Pillboxes and Tank Traps

By Bernard Lowry

A concise, illustrated guide to these Second World War defences scattered across the British landscape.

With invasion a very real threat, in 1940 Great Britain began a huge military construction programme designed to stop an invading army in its tracks. Around vulnerable coastlines, and inland, thousands of pillboxes, anti-tank barriers and other obstacles were erected to defend against attacks from sea and sky. Though many of these structures were dismantled in the wake of the Second World War, the coast and even some inland areas still boast a wealth of fascinating remains.

In this fully illustrated introduction, fortifications authority Bernard Lowry guides the inquiring reader in identifying these remaining defensive structures and explains their seemingly 'random' placement across the British landscape.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Sep 10, 2014
• ISBN: 9781784420147

Bernard Lowry

Bernard Lowry has had a lifelong interest in military architecture. He is a founder member of the Offa's Dyke Association and the Castle Studies Group, and for seven years was Honorary Secretary of the Fortress Study Group. After taking retirement he was for several years an Area Co-ordinator for the award-winning Defence of Britain Project.

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VISIT

The land defences of Britain 1940–2, showing principal stop lines (these often following physical features) and Army Commands.

AN ISLAND FORTRESS

THE B RITISH I SLES , located off the mainland of Europe, have faced the threat of large-scale invasions for almost a thousand years, the last successful landing being that of William of Normandy in 1066. William and his knights also brought over their horses (as the Wehrmacht , still partly dependent on horse-drawn transport, would have done in 1940). Medieval wars with France and Henry VIII’s conflict with Catholic Europe led to invasion fears and as a result a number of artillery forts were built along the south coast. The conflict with Napoleonic France led to the building of Martello towers (brick-built artillery towers sited to defend the vulnerable coastline of south-eastern England) from the end of the eighteenth century. The rise of the French navy under Napoleon III initiated the building of the powerful Palmerston forts around the main naval bases (named after the British Foreign Secretary) in the mid-nineteenth century. With the outbreak of the First World War and with German forces on the other side of the Channel, anti-invasion defences were constructed along British coasts. These included fieldworks, together with small concrete defence works; the latter were christened ‘pillboxes’ after their apparent resemblance to the small, round boxes used at that time to contain pills. Small reinforced concrete defence works had also been used with deadly effect by Germany, in conjunction with machine guns, along the Western Front.

The outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939 and the occupation of much of western Europe by Germany in the summer of 1940 meant that invasion was once again a likely threat. Even before the German offensive in France had ended, the British GHQ Home Forces had issued an instruction in the middle of May 1940 for defensive steps to be taken against the landing of enemy troops by air, tactics that had been employed successfully in Norway and Holland. With the fall of France in June, Germany began to make preparations for the invasion of Britain, issuing Führer Directive 16 on 16 July. If Germany had had sufficient maritime ability to invade at the time of the Dunkirk evacuation, then this might have met with success. However, she had also lost vital aircraft, especially transports, and much of the armoured equipment used in France was at its last gasp. Operation Sea Lion, the code name for the invasion, was planned to make use of both seaborne and airborne forces, and a date was set by Hitler and the German High Command for the launch of the operation: 16 September 1940. The planned invasion envisaged seaborne landings between Worthing and Folkestone with airborne landings behind the port of Dover.

A number of events led to the postponement of the planned invasion, the principal one being Germany’s failure to gain air superiority during the Battle of Britain. Another factor was the German navy’s (and probably also Hitler’s) disquiet at the chances of successful and sustained landings in the face of the much stronger Royal Navy, coupled with the prospect of deteriorating seasonal sea conditions. In addition, the attraction of an attack on Germany’s ideological enemy, the USSR, meant that in the late summer of 1940 Hitler had already begun to switch his attention eastwards, and the army groups gathered for Sea Lion were gradually moved to Poland. Hitler would pin his hopes on the success of the U-boat offensive and the Luftwaffe’s night bombing campaign against Britain, expecting that this would bring the country to its knees and lead to its surrender, or to the agreement of terms favourable to Germany, especially once the USSR was defeated. But this was not known to Britain in the latter part of 1940 and into 1941. Whilst Britain prepared for what