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History Travels - Bunker Museum - IJmuiden, Netherlands

History Travels - Bunker Museum - IJmuiden, Netherlands

January 2020 · 5 min read · Velsen

Hello lovely Steemians !


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Today I want to present to you some pictures that I took during my last visit to the Bunker Museum in IJmuiden in the beautiful Netherlands. This Museum is just a few hours away from the place where I am living. It has a camping site directly next to it, that is only a few minutes away from the Dutch beaches at the Atlantic Ocean, and I have been there already several times with a friend for some short four-day long holidays. The Bunker Museum in IJmuiden is actually one of my favorite places in the Netherlands, so I will definitely visit this place more often in the future. It became a tradition for me and my friend ^^ I already showed to places like Haarlem and Amsterdam, both just a few minutes train ride from Ijmuiden, in some previous posts. Please enjoy this little visual tour, showing you some impressions of "just" the outer terrain of the Bunker Museum ^^


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Ijlmuiden During the Second World War

- Invasion of the Netherlands


During the Second World War the German Army invaded the Netherlands in the time from the 10th to the 17th May in the year 1940, in just one week, as a part of a swift attack, the so-called Blitzkrieg. They occupied the strategic important canal to Amsterdam and destroyed nearly most of Ijmuiden to create what they called the "Festung IJmuiden" (Fortress IJmuiden), a heavily defended area in which the entire civilian population had been removed.


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- The Fortress IJmuiden


IJmuiden became on of the two major fortified pens by the Kriegsmarine (German Navy)
and hosted their fast Torpedo Boats, which laid up in shelters during the day, safe from air–attacks, and were put out to sea under cover of night to attack the ships of the Allied Forces. The pens were priority targets after D-day as those torpedo boats were a considerable threat to the supply lines of the Allied Forces in western Europe and were subjected to repeated air attack.


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- Attacks on IJmuiden


There were a total of four attacks by No. 9 Squadron and No. 617 Squadron of the British Royal Air Force on the bunker complex. They dropped a total of 53 five–ton heavy Tallboy Earthquake Bombs. There were also two attacks in 1945 by the American Air Force with rocket–powered Disney Bombs, specialist weapons designed to penetrate fortified, concrete bunkers that could resist conventional bombs. The story of IJmuiden during the war is told in the Bunker Museum IJmuiden in more detail (in Dutch). But the interior of this museum will be another post after my next visit ^^


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- The Trench, "Schützengraben"


I took these pictures here to give you an impression of how it looks like to stay in a military trench. A trench is a form of field fortification, usually in the form of an angled trench, which serves to protect the shooter with a front and rear cover for the safe firing of shots while standing or kneeling and for protection against grenades and their splinters. On our first day in Ijmuiden we were spending the whole night in this trench, from dusk till dawn. We actually had a lot of fun that night, but that's a totally different story, hehe, and we have no documentation about that, but some amazing memories ^^ Here you see some pictures from what you see when you look outside the trench.


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Landscape full of Bunker


All pictures so far where taken from the northern area of the WN81 Battery that is markets as "Bunker museum" on the map. But there are several more bunkers located in the area to the south that we already explored several times. If you are willing to climb and crawl a little bit you can find some beautiful locations. According to the tags on the bunker walls already many visitors did ^^


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My Favorite, the Creepy Bunker ^^


Here are some pictures of our favorite bunker in the area. We entered this bunker on our firs visit several years ago during a time when it was already fully dark outside. The entrance looked soo creepy that we couldn't resist to go inside ;) .. There were this little signs everywhere that were leading through the whole complex directly up to the top. We only had a little head flaslight and during the night the paintings create an amazing but creepy enviroment. If you like to visit ruins in general or are interested in historical places, and happen to be in the Netherlands by coincidence, this is a great location to visit that I can really recommend to you. Not only because of the great Bunker Museum, but also due to the dutch beaches on the Atlantic coast, and it's close location to Amsterdam, Capital City of the Netherlands ^^


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All pictures were taken by myself, ©@adalger, with a Samsung Galaxy Mobile Phone. For information gathering I used several articles on Wikipedia


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Learn more about @adalger here !


Best wishes,
Adalger

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