Austrått Fort in Norway was built by the Germans in WW2 as part of their Atlantic wall. It utilised various guns and equipment, rangefinders, etc. but the main emplacement was a triple 11" turret from the decommissioned German battleship Gneisenau. Model Collect have used the turret from their P1000 kit, see my other post, with a few additional parts, including the concrete encasement, and delivered an unusual and interesting subject that until I bought this kit I knew nothing about. The best part is, the fort still exists, the most complete turret of any German WW2 capital ship. Since the fort was in use until the late 1960s, finally declared surplus to requirements in the early 1970s, it is in incredible condition. Photos of the fort in WW2 are scarece, but one I saw was of the turret basically being installed, the paintwork more or less as it was on the ship. I guessed that, when originally built, the soldiers at the Forts simply added more green to the grey and blue, and hopefully my depiction isn’t too bad.
360 degree view in between the barrels
360 degree drone view
360 view by the rangefinder/director/sight
360 degree drone overview from a distance
Apparently, the entire hill top the turret is situated on is extensively tunneled out for barracks, ammunition magazines, shelters, headquarters, vehicle garages, etc.
It is, and while it was only used for a short time by the Germans, Norway and NATO had it as part of their plans to defend Europe for decades. It really is incredible to think an entire battleship turret is simply removed, sent to a land position and utilised as a defensive unit. It’s one thing to use turrets like this on other ships, I mean, the Royal Navy did that repeatedly, for example WW1 and WW2 Monitors, even the main guns of HMS Vanguard, but like this fort? It must be pretty rare.
The Germans also used redundant naval guns, complete with mount and shield, installed in concrete casemates along their Atlantik Wall.
Very true, some smaller ones near this fort, and other guns from Gneisenau, just not in a complete turret. I think it’s the complete turret part of it that I find remarkable
Actually, it’s not the only German 280mm gun battleship turret converted to a shore battery surviving, but the other two are much older. The Brandenburg-class Pre-dreadnought SMS Weissenburg was sold to Turkey in 1910 and re-named Turgut Reis. For a Pre-dreadnought she was unusual in not only having twin-gun turrets fore and aft of the superstructure but another amidships. These were fitted with 28 cm MRK guns, L/40 in the fore and after turrets but shorter L/35s in the midship mount. Turgut Reis survived an active WW1 but in 1925 she became a stationary training ship (later barracks) and the midships turret and one other were sent ashore to form a coast defence battery named after the ship. The ship herself survived until 1950 when breaking up commenced and continued until 1957. The shore battery survives pretty much intact today.
The 28 cm MRK L/35 guns are not the only ones surviving: Norway bought three in 1890 and installed them in the Oskarsborg fortress where they remain, their moment of glory coming at 04:21 on 9 April 1940 when they blew the hell out of the brand-new heavy cruiser Blücher which was then finished off by the fortress’ concealed torpedo battery.
I believe that turret “Cäsar” is not as when it was on Gneisenau, being substantially up-armoured. This additional armour is the only surviving remains of turret “Bruno” at Fjell festning after it’s demolition sometime after 1963. The additional armour brought the turret weight up to around the 1000 tonne mark which would be too much for the Ratte, so Model Collect’s usage of the turret in it’s Batterie Oerlandat form is incorrect.
Regards,
M
Not that rare. Two twin 12-inch battleship turrets removed from HMS Illustrious (1896) were emplaced to defend the mouth of the Tyne, one each to the north and south of the river, these batteries being completed (at great expense) in 1921, and demolished in 1926…
There are surviving triple 12 inch turrets from the battleship Frunze (1915) mounted ashore as Armoured Coastal Batteries 30 and 35 in Sevastopol, Crimea, to replace twin-gun turrets destroyed in WW2, they were operational until 1997. The other two turrets were sent to Vladivostok and mounted as coast defence installations, where they are preserved as the Voroshilovskaya Batareya Museum.
Spain used the fore and aft twin twelve-inch gun turrets from the dreadnought Jamie I (after she blew up in 1937) at Tarifa to help close the Straights of Gibraltar; they’re still there but somewhat decrepit.
Two of USS Arizona’s triple 14 inch turrets were removed from her wreck and installed in coast defence batteries in Hawaii.
When Japan’s incomplete Tosa-class battleships were cancelled (Kaga was converted into an aircraft carrier, Tosa used for armour trials before being scuttled) their twin 16.1 inch (41 cm/45 3rd Year Type naval gun) turrets were used to upgrade Nagato and Mutsu while the original turrets of those vessels were sent ashore, some being used as coast defence batteries (one each on Iki and Tsushima Islands, with the third at Pusan in Korea). Mutsu’s original number 4 turret was mounted ashore at the Etajima Imperial Japanese Naval College (now the Naval Academy Etajima) where it still remains.
Regards,
M
I was mostly meaning WW2 ships, especially taken from the ship during the war. The others you mention were all interwar of post-war, Plus, you are talking about mounting these guns on another country’s land, and for them to not dismantle them after the conflict.
That’s setting the bar rather high, as most fixed coastal artillery became obsolete after WW2 and they were a convenient source of scrap, so few of any sort remain except in remote or otherwise inconvenient locations. I was restricting myself to battleship primary armament still in their original naval turrets (even if modified). If you want to go smaller, two of Gneisenau’s secondary Drh. LC/34 turrets (15 cm SK C/28 Guns) survive in Denmark albeit not in their wartime locations, there’s an Italian destroyer twin 4.7 inch mount on an island off East Africa placed there in WW2. Further south, SMS Königsberg’s “10,5cm M.P.L. c./1904” primary armament ended up ashore in WW1, most were converted field artillery (two survive) but some were emplaced on their original naval pivot mounts, Gun 362 (one of Königsberg’s broadside guns) at Mwanza overlooking Lake Victoria where it was captured by a British and Belgian force and taken away as a prize. It was last photographed in Jinja, Uganda, in 2014 and may well still be there.
If you include naval guns removed from known vessels but their shipboard mounts modified or replaced for fixed mounts ashore two of HMS Hood’s 5.5 inch guns are on Ascension Island (as are a pair of 7 inch Muzzle Loading Rifles: I don’t know whether these are land service or the shorter shipboard tubes, but they are on their original carriages which is unusual as these were more easily cut up for scrap, while the barrels were disposed of by other means - buried, thrown over a cliff, or left where they lay). My own old home town in north-west England was defended in WW2 by two French 5.4 inch Canon de 138 mm Modèle 1910 from the battleship Paris - probably the last (to date) French capital ship carried by boarding by British forces… We had to give them back after the war but fortunately there are still two on their naval mounts on Cát Bà Island in Vietnam.
I could go on at length on this subject but the hour is late and it is drifting away from the topic of the thread. I’ll just close on another local note. In 1914 Brazil ordered a Project 781 Riachuelo class battleship from Vickers at Barrow-in-Furness. This didn’t go very far in terms of construction before cancellation (the outbreak of WW1, but Brazil couldn’t have afforded it anyway) and left Vickers with the BL 15-inch Mark I guns. These were proofed at Vickers Eskmeals range (which is still doing a similar job for QinetiQ) and sold, along with some new-build tubes, to Spain between 1929 and 1935 for mounting as shore batteries. A total of 18 were delivered; the last of these was fired for a final time before being taken out of service on 24th September 2008, and therefore both pre- and post- dates Austrått Fort…
Cheers,
M
Spoiler Alert
In the book “Footfall” by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, the 16 inch guns of the New Jersey(?) are turned into individual attack craft and launched into space aboard an immense Orion type rocket in order to make a direct assault on the mother ship of alien invaders. One of the space shuttles, carrying a nuclear bomb in the cargo bay, makes it through the alien defense and goes boom.
…
That turret and the Ratte you built are pretty cool. I like the finish. It would look really neat in a diorama with some trees, people, and a vehicle or two to give the whole thing a sense of scale.
If you do a diorama with the Ratte, it should be running over the Kremlin. That would be awesome.
The Kremlin is a bit ambitious; Lenin’s Tomb, on the other hand…
Cheers,
M
I’m not familiar with the book, sounds unique 
I know LN from Ringworld and a few others. I honestly hadn’t decided on how the Scharnhorst Ratte was to be finished. The base coat, Humbrol 79, was to be mostly painted over with a winter coat of white, (albeit blotchy, as was often the case) and displayed with some other Fist of War models I’m going to build, (I have maybe two dozen other ModelCollect 1/72 kits from that era) all in the same camo. However, the more I build the Scharnhorst, the more I’m liking the simple grey. But, mind reader that you seem to be, my idea was to have them as they would be in the battle for Moscow. So the Kremlin was pretty close to the mark.
As for the Fort camo, I just imagined what soldiers with limited paint would do to disguise something so massive.
If I was in charge, I would plank over the top of the turret, add a wood border, fill it with 6 inches of dirt, and plant a bunch of vegetables. No one would see the turret and my guys would appreciate the extra produce. Maybe Martha Stewart would showcase my work in Turret and Garden.
For the attack on Moscow, maybe have one of the Ratte main gun barrels pointed at a statue of Stalin. Or what’s left of a statue of Stalin.