Air-Raid Shelter Type "Salzgitter"
This Salzgitter-type air raid shelter is one of two remaining air raid shelters from the Second World War in Saxony-Anhalt, which were built in 1944 and served as a protective and command bunker for a mineral oil plant. A total of 16 air raid shelters of this type were planned on the site of the mineral oil plant, of which only 8 were built due to a shortage of materials.
The Salzgitter design was created in 1944 as a standard bunker for the oil-processing industry (primarily refineries and hydrogenation plants). This variant was also known as the "Geilenberg bunker" after Edmund Geilenberg, the general commissioner responsible for special
tasks and securing the fuel industry. As these bunkers were built late in the war, they were designed so that they could be erected and deployed quickly. The basic structure of the Salzgitter bunker is an elongated high bunker consisting of a barrel vault with entrance structures. Steel slats were installed at defined intervals on a solid foundation slab 2-3.75 m thick and fitted with boards as loss formwork. Braunschweig reinforcement with a 14 mm structural steel diameter was used as reinforcement. A 2.50 m thick concrete ceiling was poured over the resulting cavity. The structure could be entered through a gas lock via cubic, likewise reinforced entrance structures at the ends of the tube (in longer Salzgitter bunkers also in the middle).
This bunker was used in various ways after the war, most recently by the GST (Gesellschaft für Sport und Technik), a paramilitary mass organization of the GDR, formed in 1952 for pre-military training for the "protection of the homeland".
Visited: August 8, 2020
Location: Undisclosed, Germany
Status: Abandoned
