Mushroom pickers and lovers of hiking in green spaces located near large settlements in the European part of Russia must have come across strange structures, as if left here by an alien civilization. What are these truncated pyramids in Russian forests, who built them, and what they are for, let's figure it out.
Dragon's Teeth
Overgrown with moss, low pyramids, standing in a row, can be mistaken for details of secret industrial or military structures that were forgotten by careless owners and left to their fate. In fact, it is, indeed, a military fortification, which is sometimes poetically called "the teeth of the dragon."
These are nadolby, which come in different shapes. They were used to stop a tank attack during the Second World War. Slowing down enemy tank forces became an easy target for anti-tank units.
"Dragon's teeth" were installed in several rows on one common concrete base. Then they were connected together with the neighboring groups of gaps with the help of anti-tank ditches.
Those pyramids that attract the attention of tourists walking in the forest reach a height of 90-120 cm. now the forest is swallowing them up, dragging them in with weaving grasses, turning them into something fantastic.
The shape of the nadolbov
Nadolby in the form of pyramids began to be built by the end of the war. Before that, other designs were popular:
- vertical metal barriers with stops against overturning;
- logs dug into the ground at an acute angle;
- boulders, of which there were many in the forests of Finland and northern Russia.
Metal structures for stopping tanks and armored vehicles were rare. The most popular material for anti-tank blades was considered to be wood. Logs were harvested quickly, in a short period of time they were installed - and now the necessary fortification structure is ready.
Wooden nadolbs were short-lived, to our time they have almost never been preserved.
Nadolby in the form of huge heavy granite stones were also erected quite often. Boulders were sometimes not at hand, so they were transported by car to the place where, according to the plan of specialists, anti-tank barriers were to be located. The soldiers buried them in the ground by hand with the sharp end up.
Inventor of anti-tank blades
Nadolba have been known to people for a long time. Until the beginning of the 20th century, they were used mainly for peaceful purposes. Nadolbs were used as supports for railings along the roads, they marked the gates or limited the railway track. In large cities, nadolbs served as protection for the corners of buildings, which could accidentally touch and damage the carriages.
For a long time, it was believed that Karl Mannerheim, the commander-in-chief of the Finnish army during the Winter War (1939-1940), came up with the idea of making gaps to contain enemy troops. However, some historical research suggests that structures in the form of "dragon teeth" were already invented before Mannerheim, and he simply borrowed them when he saw them during a trip to China at the beginning of the 20th century.
Mannerheim's path to the east ran near the Caspian Sea, where he saw rows of vertically dug stones in an open field. He sketched a figure made of stones and forgot about the sketch for more than 30 years.
When it was necessary to build structures that could detain Soviet troops during an attack on Finland, Karl Mannerheim discovered his old drawing and decided to build something similar in the northern forests.
Who was the inventor of the stone defensive line near the Caspian? It turned out that such a barrier from the warlike steppe dwellers during the work on the construction of the Novo-Alexandrovsky fort was built by the engineer Korelin. Now there is nothing left of this fortress, only stones in the form of stones and a commemorative plaque, which indicates that this place was once visited by Karl Mannerheim himself.
