Topic summary
Anti-aircraft artillery
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Anti-aircraft warfare.
Second World War
The Germans developed massive reinforced-concrete blockhouses, some more than six stories high, which were known as Hochbunker 'high bunkers' or "Flaktürme"flak towers, on which they placed anti-aircraft artillery. Those in cities attacked by the Allied land forces became fortresses. Several in Berlin were some of the last buildings to fall to the Soviets during the Battle of Berlin in 1945. The British built structures such as the Maunsell Forts in the North Sea, the Thames Estuary and other tidal areas upon which they based guns. After the war most were left to rot. Some were outside territorial waters, and had a second life in the 1960s as platforms for pirate radio stations, while another became the base of a micronation, the Principality of Sealand.