Bunker visit (Diogenes)

[Marcel]

:Last weekend I visited this bunker, the Diogenes bunker at Deelen, which was the main command center of the German nightfighters over North-west Europe. I thought you might like some pics

 

[B-17engineer]

How'd I miss this? Awesome!!!!

 

[RabidAlien]

 

[Gnomey]

Excellent stuff Marcel. I'm sure you have some more to share as well

 

[vikingBerserker]

Very cool!!!

 

[Vassili Zaitzev]

Awesome Marcel!

 

[Maximowitz]

Fantastic!

 

[Njaco]

Great pics Marcel!

 

[Aaron Brooks Wolters]

Wow Marcel!!! Great material and shots!

 

[Marcel]

Thanks guys!

Excellent stuff Marcel. I'm sure you have some more to share as well

Of course I have but not that much. It's very difficult to get good pictures in those corridors within the bunker. In fact there's not much left of the interior. During Market Garden, the Germans panicked (Deelen is just a few miles from Arnhem). They tried to blow up the bunker by detonating 2 1500 pounders in the great hall. Unfortunately the building was too well build and hardly suffered any structural damage. The interior however was smashed to smithereens. This included a 15m by 9m big glass panel containing the map of Europe. After the war, the Dutch bomb squad used it for storage of unexploded bombs which they found on the Deelen aerodrome. In 1948 the bunker survived an explosion of a 5000 poind tallboy bomb without any significant damage.
Most of the bunker is now used to store the Rijks-archief. The great hall is divided by floors and now functions as a depot for the Arnhem's museum. We could not visit that unfortunately. So most of the bunker is now clean and white, with metres of bookshelves, containing boxes with papers, not very interesting at all. Few things remain, like the diesel generator you see in the pictures in my earlier post. It was covered by debris for 60 years and recently re-discovered. They also re-discovered the warning "Rauchen bei fliegeralarm verboten" (Don't smoke during air-raids) and several escape routes (like the one below. All discovered within the last few years.

 

[Marcel]

Some more pics...

 

[Messy1]

Cool stuff Marcel. Thanks for posting.

 

[BikerBabe]

Neat stuff and cool pics. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Wayne Little]

Thanks for sharing Marcel!!

 

[109ROAMING]

Thanks for posting these Marcel , most interesting to see

 

[ToughOmbre]

Great photos Marcel!

Thanks!

TO

 

[evangilder]

Neat stuff! Thanks for sharing.