Arnhem Shermans

[dpittaway]

During a recent visit to a test facility outside of Arnhem I saw one of the two buried Shermans, all you can see is the turret placed there during the cold war . Returning in a few weeks and I will find the other, due to ongoing building work this was as close as I could get.

[uber_soldat]

Very nice, do you know weather it is just an enplaced turret or the whole shebang?

[Paul B]

They are usually the entire hull and turret, set in concrete.
Access was via a hatch over the engine bay, the powerplant and running gear were removed before the hull was entombed.

[Thanatos]

Hi mate,
Do the firing arc's of the turrets cover the Bridge and it's approaches?
Cool cold war emplacement.Thanks for sharing.
All the best.

[dpittaway]

The locals tell me they are as Paul B states and there are two, the one I couldn't see is pointing towards the bridge. Hopefully the building work won't cover them up!

[Paul B]

This example looks to be a "new" one in the Arnhem area to me.
I've seen the one beside the lower road between Arnhem and Oosterbeek (Klingelbeeksweg?), and there are four at the old brickworks at Meijnerswijk on the south side of the river.

EDIT:
I see from my notes that there were originally 21 Shermans emplaced in the Arnhem sector in the 50s, all converted to hold a machine gun (usually a single .30 Browning), so there's a few more still to find...
Nijmegen had 34 Shermans, (including 5 Fireflies, the remainder were MG turrets) while Deventer had 6 Fireflies and 23 Ram tanks as MG positions.

PB

[Thanatos]

Thanks for the info. Paul,very informative.
Cheers mate

[Paul B]

Ta Dave.

I've pulled the local council's report on these and it confirmed my suspicion that this "new" one is on the KEMA site up the hill from the Klingelbeeksweg example.
There is apparently another one nearby, probably partially buried and/or missing its turret.

[dpittaway]

Yes Paul it was the KEMA facility