Pillbox

 

A Pillbox is a small building, of concrete-slabs or filled bags, widely used in World War II to provide a line of defence, called a stop-line, against enemy landings by sea and air, and any advance from these. Most are of the slab type but some were disguised as cottages.

 

The photographs are of the Pillbox which is in the field opposite Station Road, Coxhoe.

 

These buildings held small garrisons of soldiers armed with rifles and machine guns. Some pillboxes were large enough to accommodate anti-tank guns.  Mobile, and larger, forces could then be summoned as reinforcements.

 

        

Balloons when inflated measured 66 feet long, 30 feet high and needed 20,000 cubic feet of hydrogen per fill, the gas inlet valve was situated at the rear of the upper left stabilising fin. The three stabilising fins were inflated by air flowing in through scoops on the fins. A large valve on left side of the balloon released hydrogen automatically as it expanded in the rarefied air and a rip-line pulled out a panel at the top rear of the balloon if it became unmanageable on the ground. Manageability in the air was a different matter, at the end of September 1939 a storm tore loose many of the balloons and some 60 of them got as far as Sweden.