Guérite blindée

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Guérite blindée made of cast steel in the Fort de Vaux

In the French army, Guérite blindée originally referred to a weakly armored observation or post on the wall of a fort. It was intended to provide the observation posts (or the guards) on the fort's walls with a certain amount of protection from enemy shrapnel, rifle or shrapnel bullets . They were first installed in the forts of the Séré de Rivières type of the Barrière de fer .

Later, however, in the French-speaking countries protected positions of any type were generally referred to as "Guérites blindées".

  • Model 1902

  • Model 1905 with internal access

  • Model 1905 with external access

There were a total of two models, of which the second model was manufactured in two variants.

  • Model 1 from 1902:

This was just a steel cylinder that was set up freely without cover on the wall. Access was via a steel door in the back, the interior consisted only of a foldable seat. Only three pieces of this version were made, all of which were installed in the Fort du Saint-Michel (Toul) .

  • Model 2 from 1907:
Variant 1 : This was presented on June 5, 1905 and installed from 1907. It was a concrete tube, not quite a man- high, with a wall thickness of 80 centimeters, on which a dome made of 2.5 cm thick sheet steel or 3.5 cm thick, cast steel was placed. The concrete part was embedded in the ground up to the edge, with an access shaft to the steel door remaining free on the rear. Inside was a height-adjustable seat. As a rule, this variant was built into the wall of the fort, but there were also separately standing copies (with a surrounding earth wall).
Variant 2 : This differed from the first variant in that access was not from the outside, but through a passage and shaft with a ladder from inside the fort. In this case, this may have saved the post a dangerous walk in the generic fire.

All models had three viewing slits through which a viewing range of 240 ° could be covered.

The Guérite blindée was seen as an alternative to the Observatoire cuirassé , which was considerably more expensive and could only be produced with much greater effort.

In 1914, more than 130 of these armored posts were built into the forts.

The price was 530 gold francs each.

When the Germans began to cannibalize the forts for scrap extraction through the Todt organization in 1943 , most of these posts were scorned because of the small amount that could be achieved and for this reason are still available on site.

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