Town Wesel in Germany. App. 19 of February 1945.
97% of Wesel was destroyed.
Bombers I imagine?
Plus artillery, tanks and the kitchen sink. That photo is from after it was captured, and so there is a great deal of destruction there beyond just bombers.
Oh, and the town also had bridges over the Rhine and Lippe…
wonder how many tons of explosives went down there … you can`t bearly see and inch without crater … i stoped counting them by 20
Looks like the Moon surface.
I doubt the such great craters could be resault of artillery/tank fire.
This rather remind the Carpet bombing action.
Not necessarily - some of them certainly will be, but the majority look rather like shell holes to me.
Moon surface… exactly what I thought myself when I saw it.
Now we know what from the Apollo program has bagan ;)
From the “preparation” of moon surface on the Earth.
Just compare the avarage size of craters with a dimention of rest buildings.
The ONLY few artillery howitz are ( for instance 600-mm Karl or 800-mm Dora) capable to made such great holes. But allies as far as i know had no such a geat artillery caliber. Instead they had a lot of excellent bombers;)
There may be an issue of photographic perspective.
The craters get smaller the further away they are from the camera.
I’d like to know what it was in the foreground that attracted so much attention, unless it was open land to begin with.
Bags you the OP on the tree at left.
There used to live people
Egorka
When I arrived in Holland in 1946, I started reading about the WWII in Europe. I stopped reading about that war in Europe in 1995, only then I began with my research about the war in the Far East.
It was in 1947 that I read about the German building workers who did lots over work without being paid, just to rebuild their bombed moon-landscape-towns. Admirable.
I doubt if any Dutchman would do that for his country.
Yes, in fact if one take a look at the town Weseltoday in GoogleEarth he will be surprised how full of life the town is!
Well done Germans!
The craters in the Wesel photograph are mostly from aircraft bombs. Mostly of the larger variety. The date of the photo and Wesels location suggest it may have been attacked as part of the early 1944 transportation/or deep interdiction attacks performed by the US 9th Airforce. But the dgree of damage clearly indicates other attention as well.
The clear area in the foreground may have been a railroad yard. Although I usually find bits of track and other clues still visable in the photo.