What World War 2 places have you visited?

I have been to several concentration camps and I sort of regret it. The sadness is palpable and it follows you.

siegelsuniforms.com

 

What was Pearl Harbor like? I really want to travel and see it someday.

 

I was stationed on Hawaii from 2003 to 2006, in the Air Force but assigned to a Marine Corps station, Camp Smith. Camp smith looked right down onto Pearl, one of the best views in Hawaii. Pearl Harbor has a great museum on it and you can go aboard the USS Missouri. I would recommend a trip if you can.

 

I went to Oahu this past June for almost 2 weeks. My sons (Both in the US Army) and I visited all of the WWII sites that we could find. We all learned things that we never even heard of before, so we all learned something there. I will return there early next year, so In want to find out even more before that visit.

 

I have been to Norway, Denmark, Germany, France, The Netherland, Belgium and Austria. Visiting battlefields.
One of the most impressive remnants fra world war II, is to me, the flaktower in Heiligengeistfeld, Hamburg...
/Martin

 

Modern day Wilhelmshaven

 

Mostly through my work but sometimes personally I have been extremely lucky to have visited several WW2 locations. More than a few abandoned and still used RAF and US air bases, most of the coast of Normandy, Alsace and Lorraine as well as much of France in general, most of the Ardennes, Remagen, Aachen, Dachau, Pottsdam, the Brandenberg Gate , Terezin, the route of XXX Corp through The Netherlands, Scapa Flow, almost all of Italy, Malta, much of Greece and Crete, and many other European locations but most were not WW 2 oriented . I am m not the close student most here are but have had a life time curiosity about the war and when traveling tried to see war locations.

Hard to separate a general area and something war specific. In Alsace-Lorraine one can find countless parts of the Maginot, many unmarked and seen by chance but in Sicily pillboxes and concrete gun emplacements are rather random . Once driving from Belfort to Colmar I spotted a pillbox in a farmer's field, had to stop and check it out. Colmar itself and Riquewhir, were very involved in the war but you would never know it now. Many European churches in the path of fighting, particularly in Northern France have architecturally modern steeples, shot up as observation points whereas those in Normandy were restored to former designs and hardly noticed. Mainz, for instance has noticeably missing buildings that appear to now be parks but were bombed out, often older medieval buildings have new steel structures inside with very modern interiors to save the facades .

I was looking at Martin's shots of the village in the Falaise Pocket where it is hard to tell any war ever took place, same holds true for Bastogne.
then there is Purdey's purveyors of shotguns to the queen that has a few nicks in the granite columns flanking the front door which they are justly proud and would never repaired.

 

UK: North Weald airfield; Portsmouth Naval Base; Dover; Duxford airfield; POW barrack block on my Uncle's Buckinghamshire farm; Scapa Flow; various WW2 'stop lines' or parts thereof;

Holland: Arnhem; Elst; Oosterbeek; Eindhoven;

Germany; Cologne; The Berghof (I dug up and have at home a piece of concrete rubble from the remains of Hitler's home);

Norway: Tromso and the fjord where the Tirpitz was sunk;

 

What places are you planning to visit, please?

 

http://www.tenayatravels.com/Latest%20Update%202012%20Tenaya%2010%20October%204.html


Million dollar point where they dumped a huge amount of materiel in the ocean after the war,
Saw a downed b17 wreck as well.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/0nxvowiav2ypyu4/P1000346.JPG
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https://www.dropbox.com/s/qlmx71ow9dzf1di/P1000336.JPG
https://www.dropbox.com/s/6r8xpr2zha88icc/P1000335.JPG
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Also Luganville on Espíritu Santo
Dropped Pin
near Luganville, Vanuatu
http://goo.gl/maps/Gii1W

There is a famous ship wreck here SS President Coolidge sunk during WWII that you can dive. I didn't unfortunately.

 

I spent the longest year of my life on Attu. The entire battlefield was left as it was. When you walk up massacre valley the ground is littered with everything from ration cans to casings to live shells, and other junk you wouldn't even think of - old generators and other unidentifiable machinery. I found a 1911 magazine on Engineer hill where the owner had cut the tip off each .45 slug to make them soft points. They found a body while I was there and ID'd it as Japanese because it was wearing rubber boots. Several barges had gone down just off the old CG LORAN station (gone now) and after a storm, live 105 shells would be found on the beach. We'd take them to a big hole and stack them up - every couple of years the army would send some EOD guys out to detonate them.

They closed that station about ten years ago, so I suppose the old runway that we maintained is no longer usable. It's so far out the Aleutian chain that not even fishing boats go out that way, so I guess it will just stay as it was forever.

 

KB, That sounds ethereal, a place lost in time. I imagine all of us here have heard of Attu but I suspect only a very few can relate to it. It is perhaps fitting that it stay that way forever. Some many battlefields are forgotten or made into less than respectful things .

Thank you for the nice post. I caused me to go to Google Earth to have a look, yes, it is way out there !

Gaines

 

It was creepy place. Massacre Bay/Massacre Valley was named that long before WWII. Some Cossacks had raided the village there for slaves to take east into the new settlements in Alaska in the late 1700's. They massacred the old and sick and useless on the beach. One guy had a big bore "bison" rifle and bets were placed on how many Aleuts it would go through, so they put a string of old men and women together chest to back and fired into the first one. If I remember correctly, the ball stopped in the body of the 9th person. That's the kind of place it is. It's dark and creepy and has a dark and creepy past.

The ptarmigan hunting was excellent...

 

They must be in eastern Ukraine now !! Creepy is right. The ptarmigan hunting sounds good....for a few days .

 

I haven't been to any big World War II battlefields, but I have visited places where incidents occurred; namely Sydney Harbour and the city of Tokyo. Out of the many times I have flown, I was aware of when I was flying over the Coral Sea, New Guinea, and the Philippine Sea that they were battlefields, and in the quiet of my seat, reflected on what had occurred below me in the past.

 

I have had the privilege of being to a few WWII sites, mostly American Cemeteries in Europe, but a few side trips during TDYs.

Madingley American Cemetery in Cambridge, UK- I was surprised at how big it was. Mostly AAF casualties, Battle of the Atlantic casualties, and Army training accidents. 1,300 graves and a wall of the lost that was about 200 yds long listing MIA and names of those buried at sea.

Landing Beaches in Normandy

American Cemetery at Omaha Beach

Bastogne, Belgium

Foy, Belgium

American Cemetery at Luxembourg- Cemetery consolidated from several temporary american cemeteries after the Battle of the Bulge, also includes Gen George Patton's grave

Imperial War Museum at Duxford, UK- Former USAAF field that is now a satellite museum for the venerable Imperial War Museum of London. Houses massive amounts of tanks, a small track for visitors to drive tanks, the American Air Museum (has a 150 yard long glass wall etched with EVERY U.S. WWII plane shot down while flying from bases in Britain... left me speechless, especially when you imagine how many crew each plane had), and a functional airfield that does air shows and also give visitors rides during the summer in vintage training and bomber aircraft.

 

I've seen a lot of the stuff in Berlin and Munich. Went to Dachau. The Anne Frank house. The Soviet Liberation Plaque in Prague.
The two most unique ones for me were seeing the building where Kurt Vonnegut watched the firebombing in Dresden. It turned out my friend lived two blocks from it. Saw a lot of the rest of Dresden, as well.
When I was in Moscow, my bandmate and I saw the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
All my travel in Europe has been with bands. I'm hoping next year to go over for a proper vacation. Half visiting friends and half WWII sites. I have a good friend in Berlin who knows quite a bit about the Third Reich that I'll probably go do it with.
I really want to see Treblinka, too. Gitta Sereny's book had a profound impact on me.

 

Closest I've been to a battle site was Fort Columbia across the river from Ft. Stevens. I have visited Trinity Site though as well as some bases and such that were in use during the war.