SOMME BRITISH Sector - Lochnagar Mine Crater - Hawthorn Ridge Mine Crater
- by Pierre Grande Guerre
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- 10 Apr, 2019
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Years of visit: 2005, 2007, 2011
These mine chambers, at the end of a tunnel, were filled with 2.000 to 60.000 lbs. of explosives. In June 1916, before the Battle started, along the Western Front as a whole, the British detonated 101 mines, the Germans detonated 126 mines.
After the continous artillery bombardment, which started at dawn 24 June 1916, of 7 days and 7 nights on the German lines, with 1537 Artillery Guns and 3.000.000 shells, ...
... the British detonated 17 huge mines along the Somme front at 7.20 A.M.
There are almost none craters left, but we visited 2 craters, like this one:
I estimate the diameter of the Lochnagar Crater at about 75 m. and the depth about 25 m.
The diameter of the Lochnagar Crater is to wide to catch it in one view with my camera lens. The Lochnagar mine was loaded by the 185th Tunneling Company with 2 charges of resp. 24.000 Lbs and 36.000 Lbs of Ammonal.
Warning! The crater is subject to increasing erosion. It is strictly forbidden to clamber down into it.
Hawthorn Ridge Cemetery no. 1 on the top of Hawthorn Ridge ...
... offers a beautiful 360º panorama view over the battlefield, but also a view at the now wooded Hawthorn Crater.
The Tunnelers detonated the mine 10 min. too early. Stills of the famous scene of Geoffrey Malins of the explosion of the Hawthorn Mine, spreading debris and body parts.
View from Sunken Lane to the Hawthorn Ridge. This is the same spot from where Geoffrey Malins filmed the explosion of the Hawthorn Mine.
Nowadays it is hard to detect in the overgrown crater, but it has the shape of an "8".
I climbed down to give you an impression of the depth in the northern circle of the "8", and in the southern circle on a depth of about 10 m. My late wife, Chris, made these photos from the crater lip.
The second crater, finally forming the "8" shape, was created by a British explosion on 13 November 1916, because the first advance of 1 July at the Hawthorn Ridge was no success.
View from the lip of the crater into the direction of the Sunken Lane and Beaumont Hamel Cemetery.
On the next pages we will see what happened at 7.30 AM, when the infantry attacked Thiepval.
Continue to the next chapter: "Thiepval Memorial - Dorsets Memorial - Mouquet Farm"
Inleiding: Franz Von Papen & Werner Horn; schaker en pion
Onlangs stuitte ik in een oud boek (1) van 1919 op een opmerkelijk verhaal over een Duitse Luitenant, die in begin februari 1915 een half geslaagde bomaanslag pleegt op een spoorbrug over een grensrivier tussen de Verenigde Staten en Canada. Ook al staat de bekentenis van de dader, Werner Horn, deels in het boek te lezen, de naam van zijn opdrachtgever zal Horn blijven verzwijgen. Na wat verder zoeken vond ik ook de naam van Horn’s opdrachtgever, Franz von Papen, een van de aangeklaagden van het latere Neurenberg Proces in 1946.
In een Grote Oorlog als de Eerste Wereldoorlog is Horn’s aanslag op de brug uiteraard slechts een bescheiden wapenfeit. Toch vermoed ik dat dit relatief onbekende verhaal, dat de geschiedenis is ingegaan als de “ Vanceboro International Bridge Bombing ”, nog interessante kanten kent. Het is onder andere een spionageverhaal over hoe in een groter plan een sluwe schaker zijn naïeve pion offert.
Beknopte situatieschets Canada en de Verenigde Staten in 1915
This trip we start at the Léomont near Vitrimont and we will with some exceptions concentrate on the Battle of Lorraine of August-September 1914 in the area, called, the “Trouée de Charmes”, the Gap of Charmes.
After the Léomont battlefield we continue our explorations to Friscati hill and its Nécropole Nationale. Next we pay a visit to the battlefield of la Tombe to go on to the Château de Lunéville. There we cross the Vezouze to move on southward to the Bayon Nécropole Nationale. At Bayon we cross the Moselle to pass Charmes for the panorama over the battlefield from the Haut du Mont. North-west of Charmes we will visit the British Military Cemetery containing 1918 war victims. From Charmes we go northward to the battlefield of the First French Victory of the Great War, the Battle of Rozelieures of 25 August 1914. North of Rozelieures we will visit the village of Gerbéviller. From there we make a jump northward to visit the ruins of Fort de Manonviller to finish with an interesting French Dressing Station bunker, west of Domjevin.
During this visit, we try to focus on the day that the momentum of the battle switched from the French side to the advantage of the Bavarian side: the day of 20 August 1914, when the Bavarians rapidly re-conquered the territory around Morhange , being also the day of the start of their rather successful “Schlacht in Lothringen”.
We will visit beautiful landscapes of the "Parc Naturel Régional de Lorraine", memorials, ossuaries, and cemeteries. Sometimes we will divert to other periods of the Great War, honouring Russian and Romanian soldiers, who died in this sector. We start our route at the border village of Manhoué, and via Frémery, Oron, Chicourt, Morhange, Riche, Conthil, Lidrezing, Dieuze, Vergaville, Bidestroff, Cutting, Bisping we will finish in Nomeny and Mailly-sur-Seille, where the Germans halted their advance on 20 August 1914, and where they constructed from 1915 some interesting bunkers.
