grimace to compensate for the pressure changes that came with the firing of the 128s.  We were not allowed to fasten our chinstraps of our steel helmets so as to prevent injury from the blast.

 

Later when we fired the 128s at clusters of tanks as far out as Tegel, the barrels were down to zero degrees and the shock waves were enough to break the cement of the 70cm high and 50cm wide parapet of the gallery five meters below, exposing the steel rods beneath.

 

[Vacillator]

1 hour ago, ASL Veteran said:

I decided to try and dig up my first hand accounts - here is part of one

Thanks ASL that's very interesting reading. 

As for the thread topic, I would love to see flaktowers in CM but they're not an easy thing to recreate.  Hope I'm proved wrong .

 

 

[ASL Veteran]

Here is another account - wherever he is referring to shelters or bunkers he is referring the Zoo Flak Tower

Quote

We go along Budapester Strasse and turn left into the Zoological Gardens where the colossal bulk of the Zoo-Bunker stands close to the S-Bahn.  Sentries and tanks standing under the trees stop us and we are then led to the bunker, which is one big field hospital.  All the camp beds and the air raid shelter beds are filled with wounded.  Soldiers, refugees, and wounded are packed close together in the passages and the big shelter rooms.  We are shown into a big room, in which every last place has been taken, and have to wait for further instructions.  We split up, everyone looking for a place for himself in this already overfilled room.

 

There is a sound of loud voices in the room.  The air extractors are working, adding to the din with their monotonous whirring, which only makes one more tired.  An unbearable heat presses on one’s brain and makes one’s head ache.  Then a new group of soldiers enters the room and pushes inconsiderately through the mass of humanity, settling themselves down beside us.  They say that the Russians have thrust forward to Nollendorfplatz and that Savignyplatz has been occupied.  The enemy is trying to drive a wedge between the Zoo and Wittenbergplatz from the corner of Augsburger Strasse and Passauer Strasse.  It has been possible to clear Hardenbergstrasse only as far as the Knie.  The ring around the Zoo is being drawn tighter.

 

The civilians say that Hanna Reitsch and Major Rudel are supposed to be in the bunker (flak tower).  It is to be defended to the last man as the last strong point offering a focal point should the government quarter fall to the Bolshevists. 

 

Sleeping in all this noise is unthinkable.  We are lying here in a vast coffin with meter thick walls, in which soldiers and civilians have been thrown together from all parts of Berlin.  A woman from Weissensee is bemoaning the fact that she did not stay at home, and that the Russians were able to take that district without a fight.  It is in this bunker that one first gets some idea of what the lunacy of fighting has caused, tearing the civilian population into this whirlpool of destruction.  They sit around without hope, praying only that this misery will end.

 

Goebbels has ordered the bunker to be defended to the last man.  There is talk of a breach between the Americans and the Russians.  On the eve of Hitler’s birthday, while we were standing on the Oder, Goebbels made a speech in a radio broadcast on these same lines.  A leaflet is going the rounds after the newspaper.  An elderly woman with a child, who tells me that she is its grandmother and that its mother has been killed, lets me read the leaflet.  “The perverse coalition between plutocracy and Bolshevism is at the breaking point.  The head of the enemy conspiracy has been crushed by fate.  It was the same fate that allowed Hitler to stand upright and unwounded among the dead, severely wounded, and rubble on 20 July 1944.  I never saw him waver or lose heart.  He will follow his way until the end and there expect, not the downfall of his people, but rather a new happier beginning to an unparalleled blooming of Germanness.”

 

One soldier says that Hitler got married in the bunker under the Reichs Chancellery yesterday.  A latrine rumor?  That would have been a jolly wedding night under the thunder of the guns!  And we have to go on fighting for this man, to whom Germany no longer belongs!  Because of the oath we swore to him, soldiers and civilians have to go on dying.  Someone says that Hitler has married an actress and that she will appear as a milkmaid on the new twenty Mark note. 

 

A soldier claims to have seen Hitler climb into an armoured personnel carrier on the 27^th demanding to be taken to the scene of the fighting in the Tiergarten.  However, I think this is just another fairy story like so many others.  Suddenly our Ruhleben combat team leader enters the room and we have to get ourselves ready.  The war goes on.  Then he disappears again.  The civilians become restless as we get up and make our way to the door in a long file through the passage, men joining us from other rooms as we pass.  Then we go down the stairs and past some sentries to step out into the night.

 

[Lucky_Strike]

2 hours ago, ASL Veteran said:

The zoo bunker was the most comfortable of the three big flak towers in Berlin.  It was well equipped ...

51 minutes ago, ASL Veteran said:

We go along Budapester Strasse and turn left into the Zoological Gardens where the colossal bulk of the Zoo-Bunker stands ...

Thanks for these quotes, most interesting, I recall the first one from somewhere, I’ll have to go trawling through my library now!

The Nazis were convinced they could hold out in the Zoo tower, apparently they had a year’s worth of supplies in there ready for a siege. Quite rightly the Soviets never took the bait, but rather offered surrender terms to the commander after they had taken the rest of the city, undoubtedly saving many lives in the process.

1 hour ago, Vacilllator said:

As for the thread topic, I would love to see flaktowers in CM but they're not an easy thing to recreate.  Hope I'm proved wrong .

Their influence would definitely be a must for any historic scenario featuring the first attempts to cross the Moltke Bridge. But how do they model direct fire over open sights? I’d like to see them even if they are only scenery.

 

[BFCElvis]

Now we can get some decent screenshots of these guys. Ladies and Gentleman. Volksstrum. 

 

[Anonymous_Jonze]

19 minutes ago, BFCElvis said:

Now we can get some decent screenshots of these guys. Ladies and Gentleman. Volksstrum. 

 

Wow. Awesome job! Is it possible to add some of those field caps to the wehrmacht/ss? 

[danfrodo]

poor buggers.  they are gonna get smashed.