trenches, artillery positions and shell craters on google earth

Apologies if this subject has been posted previously but i had a look on google earth at the area of the stalingrad kessel and came across what looks to me like old trenches huge ammount of shell craters and artillery emplacements.

do the russians realy have so much land that they dont bother reclaiming this land and just leave it as it is ? it looks like it happened last year not 60 years ago ... or perhaps i am mistaken ?

 

Can you post it?

 

yeah i will get some examples of each 2 secs ......

 

Google Maps

Google Maps

 

This is very bizarre.

 

what do you reckon ? it looks like old trenches to me .... and artillery dug outs ... i stumbled upon big lines of craters obviously where a "front" was established but i cant find them again ! but i will keep looking ..... im tempted to get a metal detector fly to volgograd and get hunting at those locations ...

 

It is certainly shaped like old trench systems. Artist drawings of those in Stalingrad look kind of like that.

 

there are loads all around the kessel area some look faded others very distinct zig zag patterns and communications trench leading up to them etc. i suppose if the land is crap and they have loads of it then there os little point bulldozing it ....

 

to be honest guys they look a "little to modern" in the first pic you can see tire/track marks......i would not think theses would survive 65 years....they could just be from a moden day exercise / fireing range perhaps ???

then again there could be more to it ???

 

then the area around volgograd must be the biggest army training ground in the world !!! they were only a few examples .. look at a map of the kessel front line and match it to google earth and you see shell craters fox holes trenches artillery emplacements all over that area .and why would the soviets conduct training so close to a big city when they have the biggest wastelands in the world to choose from ?

 

also the second example corresponds with the "nose area" of the kessel which was held by 3rd motorised infantry division. if the land is useless .. why bother flattening old trenches etc ?

 

stug....i didnt say i knew for sure.....just looked like it too me, (my knowledge of this theatre of operations is limited)

but i still think that they look to be in "too" good of condition.....but that's just my two cents worth

 

Either way, authentic or not... cool find on Google Earth! Thanks for sharing stug. I'm still on the fence about it... but irregardless, it's fun to think so anyway

 

For Stalingrad in particular. My friend Paul-used to run a battlefield tours service that was at Stalingrad. You can walk out into the fields and still see rusted out vehicles, weapone, equipment and such and yes-those cratrs and trenches and such are still there-slowly being reclaimed by Mother nature.

 

In the second link, where the trenches look like a T enclosed in a big O, was the trench oriented towards the north? And what is the northern half of the circle? Some kind of barrier or obstacle?

 

yeah they look pristene .. maybe they are maintained for historical reasons ?

 

i had looked around a few places that have seen alot of bombardment etc like el alamein etc but seen nothing but i suppose desert storms would soon cover evidence of battle and in europe land is fertile so gets reclaimed really quickly so that left the steppe wastelands of russia and i was amazed ! but it is such a big battlefield that there are shell craters all over the place in uncultivated land ... and having looked at recce photos of ww1 trenches and shell craters it looked to good to be true .. i hope it isnt

 

yes it looks like it was facing north protecting the road to marinovka. the circular trench is maybe an earlier soviet one that 6th army occupied and incorperated in their own new front

 

If you "Google Earth" up Amiens and Verdun France you can clearly see many of the WW1 trench lines as they zig zag across the land. Some are simply still there because of the French attitude toward historical areas. Some are actively "maintained" as memorials. If you zoom out a little the landscape itself shows what appear to be shell craters overgrown now, but still vaguely visible.

 

can you post a link ?