The Odeon & M19 Mortar Bunker (Channel Islands) -- August 2018

The "Odeon" (named due it looking like a cinema) is an observation and rangefinding tower that was built by the Germans when the occupied the Channel Islands. They originally planned to build 4 more of these around the island of Alderney. It is the only bunker of its type (MP3) ever built.
It is now owned by the Wildlife Trust, who plan to turn it into a visitor centre some time in the future

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I was unable to get onto the roof
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There was also a different bunker nearby:
An M19 Mortar Bunker.
This would have held a mortar, designed to fire 50mm projectiles at a rate of 120 rounds per minute.
The mortar was removed during a post-war scrap drive, but the rest of the bunker remains in reasonable condition.

_DSC0354 by jono372, on Flickr

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Very unusual building, reminds me of something from Star Wars, nice photos as well.

Always loved the look of this,so it's good to see the internals.We must remember however that it was built using slave labour gangs.

A translation of beobachter into English is observer

Comprehensively photographed, proper job,Thanks

I love this building, but as oldscrote says it has some dark history. Then again so do many ww2 era places.

That's an interesting post and a lot of photographs. Thanks for posting.

Interesting, it looks very German from the first pice (dont know why, u can just tell its not British built)
Nicely photographed, odd that they have lighting on in there!

BikinGlynn said:

odd that they have lighting on in there!

Click to expand...

Only to be expected now the place is owned by a private body. Place is a bit of a nightmare in some areas with no lighting. All of the 'Atlantic Wall' was built by slave labour - however the ones building this and similar structures were treated very slightly better (they were judged to be more skilled) than the poor sods digging foundations and external trenches were. In these days of the neo-Nazi, more should be done to remember the unfortunates who suffered and died building these abhorrent structures on British soil. They are memorials, not 'play things'! Over the years I have heard and read some pretty absurd ill informed comments about these structures.

Def has art deco vibes about its design which I like, but its construction and usage isn't so appealing, we can't erase history although some would like us to nowadays, another interesting set of images ect100!