Tour Report: Command Post W13

After we finished our exploration of the communications bunker, we moved on to the next bunker. For this we only had to drive a short distance down the road and then a bit through the forest - actually only a short hop, but with an Audi TT on the uncleared forest roads it was already an adventurous drive.

We parked the car on a forest path next to a former guard post and made our way through the thicket. Soon we could make out some concrete parts as well as the supply and exhaust pipes.

It was quite clear - below us was the former joint command post of an air defense missile regiment and a radio engineering battalion.

The main entrance had obviously been bricked up a long time ago, but we found an open emergency exit that we could use as an entrance.

It felt like a very long way down, even if it was only a few meters in the end - but such a first entrance is quite exciting, and can distort the perception a bit :)

Through the emergency exit we first entered the room with ventilation and air conditioning. From there, we went down the hall to the radio distribution room and on to the storage room. After a short look into the airlock of the main entrance we explored the annex consisting of three FB-3 tube bunkers. After that, we headed back out into the sun - because we had two more locations to explore that day....

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Tour Report: Communications Bunker "Little G"

This place was so secret that even in the paranoid bureaucacy of East Germany, there was no codename for this bunker - and it was forbidden to mention the name or the location in any case.

It was this place that my friend Lost Places in Schleswig-Holstein und Umland and I had chosen as the first of four locations on a day trip through the Northeastern part of Germany in July 2019.

I was picked up early in the morning, and about 2 hours and 200 kilometers later we were driving along a narrow road that would lead us to the bunker. When we reached a clearing where we thought the bunker was, we first saw...nothing. A radio mast next to the area showed that we were on the right track, but a bunker was nowhere to be seen. In the field, however, we could clearly see a heavily overgrown hill - the bunker hill.

So we got our equipment and set out to explore the site. There were no obvious paths, and it was all very overgrown, so we had to make our way cross-country through the bushes. Then, on top of the hill, we discovered a small antenna and some fan outlets, which showed us that we had indeed found the right place. When we then discovered the main entrance, disappointment was already spreading, because it was locked bomb-proof.

However, we were not discouraged by this, but looked for the emergency exits of the bunker. And we found one. It looked a bit like a too small toilet house - but with a very wide drain ;)
We climbed down the ladder and then had to squeeze through a narrow round hatch to get into the rooms of the bunker.

The bunker itself was quite big - a floor space of 500 square meters and about 30 rooms of different sizes wanted to be explored. The typical picture presented itself: Almost all electrical equipment was removed in the course of abandoning the bunker, and the rest was snatched up by cable thieves.

Still, it was a very interesting walk-through, because none of us had explored a bunker of this type before - and both graffiti "artists" and party-crazed teenagers had left the bunker alone until then.
So we had a very successful and exciting location to start our tour - it's always good to start the day with a sense of achievement!

To find out about the history of this place and to check out all the photos, click the button below.

Tour Report: Sanatorium J. [Revisit]

A short vacation in March of 2019 took us to the Harz Mountains to visit our friend Jens. On the morning after our first night, we had explored a small old original 1970s apartment, and in the afternoon, we returned to chop some wood for the next night and prepare the fire for the evening barbecue.

We decided, however, that there was still enough time to use the (admittedly bleak) afternon light to go for another quick tour of the old sanatorium on the site. The rain/snow had stopped, and even a few blue spots could be seen through the thick cover of clouds.

What I didn't know at that point was that the photos I took that day were the last ones I was going to take at this place for more than three years.

To find out about the history of this place and to check out all the photos, click the button below.

Tour Report: "The Red M*A*S*H"

The final location that my friend Toeppi from "Fotodokumentationen" and I visited during our spontaneous tour in February of 2019, was a truly unique place - as far as I know, it's the only location of its kind in Germany.

It is an abandoned field hospital that used to be a Soviet project for reusable command posts and field hospitals called Type SKT (сооружение каркассно-тканевое = Frame-Fabric-Structure). This particular object is actually made up of two structures of this type. It was used as a training object for field care for wounded soldiers.

We drove for about an hour, and we arrived sometime around 3 o'clock in the afternoon. It was February, so the sun was already low, and it was beginning to get colder. Near the coordinates, we found a public parking space, and we assembled our gear. We had to walk a bit to get to the little forest where the field hospital was located under about two or three feet of earth. We waited for the people that were walking along the street to disappear so that we could walk into the forest unnoticed. After all - the facility was near a residential area. One of the access points was even right in someone's backyard, so to speak.

As we approached the field hospital, we only saw a small mound of earth, but as we came closer, we saw the top of the fortified access that had been filled up with earth but re-opened at some point. There was a small hole that we could climb through to get in.

This wasn't a huge place with tons of stuff - but it was a very interesting location - not only because it was a rare thing to find and explore, but also because there was a lot of special stuff still left, such as parts of a mobile x-ray machine, liquids for intravenous infusions and even some medicine. A few tables, stretchers and parts of the ventilation system were to be found as well.

We took our time to photograph the place and all the details that we were able to find, before we made our way out and went back to the car.

Looking back, we got really lucky to have seen the place in this condition, because we were there during a phase before the "tourism" began and tourists started stealing things and decorators moved the stuff around to get the "better" photo.

To find out more about the history of this place and to check out all the photos, click the button below.

Tour Report: Anti-Aircraft Shooting Range

After exploring the command post bunker, another abandoned military installation was the second destination on the first of two days of our short tour through the northeastern part of Germany back in January of 2018. We had actually planned this spot only for one special relic that we'd seen photos of, but in the course of the research, it turned out to be part of a far larger area with many relics that point to a vivid history over the past century.
As we arrived at the place, we found one thing to be very obvious: fences.
The entire place seemed to be fenced in. And we could see trucks and people working on the premises.
I'm sure that there would have been possibilities to enter the area by sneaking through the forest looking for a hole in the fence, but since at least part of the place seemed to be in use by someone, we decided not to take the risk and attempt a different approach.
We rang the bell at a house near the main gate of the area. A woman opened up, and as we confronted her with our desire to explore the area, she surprisingly said yes - under certain conditions.
She allowed us to walk around in the front part of the premises, if we didn't bother the people working in the back of the place.
Luckily, the permitted part contained the "special relic" that I mentioned above so that the main goal could be achieved.
This special relic are the remains of an old anti-aircraft cannon that probably dates back to World War II, but it could also be a leftover from the use by the East German military; there is no real information.
I addition to the cannon, there were also some smaller buildings and shelters to be found - the main ammunition bunkers remained out of our reach - but we were informed that there might be the possibility of a visit if we ask in time before we get there...so there might be another visit in the future :)


To find out more about the history of this place and to check out all the photos, click the button below.