Foreword
When, during the Second World War, the Allies and the Red Army entered the territory of Germany, they began to collide with various strange structures, which had no analogues either in the USSR or in the rest of Europe.
Among other German mysteries, many-meter towers, built of strong fortified concrete, reminiscent of ballistic missiles, ready for launch, were found in a number of German cities.
Of course, the Allied command, having access to these towers, to technical documentation, as well as to living builders and users of these towers, quickly figured out what it was and for what purposes it was built.
They found out, and … lost all interest in them.
After the war, when, in accordance with the Potsdam Agreements, the complete demilitarization of defeated Germany was carried out, these structures, although they fell into the number of military installations subject to demolition and destruction, were treated without any haste to their destruction. They were mostly demolished if they began to interfere with peaceful construction or if they spoiled the landscape too much. For example, out of 34 towers built for the Wehrmacht, 7 survived at the beginning of the XXI century. The rest were gradually demolished in the period from 1947 to 1997.
So these strange towers sticking out into the sky, frightening foreign tourists, remained standing in many places.
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Well, when in the nineties, after Europe lifted the Iron Curtain a little, and Russian tourists poured into Germany, they also began to meet these wonders. But in our country, the townsfolk had never heard about them at all, and the citizens had no information about these towers.
True, in Wunsdorf, where the headquarters of the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany (GSVG) was located, there are several such towers. But our military knew very well what it was and why. Therefore, they did not show interest in them and did not talk about them at home, since these towers are simply boring.
But the intellectual Russian intellectuals, as always prone to mysticism and self-intimidation, immediately began to look for black cats in dark rooms where they had never been. One of the very popular myths was the version that these things are some kind of special construction, with the help of which Hitler "personally communicated with the cosmic mind", "received instructions from the higher alien forces." Well, at worst, these are the "mooring masts of alien space flying saucers", which apparently flew in droves over Germany at that time..
I have to disappoint the lovers of everything mystical, mysterious and "beyond the control of the human mind." This is a purely utilitarian and very simple structure and structure called "Luftschuetztuerme", which means "air defense towers".
Simply put, these are bomb shelters for the personnel of nearby institutions and enterprises. And for the population of nearby houses.
Why not underground, but above it?
But simply the architect Leo Winkel, who proposed this idea, calculated that the resistance of such towers to aerial bombs is no less than underground shelters, with significantly lower costs for their construction and further operation.
At the end of the preface, I must say that in the pre-war period and during the war in Germany, overhead bomb shelters were built not only by Winkel's structures, but also by other projects more or less similar to Winkel's. Yes, and on the Winckel towers, I do not pretend to be perfect accuracy and completeness. I give the information that I managed to collect and analyze. Sources of information sometimes contradict each other.
End of the preface.
Reference. Leo Winkel was born on 15 September 1885 in Cologne. An architect by education. Until 1916 he worked in the construction department of the Imperial Association of Mining Enterprises. Then he moved to work at August Thyssen AG in Duisburg (North Rhine-Westphalia). In the early thirties, he took up the initiative in the design of overhead bomb shelters, based on the Italian idea of Campanile.
On September 8, 1934, at the State Patent Office, he registered patent No. 658344 for the Leo Winkel air defense tower (LS-Turms von Leo Winkel).
1936-30-12 in Duisburg created the construction company "Leo Winkel & Co". Basically, the company was engaged in the design of overhead bomb shelters (air defense towers) and, being the copyright holder of the Winkel tower patent, sold projects with licenses for their construction.
Leo Winckel lived a long life. He passed away on March 12, 1981. in Duisburg.
End of help.
The tower of the first project, designed by Winkel in 1934, had a conical shape, a height of 20 meters and could accommodate 200 people. Occupied area 25 sq. m., i.e. only 5.6 - 5.8 meters in diameter.
In the diagram on the right: Section of the Winckel tower of the 1934 project. (patent No. 658344).
The tower of the first project, designed by Winkel in 1934, had a conical shape, a height of 20 meters and could accommodate 200 people. Occupied area 25 sq. m., i.e. only 5.6 - 5.8 meters in diameter.
Cross-section of the Winckel tower of the 1934 project. (patent No. 658344).
Spiral wooden interfloor staircase of the tower of the 1934 project, running along the wall.
A feature of this project was that the two lower floors were still below ground level, and the tower itself stood on its own rather wide foundation. It had two entrances located on opposite sides of the tower, with one entrance at ground level, and the second leading directly to the second floor (counting from ground level). The entrances had sealed vestibules and were locked with sealed steel doors. From floor to floor, people had to climb wooden spiral staircases running along the walls. Each floor was supposed to accommodate an average of 25 people.
The lowest floor housed filtering and ventilation equipment. Thus, the tower was also a gas shelter.
What exactly was Winckel's idea? Here's what:
In fact, the tower shelter is similar to a cylindrical underground shelter of the same capacity. But only rotated 90 degrees. In other words, "put on the priest." This provides the following benefits:
1. The probability of hitting an aerial bomb in the projection of the structure is reduced by 2-3 times. (V. Yu. G. agree that the probability of a bomb hitting a circle with an area of 25 sq. M. Is much less than in a rectangle with an area of 67.2 sq. M.).
2. During construction, extraction of soil with a volume of about 300-500 cubic meters is excluded. And this is only for the volume of the structure itself, without taking into account the need to bury it (!) Taking into account, all 700-1000 cubic meters will be released. In total, the underground shelter will require the movement of more than 1500-3000 cubic meters. ground, while for the tower almost nothing.
3. Consumption of concrete and iron for both types of structures is approximately the same.
4. Problems with waterproofing and protection of the structure from groundwater are eliminated.
5. The question of how to deal with previously laid and interfering underground utilities (water supply, gas, sewerage, electric cables, communication cables, etc.) is sharply simplified.
6. The question of finding a place for an erected shelter is greatly simplified, which is especially important near and on the territory of cities, enterprises, railway depots, stations, etc.
It is already clear from this how much the Winckel Tower is cheaper than an ordinary underground shelter.
Plus to this:
7. In case of collapse of adjacent buildings, there is no danger that entrances, heads of air intake pipes will be filled up, and the shelter will be flooded with water from the destroyed water supply system, or even worse, sewage water.
8. Panicking people do not need to seek shelter, much less the entrance to it. The tower is then visible from all sides.
At the same time, Winckel believed that the resistance of his tower to a bomb that fell into it was, in any case, no less than an ordinary underground shelter with the same concrete consumption.
After all, a high-explosive bomb falling on an underground shelter expediently uses its kinetic energy (penetrates the soil to some depth) and the force of the explosion, and practically the entire force of the explosion (except for a part of the force of the explosion going out through the channel pierced in the ground by the bomb) is directed towards the least resistance, i.e. on the walls of the shelter, behind which there is an air cavity. In the language of explosives, this is called "placing an explosive charge with a plug."
But when a bomb hits the Winckel tower, it ricochets off the wall, since the angle of the bomb meeting with the obstacle is very small (no more than 10 degrees) and its kinetic energy is spent not on breaking through the wall, but on burying the bomb into the ground at some distance from the base of the tower … Figuratively speaking, the tower throws the bomb that hits it away from itself. But the underground shelter cannot do this.
Note that the detonators of high-explosive bombs do not fire instantly, but with a certain slowdown, in order to enable the high-explosive bomb under normal conditions to go deeper into the ground (to penetrate a building, etc.). Thus, a bomb that hits the tower ricochets off to the side and explodes near ground level or underground, where only the foundation of the tower is located. As a rule, there is no direct contact of the bomb at the moment of its explosion with the structure. Consequently, only an air shock wave acts on the tower (if the bomb exploded on the surface). And to an air shock wave, structures such as pipes (Winckel's tower, this is essentially a pipe) are amazingly resistant. This is confirmed by numerous photographs of the war. Even in Hiroshima, the pipes stood where nothing else survived.
If the bomb explodes in the ground, then the seismic shock wave in the ground acts only on the base of the tower. Calculation according to the 1969 Blasting Manual. gives us the following figures: the radius of a dangerous shock from the explosion of a 500kg bomb. up to 13 meters. Those. damage to the tower foundation (the foundation, not the entire tower!) is possible if the bomb explodes in the ground closer than 13 meters. At the same time, damage to concrete (cracking) occurs when a bomb explodes closer than 9 meters.
Unfortunately, these are just calculations. What actually was the resistance of the Winckel towers to bombs remains unknown. We were unable to obtain information on the results of actual bomb drops near the Winkel Towers, except for one case.
On October 12, 1944, during the next (twenty-fourth in a row) bombing of Bremen, an American high-explosive bomb (caliber unknown) hit the tower on the territory of the Focke-Wulf company in the Hemelingen area and exploded near the observation embrasure, fundamentally damaging the head of the tower. Five air defense police officers who served there were killed. Nobody else was hurt. The tower did not receive any other damage.
It is curious that 190 B17 bombers, each carrying 2.7 tons of bombs (if you count in the number of bombs, it is five or six 500-pound bombs), bombed the plant on that day. Consequently, about 950 bombs fell on the territory of the plant.
All the now defunct towers were destroyed in the post-war period, and not during the Allied bombing raids of 1940-45. None of them was seriously damaged during the war.
Winkel also believed that steel plates used to protect underground structures could be used with much greater effect in his towers. Steel may only be required to cover the gabled roof to deflect the bomb, and near the base to protect against the blast of the explosion.
Winckel also proposed using his towers (without a gabled roof) and for placing anti-aircraft guns on them, which is especially important for German cities with their very dense buildings. Because of this, it was extremely difficult to find places for placing anti-aircraft guns and it was difficult to provide the necessary sectors of fire. True, this proposal was not accepted and anti-aircraft guns were not installed on the shelter towers. For this, special anti-aircraft towers (Flaktuerme) were built, which, however, were also used as shelters.
According to Winckel's idea, these towers could find another military and one peaceful application. The towers could be equipped with irrigation equipment to neutralize poisonous gases. And after the war, the tower can be converted into a water tower.
The project was fully supported by the Minister of Aviation, G. Goering, who, however, demanded to reduce the metal consumption for the tower.
Test tower
In 1935, a Winkel tower (apparently a project of 1934) was built at the Rechlin test site near Mützensee for testing bomb resistance.
On January 8, 1936, the first bomb was dropped on it. For several days, Ju 87 dive bombers tried to hit it, using up about 50 bombs, but not a single bomb hit the turret itself.
Then they began to test the tower, fixing bombs weighing 500 and 1000 kg. directly against the outer walls at the top, middle and bottom and blowing them up. In all cases, only some external damage was noted without spalling of concrete inside the tower. During the explosion, the tower made two or four vibrations and remained upright. True, the experimental animals (goats), which were tied to the wall inside the tower, lost their hearing.
Based on the tests, it was ordered to place people in the tower no closer than 30 cm from the outer walls.
July 27, 1937 Based on the test results, the Ministry of Aviation issued L. Winkel & Co a permit to sell construction licenses to construction firms, which were formally named Luftschutzturme “Bauart Winkel” (Air Defense Tower “Project Winkel”). Abbreviation LS-Turm Winkel.
At the same time, standard types of towers were installed, differing in capacity:
-reinforced concrete:
* Type 1 for 400 people;
* Type 2 for 315 people;
* Type 3 for 247 people;
* Type 4 for 168 people
-concrete:
* Tower 1 for 500 people, * Tower 2 for 391 people, * Tower 3 for 305 people, * Tower 4 for 220 people, * Tower 5 for 164 people
Metal consumption for one reinforced concrete tower was 2,600 tons of reinforcing steel, 150 kg. steel wire, and 1200 tons of boiler steel.
The first towers built
However, even before the official approval of the Ministry of Aviation as a private structure, the first usable Winkel tower was built in 1936 at the Thyssen gas and water plant in Duisburg.
The second reinforced concrete Winkel tower, already an approved project - Type 3, with a capacity of 247 people, was built in 1937 on the territory of the Siegerland power plant in Siegen. It was supposed to protect both the employees of the power plant and the employees of the Sieger Kreisbahn GmbH. The tower had a cesspool instead of a drainage system. It was built in two months (from 1937-10-10 to 1937-16-12).
The first serial towers
The first serial towers, which were ordered by the Duisburg-Ruhrorter Haefen AG from the Franz Brueggemann firm on November 4, 1937, were two towers with a capacity of 391 people. each built in the harbor of Duisburg.
The location of the towers is shown on a fragment of the Duisburg city plan map.
Note that this does not mean that there were no other shelters and shelters in the harbor. Although, in general, the construction of shelters in Germany began no earlier than 1935, various basements of residential and public buildings were mainly adapted for them.
The towers were designated:
Luftshutz-Turm 1 Ruhrort (LS-Turm Nr. 1 Ruhrort), "Luftshutz-Turm 2 Duisburg" (LS-Turm Nr. 2 Duisburg).
Both towers were Type 2.
Tower number 1 (LS-Turm Nr. 1 Ruhrort) was intended to accommodate a task force for eliminating the consequences of an aerial bombardment. On the floor located above the technical floor there are 87 people of the 1st emergency shift (fire extinguishing groups, medical, chemical protection, recovery).
On the next floors there are 106 people of the 2nd emergency shift.
On the upper floors there are 30 railway employees, 45 employees of the recovery group, 25 residents of the nearby Veselerstraße buildings.
Tower # 1 will be blown up by the harbor administration in 1950. it will not find further use.
Due to bureaucratic delays, usual for peacetime, the start of construction of tower No. 1 was delayed. Construction company "Franz Brueggemann" (Franz Brueggemann) only on June 1, 1938 announced its readiness to start work. However, the work that had begun was often suspended due to a lack of cement, equipment, and labor. The towers in the harbor of Duisburg were completed only in the winter of 1939.
For the same reasons, the construction of tower No. 2 (LS-Turm Nr. 2 Duisburg) was repeatedly suspended.
Initially, seven firms were engaged in the construction of the Winkel towers:
* Hochtief AG, * Franz Brueggermann, * Dyckerhoff & Widmann, * Wiemer & Trachte, * Boswau & Knauer, * Philipp Holzmann, * Vaucc and Freytag (Wayss & Freytag).
Later, their number increased to twelve.
New project towers
In 1938, Winkel patented a new design for a bomb shelter tower (patent No. 702711 dated February 22, 1938).
The towers of the new project from reinforced concrete could have a capacity of 400, 315, 247 and 168 people, and from monolithic concrete - 500, 391, 305, 220 and 164 people. These are standard capacities. In reality, the capacity of some towers could have a capacity of 20 to 628 people.
The structure is entirely located on the surface of the earth (i.e. it does not have underground floors). In this case, the foundation is deepened by no more than 1.04m.
The new tower, if we consider the project with a capacity of 500 people, is wider. Its diameter at the base is 11.54 m. (64 sq. M.), Height is 23 meters.
The wall thickness at ground level is 2 meters and it decreases by 5 cm for every meter of height. This is if the concrete is monolithic. From a height of 10 meters, the thickness of 1.5 meters and more does not thin out anymore.
If the tower is made of reinforced concrete, then at ground level the wall thickness is 1.1 m. with a thinning of 3 cm for each meter of height. The minimum thickness is 80 cm at a height of 10 m, and above has the same thickness.
Roof thickness for cast-in-place concrete is 2 m, for reinforced concrete 1.4 m.
Reference. The roof of the structure can withstand a hit from a high-explosive bomb:
* 1.4 m thick - 500-pound bomb (230kg.), * thickness 2m. - 1000-pound bomb (465 kg.), * thickness 2.5m. - 2000-pound bomb (920kg.)
End of help.
The clear height of the premises is 2 meters. The thickness of the floors is from 5 (reinforced concrete) to 10 cm (concrete). In the ceiling part, the floor slab has anti-spalling clothing (mesh and boards that prevent pieces of concrete from falling off the floor on people).
The roof of the tower and the lower part are not covered with steel, as it was assumed in the towers of the first project. The walls of the tower and floors are concrete or reinforced concrete. From floor to floor there are straight two-flight wide concrete stairs located in the center of the tower. This ensures that the tower can be quickly filled with people.
Access of people inside is possible from three entrances, located one on each of the three lower floors … Moreover, the entrances were located with a turn of 120 degrees relative to each other. Thus, the filling of the tower was possible in three non-intersecting streams of people from three different directions.
The tambours, which were simultaneously the gates of the gas shelter, had a triangular shape in plan.
The inner part of the tower had a staircase, the rows of seats were located both in the extension of the staircase steps and on large arched platforms.
For one concrete tower with a capacity of 500 people, only 2.9 tons of steel, which was in dire need of Germany, was spent.
Inhabitability of the 1938 project tower. was significantly higher. It was equipped with electric lighting, however, from the city power grid. The tower did not have its own power source, although this was provided for in the technical conditions.
The tower was also connected to the city water supply and sewerage system. One toilet was relied on for every 30 people. Where it was not possible to connect to the sewerage system, cesspool toilets were installed.
Filtration equipment from the Draegerwerk company from Lübeck was installed on the highest floor. However, installations from Auer were also used.
Depending on the capacity of the tower, it was possible to install HLF types:
* R 600 with MR 600 air pumps with a capacity of 600 liters of air per minute, * R 1200 with MR 1200 air pumps with a capacity of 1200 liters of air per minute, * R 2400 with MR 2400 air pumps with a capacity of 2400 liters of air per minute, The installations were operated both electrically and manually. Fresh air was taken through horizontal holes in the walls on the upper floor (which had valves that close the pipe in the event of a sharp surge in pressure from the shock wave of the explosion), passed through filters and under pressure through the pipe was supplied to each floor. Exhaust air from all floors was displaced through a return pipe to the floor located below the intake floor and was thrown out through openings equipped with check valves. Thus, contaminated air, including smoke, carbon monoxide from fires, could not enter the tower from the outside. Due to the return pipe, the exhaust air was discharged from each floor evenly. Those. people received equally clean air on all floors.
Figuratively speaking, the tower was a huge collective gas mask.
In addition, the tower could be blown out with a high air pressure without connecting filters, which ensured rapid ventilation of the premises after the end of use. Within minutes, the tower was again ready to receive people.
No heating was initially provided for in the tower. However, the frosty winter of 1939/40. showed that even when working on the lower floor of a 4-kilowatt electric fireplace on the upper floors, with the ventilation system not turned on, the temperature was below zero (-6 - -8 degrees). This made it impossible for people to stay in the tower if the tower was used in winter, since with the ventilation working, the temperature in the tower would be equal to the outside temperature. In order to avoid defrosting the water supply system, the towers had to be kept without water in pipes all winter 39/40, which also prevented the normal operation of the tower.
The Droeger company in March 1940 proposed installing electric heaters in the ventilation system to heat the incoming air. They could provide faster drying of the newly built tower. Calculations have shown that tower No. 1 for normal operation in cold winter requires 12 electric heaters with a total capacity of 12 kW. In average conditions, 6 heaters could be dispensed with.
The author has no information about the design equipment of the tower with telephone communication. Inspection of some of the surviving ones does not give an unambiguous answer either. Traces were found in some of the towers indicating that they housed telephone switches, telegraph sets, and radio stations. Obviously, this equipment was already installed by users depending on their needs.
There is also no exact information about whether these towers could be connected by underground passages to the outside or to other buildings. Based on the drawings, no.
However, loudspeakers were installed on the doors in the tower, connected to the city Air Defense Center, which made it possible to notify people in the tower about the air situation, about the destruction that occurred in the city and the procedure for further actions.
The doors themselves for this and other towers could be made of steel or extra high-strength reinforced concrete from the firms Mauser from Cologne, Marcus Metallbau from Berlin, Hazet-Werkstatten from Berlin and Peltz-Geldschrank-Werke from Düsseldorf.
According to the project, the tower was supposed to be painted to match the color of the surrounding environment and planted with trees for camouflage purposes. However, this has not been done universally. There are literally two or three cases when the towers were camouflaged, and even then these were towers for the Wehrmacht.
It can be considered that the towers in the harbor of Duisburg became pre-production models, which made it possible to identify all the design flaws and eliminate them.
Winckel's competitor Paul Zombek
In the same 1938, Leo Winkel had a competitor who tried, using the shortcomings and shortcomings of Winkel's project, to squeeze him out of the market for bomb shelters. It turned out to be an engineer from Dusseldorf, Paul Zombeck (Paul Zombeck). He proposed cylindrical towers of significantly larger diameters, which had greater capacity and greater comfort with less concrete consumption.
There was even an idea to combine the merits of both projects in one project. However, Winckel saw this as a violation of his patent rights and won the lawsuit.
At the same time, a certain number of Zombek towers were built in several cities in Germany. In particular, in Hamburg, Berlin, Wilhelmshaven.
Winckel's bomb shelters were built mainly from 1939 to 1941. There are about 129 known towers built in 16 different projects, which are uniquely identified as Winkel Towers. Including those that were quite significantly different in appearance from each other. Of these, about 85 are located in the northern, western and southwestern parts of Germany. And about 100 similar towers were built semi-legally by various small firms, which took the Winckel tower as a model.
Winckel Towers for the Wehrmacht
The Wehrmacht took considerable interest in the Winckel Towers. In total, since 1939, the Wehrmacht ordered and built 34 Winkel towers for its needs. Of these, 19 are in the territory occupied by the Army High Command Headquarters (OKH) in Wünsdorf / Zossen.
The rest of the 34 towers for the Wehrmacht:
* Four towers were built near the army barracks in the West German city of Giessen (Land of Hesse). All four survived
Pictured on the right: Winkel Tower # 4 near the Verdun barracks in Giessen
* One tower at the army repair plant in St. Wendel (Saarland). Preserved.
* Four towers at Wildpark-Werder near Potsdam for the Luftwaffe High Command (Object "Kurfürst"). During the GDR era, these four towers were used by the GDR Army for military purposes.
* Three towers in Barut in eastern Germany in Brandenburg. (Not preserved).
* One at the military shipyard in Wilhelmshaven (Blown up)
* One for the Luftwaffe at the Rechlin test site near Lake Muritzsee (Blown up).
To date, of the 34 Winkel towers built for the Wehrmacht, about seven have survived.
Note. Thus, it becomes clear that the Winckel towers were not absolute twins in design and appearance, such as tanks or aircraft of the same brand. Each time, the designers proceeded from the specific purpose of this or that tower, the customer's requirements, his tastes and preferences.
By the way, many Winkel towers, built for civilian customers, have viewing slots (embrasures) on the top floor, which, as a rule, are not on the towers for the Wehrmacht.
End of note.
Winckel Towers for German Railways.
After the Wehrmacht, the next major customer of the Winkel towers was the State Railways Administration (Reichsbahnamt). Published in the summer of 1940. The Railroad Air Defense Directive stated that the Winckel towers should be ordered with a capacity of 500 people.
However, one of the first towers, built on the territory of the railway equipment repair plant in Kaiserslautern, had a capacity of 600 people, occupied an area of 128 sq. m, had a volume of 1738 cubic meters, internal usable area of 324 sq. At a height of 25 m, it had a diameter of 12.8 m at the base and a wall thickness (first floor) of 2.3 m. The structure was equipped with two filtration units, 4 double filters with a capacity of 1.2 cubic meters / min. each.
In Hanover, three towers were built for the railway department. One of them is at the main goods station in Hanover, Hainholz, the second is on the territory of the depot and train sorting (now it is the Lehrte freight station) and the third is on the territory of the electrical repair plant in Leinhausen.
The first two towers belonged to the "II c" project of the Bruggermann company.
The capacity of both towers is 400 people.
Height 22.34 m, base diameter 17.60 m. The outer wall is 1.90 m thick.
The tower has 3 entrances located at an angle of 110 degrees to each other on the 2nd and 3rd floors.
There are 13 floors in total, and the 12th floor is intended for filtering equipment.
And the 13th floor is a fire station. It has loopholes for observing the surrounding area.
The third Hanover Tower belongs to the 1d project and looks more like the Zombek towers.
Obviously, Leo Winkel was not averse to borrowing something from a colleague.
A special feature of this tower was a basement floor with an underground emergency exit located somewhat to the side of the tower and which was covered with a steel cover. This seems somewhat strange, since the probability that this particular exit will be filled up is greater than that of the exits in the walls of the tower.
However, it is possible that the tower could be used as a command post in the defense of the city and the possibility of secret filling or evacuation of the tower was required. Or the habit of the architect of this project to build underground shelters affected.
All three towers in Hanover have survived by the beginning of the 21st century and are in excellent condition with all their internal equipment.
One of the largest towers (# 1) was built for railway workers in Darmstadt. Its capacity was 530 people. The height is 32 meters, the thickness of the walls at the base is 3 meters, and at the top 1.3m. The diameter of the tower at the ground is 12 meters. The tower had 15 floors and was 5 meters deep.
In total, 17 Winkel towers were built for the railway department. Of them:
* Darmstadt - 3 towers (1 at the train station, two at the repair plant
Karl-Schenk-Ring. All have survived)
* Frankfurt am Main 1 tower (at the freight station.
Preserved), * Hanover 3 towers (Lehrte, Leinhausen, Hainholz. Preserved)
* Kaiserslautern 2 towers (both at the repair plant. Preserved), * Lubeck 1 tower (at the train station direction Lubeck-Buchner.
Preserved), * Ludwigshafen 3 towers (Not preserved), * Limburg 1 tower (Not preserved), * Kassel 1 tower (Preserved), * Berlin 1 tower (Not preserved), * Stuttgart 1 tower (preserved).
Of the seventeen towers on the railways, ten have survived thus far.
Looking at the Winkel towers built for railroad workers, it is difficult to find more than two identical towers. Obviously, each tower was adapted to specific conditions. Those. in fact, while owning the patent for this type of bomb shelter, Leo Winkel & Co drew up a separate project for each tower.
Winkel towers for industrial plants
In addition to the towers of the main customers (the Wehrmacht and the railway department), a number of towers are also known. In particular, about 29 towers were built for the needs of industrial enterprises and 18, which are usually considered Winkel towers, but for which there are no convincing documents. And in some cases, the exact owner of these towers has not been established.
Seven towers were built for the Focke-Wulf Flugzeugbau GmbH in Bremen in 1940-41, two of them, designated BW 2 and BW 3, with a capacity of 500 people each. near the airport on the territory of the plant. Two more towers near the plant on Hünefeldstrasse (also with 500 seats each). And three towers with a capacity of 600 people on the territory of the Hastedter plant.
Later, two more towers were built for Focke-Wulf (in the Osterdeich and Tannenkamp districts). Focke-Wulf leased these towers to Borgward, which divided the space between its employees and the employees of Lloyd-Dynamo-Werke AG (150 seats).
From the author. "War is war, and tobacco apart." Lloyd's firm paid Borgward 500 marks a month for these 150 places. In turn, Borgward gave Focke-Wulf 2 thousand marks for one tower and 1500 marks for another tower.
In Austria, a single Winkel tower with a capacity of 390 people was built at the Ranshofen aluminum smelter.
Sources of information on the Winckel Towers only for this tower give the floor-by-floor placement of people in the tower. In general, these data allow you to roughly navigate the placement of people in other towers.
So, the 1st floor is technical, people are not accommodated in it. 2nd floor 59 people, 3rd floor 100 people, 4th floor 77 people, 5th floor 57 people, 6th floor 47 people, 7th floor 36 people, 8th floor 8 people On the last 9th floor there was a fire observation post (6 people).
And, perhaps, this is the only one of all the built Winkel towers, which not only survived, but is also used today. True, like a warehouse building.
In the summer of 1940, the owner of the Draegerwerk company in Lübeck (the one that supplied the filtering equipment for the towers) Heinrich Droeger ordered a Winkel tower for his plant. However, according to his requirements, the architect Ernst Blunk made changes to the project. The capacity of the tower is 500 people. (as in the "Tower 1c" project), but the thickness of the walls at the base is not 2, but 1.6 m., the height is not 23, but 24 meters, the upper part is of a different shape and has slots for observation, and is also sheathed with iron.
Heinrich Droeger tried to give the tower an aesthetic appearance so that it organically fit into the style of the surrounding buildings. In addition, a ladder made of brackets ran along the outer wall (as in factory towers), which made it possible to climb the tower from the outside. The roof is covered with roofing iron. For its appearance, which differs from the standard, it was often called "Draeger-Turm" (Draeger Tower).
It can be said that the appearance of this tower also played a camouflage role, since it looked more like an old tower than a bomb shelter.
How much the tower was in demand during the war is unknown. Lubeck only once, on the night of March 28-29, 1942, was raided by 234 British bombers Wellington and Short Stirling, which dropped about 400 tons of bombs on the city, including 25 thousand small incendiary bombs.
The bombs laid a "corridor" from south to north about 300 m wide: from the Cathedral of St. Nicholas to the Church of St. Peter and further to the Town Hall and the Church of St. Mary. Droger's plant did not enter this zone at all. As well as the shipyard where the submarines were built. It seems that the British had no intention of crushing Germany's industrial and military might. It was a purely terrorist raid, like most of all other British air raids.
In the post-war period, the company used the tower as a warehouse for small items produced in the factory. In 1971, the Germans blew it up.
As mentioned above, a total of 29 Winkel towers of various capacities were built for industrial enterprises. Of them:
* Seven towers for the Focke-Wulf aircraft factory in Bremen. (Only one has survived on Hünefeldstrasse)
* Two towers in Duisburg harbor (Both demolished).
* One tower at the Thyssen plant in Duisburg (Preserved), * One tower in Lubeck for the Droeger company (Demolished), * One tower in Lübeck for the Lübeck Engineering Works (Retained), * One tower in Peine at the Pae-Salzgitter steel mill (Preserved), * One tower in Ranshofer in Austria in an aluminum smelter (Retained), * One tower in Kostrop-Roxel for the mining company Victor (Demolished), * One tower at Burbach near Saarbrücken for a steel mill (Preserved), * One tower in Neukirchen (Saarland) for a steel mill (Preserved), * One tower in Siegen for Siegerland power plant (Demolished), * One tower in Trier for RBE-Gelaende (Demolished), * One tower in Braunschweig at the Bussing car factory (Demolished), * One tower in Gilsenkirchen at an oil refinery (Demolished), * One tower at a metallurgical plant in Lipstadt (Demolished), * One tower in Oberhausen at the Gutehoffnungshuette metallurgical plant (Demolished), * One tower for the Daimler-Benz company (location and fate not determined), * One tower for the Schalker-Verein iron and steel works (location and fate not established), * One tower in Berlin for Flor-Otis (Demolished), * One tower in Düsseldorf for Mannesmann AG (extant), * One tower in Mülheim for a metallurgical plant (Demolished).
There is no exact information about the ownership and location of one tower.
In the photo on the right: Y. Martynenko in front of the Winkel Tower in Neukirchen. May 2012
Doubtful bomb shelter towers
As mentioned above, the German researcher M. Fedrovitz discovered several bomb shelter towers similar to the Winckel towers, but for which there are no supporting documents. Or, on the contrary, there are documents, but the towers themselves could not be found. There are about 18 such dubious towers:
* Winckel Tower in Neengraben (Hamburg) - not found.
* Tower in the Rhine depot (no supporting documents), * Five towers in Ludwigshafen (no supporting documents), * Three towers in Stuttgart (no supporting documents), * Winkel Tower in Wilhelmshaven - not found, * Tower in Breslau (no supporting documents), * Winkel Tower in Raum-Nienburg - not found, * Winkel Tower in Dusseldorf - not found, * Tower in Mühlheim (no supporting documents), * Winkel Tower in Cologne (no supporting documents).
If we proceed from the data of M. Fedrovitz, then there are 98 bomb-shelter towers related to Winckel's projects in one way or another. However, this researcher is very strict. For example, the site "Liste der bisher bekannten Luftschutzturme der Bauart Winkel" lists 129 Winkel towers.
Pictured right: Winkel Tower in Cologne.
Unfortunately, not all of the towers have survived; some of the surviving towers have no tablets.
For example, Fedrovitz considers the surviving tower in Cologne, located on Neusser Landstrasse, as doubtful (apparently due to the fact that the company did not retain any documents on it). However, one of the sites provides information that the license for the construction of the tower was obtained on April 17, 1940, and the construction itself was completed in July 1940. The tower has 8 floors and can accommodate a maximum of 628 people with a standard capacity of 518 people. Height 29 meters, diameter at the base 14.6 m., Diameter of the foundation slab 18.6 m. Wall thickness from 2.7m. at the base up to 1.1 m on the top floor. The tower has four entrances on different floors, is faced with bricks, and the dome is made of non-combustible slate.
Actually, the towers built according to Winckel's designs were required to be embedded in the wall near the entrance with a metal plate with an embossed inscription indicating that this was a Winckel-designed tower and the name of the company that built the tower.
Photo on the left: A sign at the entrance to the tower in Neukirchen. It indicates that this is an air defense tower from Leo Winkel & Co., built under license by Fr. Brueggermann in Gamborn.
Obviously, such towers were also built semi-legally, or even completely illegally (that is, without paying a license to the firm that owns the patent). Therefore, it is impossible to establish exactly how many and where the Winkel towers were built.
Termination of construction of the Winkel Towers
In July 1941, the Ministry of Aviation, which was responsible, among other things, for the construction of bomb shelters in Germany, suspended further construction of the Winkel towers, seeing in the actions of Leo Winkel & Co a desire to monopolize the market, as well as serious deviations in the design of towers from state standards. Thus, the Ministry of Aviation said that the latest projects of the Winkel towers provide for the creation of recumbent places and the division of the internal volume of the tower into separate rooms, which halves the tower's capacity. In addition, the consumption of concrete for each covered person exceeds the standard by one and a half to two times.
However, it appears that these were the reasons and not the actual reasons. It can be assumed that the termination of the construction of the towers was due to the rapidly growing shortages of building materials, labor, equipment, and a change in priorities.
The author could not find information about any significant construction of Winkel's project bomb-towers in the period 1942-45. Probably they were just completing the construction of previously started ones or, due to the availability of building materials, firms ordered small towers for their employees. In addition, priority was given to the construction of the so-called anti-aircraft towers (Flakturm), which simultaneously served as platforms for heavy and light anti-aircraft guns, and could harbor up to 16 thousand people. (V. Yu. G. - I described the anti-aircraft towers in detail in a series of articles on the Minesweeper website in the fortification section).
The authors have no information about the use of bomb shelter towers during the war. However, if we take into account that during the war years, allied aviation destroyed about 50 German cities (Bremen alone more than 30 times from May 1940 to March 1945 was subjected to massive British raids), then it is easy to conclude that the Winckel towers did not stand idle … And as far as we could find out, none of the towers were destroyed by bombs.
Conclusion
After the end of the war, the Winckel towers were to be demolished as part of the demilitarization of Germany. However, the allies, busy with more pressing problems, paid attention to the air defense towers only at the end of 1948. At the same time, the tasks of eliminating the towers were assigned to the local authorities and the administration of enterprises and organizations (in any case, the costs of demolition), which belonged to these structures. The cost of demolishing one tower reached 51 thousand marks. At the same time, the great destruction in Germany during the war created a shortage of premises. In particular, there was an acute shortage of warehouse space. In a number of cases, in particular in Siegen, the German authorities and administrations of enterprises managed to persuade the occupation authorities to demilitarize these towers without destroying them, but only by making window and door openings in the walls (from 19 to 29 windows in the tower). It was believedthat after such alteration it becomes impossible to use the tower as a bomb shelter.
In eastern Germany, on the territory of the former headquarters of the Army High Command (OKH), of the 19 towers available there, 11 were blown up by the Soviet occupation authorities between 1947 and 1956, one tower was blown up in 97 by the German authorities. There are seven left. It was decided to preserve one as a monument of technical art, two towers house exhibitions, three towers have entrances walled up, and the walls are braided with cables for climbing plants.
A number of researchers believe that in total, about 500-600 overground bomb shelters of various types were built in Germany, of which about 200 bomb shelter towers were designed by Leo Winkel and Paul Zombek. Less common structures were towers of other designers. Thus, the Dyckerhoff & Widmann company built several bomb shelters of the Dietel project ("Bauart Dietel"), of which at least two have survived (in Heilbronn and Darmstadt).
These towers were distinguished by a mushroom-shaped upper part of the tower, embrasures not only under the roof, but also in the lower floor, as well as the ability to place a 20-mm roof on the flat top of the roof. antiaircraft gun.
It is possible that in some places water or silo towers are taken for air defense towers, and also include privately built small shelters of a similar appearance and even very small (for 1-2 people) military installations.
Special thanks to my co-author Y. Martynenko, who provided us with a trip to Neukirchen, who provided me with unique literature on the German army of the early 20th century, and who explained the most difficult terms and expressions in translation.
Sources and Literature:
1. M. Foedrowitz. Die Luftshutztuerme der Bauart Winkel in Deutschland 1936 bis heute. Waffen-Arsenal Band175. Podzun-Pallas-Verlag GmbH. Woelfersheim-Bestadt. 1998.
2. A guide to military fortifications. Military publishing house of the USSR Ministry of Defense. Moscow 1962
3. Site "Wilipedia" (en.wikipedia.org)
4. D. Irving. Destruction of Dresden. Centerpolygraph. Moscow. 2005
5. D. E. Kaufman, G. W. Kaufman. Fortification of the Second World. wars 1939-1945. III Reich. Eksmo. Moscow. 2006
6. Guidance on blasting operations. Military publishing house. Moscow. 1969
7. Site "UNTERTAGE-UEBERTAGE" (www.untertage-ubertage.de).
8 Ruhig bleiben! (www.bunker-whv.de).
9. Site "Wikipedia" (ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_B-17_Flying_Fortress).
10. Site "Liste der bisher bekannten Luftschutzturme der Bauart Winkel" ((www.bunker-whv.de/winkelkmz).