Casemate 76

Vladimir Kalinin has emailed to point out a veritable howler in Casemate 75, p27. He has 'found a very funny legend to the illustration St Peter and St Paul's Fortress, Kronstadt (1703). It is not even funny because it is horrific! This fortress is located in the centre of Saint Petersburg and thousands of foreign and local tourists visit it every day! It is not in Kronstadt; that fortress is located on Kotlin Island in the eastern corner of the Gulf of Finland and has a lot of marine forts on artificial islands around it'. Kronstadt; Sea Fort Alexander I, 1845 drawing. Not a lot like St Peter and St Paul's Fortress.

Kronstadt: Sea Fort Alexander 1, 1845 drawing. Not a lot like St. Peter and St. Paul's Fortress (From FORT 20).

'If you need to know a little more about real Kronstadt just read an excellent article by Colonel Skorikov, published by Quentin Hughes in an early FORT; this article also has a little error where a reinforced concrete MG bunker built in 1934 is captioned as a casemate of an old fort; but there is a lot of useful information about Kronstadt'.

'Concrete and iron casemates of a mortar battery built in 1897' (From FORT 20).

Your Editor is duly chastened and has no excuses. The FORT referred to is Vol 20, 1992, pp27-44. The 'little error' is more of an omission. The 'concrete' in the caption is applied to the iron and stone casemate in error, and should apply to the bunker, which is not mentioned. Ed

Svein Wiiger Olsen has emailed following John Kinross's report from Oscarsborg (Casemate 75 p9).

'In the report it is claimed 'that if Blücher had taken the narrow channel she would probably have escaped but it was in the dark and her navigator knew about the dangerous rocks'. 'This is not correct because the narrow channel (to the west of the fort) for decades had been barred by an underwater masonry wall. This masonry wall was put there with the purpose of forcing enemy warships to use the main channel in front of several gun batteries and the torpedo battery. In addition the main channel could be protected by a controlled minefield in time of war. The underwater wall cannot be seen above the water but was shown on nautical maps. In Norwegian the masonry wall is known as Jetéen but I don't know the English term' (jetty? 'a projection, a pier'. Ed).

'Enclosed is a map of the Drøbak narrows. You will see the underwater masonry wall running from the South Kaholmen Island via one of the skerries to south and ends up on the western shore of the fjord.
The masonry wall still bars the narrow channel. However, in recent years there have been proposals to remove it completely or open it to allow ships to use the narrow channel. Today it is highly regarded by divers due to the wealth of fish species and maritime vegetation'.

Coincidences: Graham Thompson, home from China emailed me on 1 February 2006 as follows;
Dear Charles
Today I am in Edinburgh on holiday for one week visiting family - it is Chinese New Year - and this morning I collected my most recent Casemate and FORT from my lawyer's office where they are still sent. Then my lawyer and I went for a swift half - as one does - I came out of the pub, crossed the road in front of the Caledonian Hotel and was hailed by - David Clarke - who is in the city for one day at a conference.
How many FSG members are there? 500? (600. Ed) What is the chance of the only one in China meeting, totally randomly, a leading member from Yorkshire in Edinburgh ? Scary !

David Evans, emailing 24 Feb, noticed an error in the review of English Battlefields by Michael Rayner (Casemate 73 p28), 'but of land battles there have been none since Worcester in 1651'; in fact Sedgemoor 1685 is often considered the last, or perhaps Clifton Moor 1745, though this is usually seen as a skirmish.
Gil Dowdall-Brown, the reviewer, responds: 'In my review of English Battlefields I referred to Worcester, 1651 as the last battle fought on English soil. This is of course incorrect as Sedgemoor, 1685, Preston, 1715 and Clifton Moor, 1745 followed it. All these battles have entries in the book, as does Worcester which was '.. the conclusive battle of the English Civil Wars.' I apologise for this error, and am grateful to David Evans for bringing it to my attention.

Following my review of Heligoland (Casemate 75, p34) in which I commented that the British had 'fortified it not at all' (I meant in comparison to the powerful German efforts later on. Misleading. Ed), Charles Trollope has taken me to task, pointing out that the island was given a proper defence, mounting in 1808, a year after the take-over: 6x24-pdr, 2x18-pdr, 3x13-in mortars, 5x10-in mortars and 2x51/2-in mortars. To this were added two blockhouses and 14x12-pdr carronades. Taken into service were 5 Danish guns.

Sea service mortar, 13-in, iron, on a bomb ketch. (Brian Delf, from Osprey New Vanguard 65, British Napoleonic Artillery 1793-1815 (2) Siege and Coastal Artillery).

(According to Heligoland, the 68-pdrs and the big mortars came off the British bomb ketch Explosion, which ran aground during its invasion approach; 'The inventory of the captured Danish armaments provided grim reading. Of the dozens of abandoned cannon, virtually all were too rusty or poorly maintained to be functional'; 'By (1808) the defensive firepower...was heavily augmented with...twelve large mortars and thirty-six cannon').

Charles has a detailed report of the destruction of the Heligoland defences in 1947; there is no mention of a simulated atomic blast. He has also kindly sent a copy of an article from the Royal Engineers Journal, June 1921, which makes a strong case against the holding of an island so far from Britain and so close to the German mainland.
He also notes there is no need to go to an Australian publication to see the tables of guns v armour (Notes on the Armour and the Artillery Defence of a Coastal Fortress; Casemate 75, p33). They can be found in Orde Browne's Armour and its Attack by Artillery, printed at the RAI in 1887.

Richard Clisby writes regarding the Fotofonica (recent correspondence), apologises to Aleksander Jankovic Potocnik, author of the article in Casemate 71, and asks if any member knows of books on the subject, preferably in English (email address p3).