This is a set of placemarks for those of you interested in the WWII military landscape of Great Britain.

The Defence of Britain project was run by the The Council for British Archaeology and The Archaeology Data Service and I have been given permission by them to convert The Defence of Britain database into a GE placemark set and this is the result.

The set contains 15,456 placemarks marking the locations of all the known Pillboxes, Gun Emplacements, Artillery Batteries, Anti-Tank Obstacles and so on, that were built during the early years of the war against the threat of German invasion. You can see most of the larger artefacts such as pillboxes in GE.

The positions of the placemarks have been directly converted from the UK National Grid References provided by the volunteers that undertook the project and visited many of the artefacts. Therefore they can be inaccurate, in some cases by several hundred meters. I have checked and corrected all of the placemarks where artefacts can easily be seen but some still need correcting. If anybody would like to correct the placemarks for artefacts in their local area please PM me or mail defenceofbritain@hotmail.co.uk I would also encourage anybody that has information about artefacts missed by the survey or corrected positions and descriptions to forward this information to their local council for inclusion in the Historical Environment Record (HER) which is now the repository for all the information originally collected by the Defence of Britain project and from which any future analysis will be done.

Where artefacts cannot be immediately identified I have moved the placemarks to the most likely location based on the information contained in the descriptions, even if it duplicates placemarks, as many artefacts are misidentified. Where no such information exists the placemarks are at the location converted from the OS Grid Reference. A further note of caution regarding artefacts that have a Cassini Grid Reference mentioned: The Cassini Grid used during the war has no relationship with the current OS Grid system therefore these locations are inherently innacurate. This applies mainly to the uncategorised Pillbox section.

By default the placemarks are all turned off and I have split the various artifacts into folders so subsets can be turned on and off to avoid slowing down your PC's

Enjoy

Steve

"Explore, Search and Discover" is the tagline on the Google Earth homepage.

In the few minutes I have spent viewing this file, I have explored the network of defence systems, searched the large variety of different installations (many of which I had not heard of) and I have discovered much about Britain's historial wartime efforts.

Thank you for giving me a greater geographical understanding of where I came from.

Great file!

Thanks,
Phil

Excellent poat, I will check those local to me (Bristol) and post any findings!

Fantastic project - and as you say - a mammoth task ! Just had a look at my area (Salisbury Plain) and can certainly add a fair few WW11 installations that your survey has missed (several pillboxes and a few interesting airfields) . Will check your placemark accuracy on others and PM my findings to you . In the meantime I'll try and find the time to look at these huge files in more detail.
Mic.

Wonderfull post , I could spend days pouring over all the placemarks! i'm of to look at my local area

Glad you like it chaps.

A lot of these artefacts have been located on hearsay evidence from interviews with locals and historical documentation, this makes for some interesting descriptions. Check out Pillbox S0001441 on the west bank of the estuary at Hayle in Cornwall. It's quite amazing!

All help with position checking will be gratefully accepted.

First major update.

I have now completed the QC of the placemarks and correctly positioned them where the artefact can be clearly seen or its location can be plotted from the accompanying description. I have left locations alone where the descriptions are inadequate or ambiguous. I have also added dates to the descriptions to give some context.

Next update should included the source of the descriptions eg Field visit or cited in a book to add further context.

Cheers

Steve

Hooton Park airfield (site of) is 1.2 miles east of the placemanrk shown.

Now Vauxhall Motor works

This is the site of a spigot mortar emplacement outside the village of Twyford, Leicestershire. These - and many other types of defensive position - were built all over the country following the evacuation at Dunkirk in May 1940, to resist an expected invasion of Britain.

Since most of the Army's heavy weapons had been abandoned in the retreat to Dunkirk, a hastily-designed spigot mortar, the Blacker Bombard, was issued to units of the Home Guard (comprised of men and boys too old or too young to fight in the regular army, and men in reserved occupations, such as miners and farm-workers) for use in such a contingency. They would have been used in emplacements such as this.

This emplacement was discovered and notified by Roberts1279 - welcome to GE

Cheers

Frank

How do you add these military defensive pointers on Google Earth so that everyone else can enjoy seeing them?

There are a number of AA gun batterys, armour bunkers and trenches near where I live in Bristol. Here is the location:

51 28 08 14 N - 2 33 39 94 W
Directly North East of Pur Down BT Tower, Bristol.

They were originally used to protect Bristol from German bombers during WW2. Also Filton airport and Rolls Royce located NNW 2.14 miles from the bunkers, this would have been a primary targets for German bombers.

Replied by PM - N.