Lochnagar crater
The Lochnagar Crater (English Lochnagar Crater or Lochnagar Mine , French La Grande Mine or Mine de Boisselle ) is located south of the village of La Boisselle , in the municipality of Ovillers-la-Boisselle , in the French department of Somme . British engineering units had worked underground for months to place a series of 19 mines under the German lines and detonated them almost simultaneously on July 1, 1916 at 7:28 a.m., the first day of the Battle of the Somme . The largest of these charges were the Hawthorn Ridge mine near Beaumont-Hamel and the Y Sap and Lochnagar mines near La Boisselle. Some reports claimed that the detonation of the 19 mines at the beginning of the Battle of the Somme was the loudest human-made sound and could still be heard even in London; Earth and debris were thrown up to 1200 meters into the air.
history
The Lochnagar crater was named by the British based on their "Lochnagar Trenches" behind it, which got their name from the Scottish mountain Lochnagar . From there, the tunnel was dug at a depth of about 16 meters under the German position "Schwabenhöhe", which was held by the Reserve Infantry Regiment 110 of the 28th Reserve Division (Baden) . The 185th Tunneling Company began tunneling on November 11, 1915. In March 1916, the 179th Tunneling Company took over and completed the tunnel. 26.8 tons of ammonal explosives were brought into two chambers connected by Y-shaped corridors. The blasting of the Lochnagar mine is considered to be the largest explosion of human warfare to date.
Two minutes after the demolition, at 7:30 a.m., the British infantry attack began, but it did not proceed with the necessary speed. The Lochnagar crater could be occupied by soldiers of the Grimsby Chums Pals Battalion (10th Battalion, The Lincolnshire Regiment), but the German resistance increased rapidly and many attackers fled into the crater, which then became an easily recognizable target for the German artillery bot. In addition, the crater was also temporarily taken under fire by British artillery. The fighting over the crater claimed hundreds of victims. Overall, July 1, 1916 went down as the day with the most losses in British military history.
The Lochnagar crater still exists today and is the largest crater from the First World War with a diameter of 91 meters and a depth of 21 meters. Attempts to fill it up could be prevented. In 1978 the Englishman Richard Dunning bought the crater to preserve it for posterity. A memorial and a wooden cross commemorate the events of the war. Every year on July 1st at 7:28 am there is a memorial service at Lochnagar Crater.
See also
- List of the largest man-made, non-nuclear explosions
- Mine Warfare
- Mines in the Battle of Messines
- Crater battle
swell
literature
- Markus Klauer: Military history guide to the battlefields of the First World War in Flanders and Northern France. Verlag M. Klauer, Remscheid 2004, ISBN 3-9807648-2-6 .
- Somme north. (= Battles of the world war, edited in individual representations and published on behalf of the Reichsarchiv , volumes 20 and 21.) Gerhard Stalling Verlag, Oldenburg iO / Berlin 1927, p. 54 f. and card insert.
Websites
- J. Legg: Lochnagar Mine Crater Memorial, La Boisselle, Somme Battlefields . In: www.greatwar.co.uk . Retrieved January 28, 2015.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Legg 2015
Coordinates: 50 ° 0 ′ 56 ″ N , 2 ° 41 ′ 50 ″ E