The abandoned WW2 camp in the woods (2nd visit)

iPhone Photography

Jan 29

In 2019 I went for a hike in a small forest near Vienna. The area is known to be sparsely inhabited, so you will only encounter a few people there (if any). The nearest road is a few miles away, and there's no touristic infrastructure in that area.

The discovery of an abandoned building

After I hiked for around 45 minutes, I spotted something above the treetops that looked like the remains of a tower that could have belonged to an ancient castle. But as I went closer, I discovered that those remains belonged to an abandoned and decayed building.

The inside of the building was taken back by nature. Trees grow everywhere inside the former building. I love that. It's so impressive to see how nature takes back such facilities.

I wasn't prepared to explore an abandoned building. Neither did I have my AmazonBasics Travel Tripod with me, nor my trusted Olight S30R III flashlight I usually use to explore such places. Instead, I used my everyday carry flashlight (also from Olight).

As I didn't have my tripod with me, I used a neat feature of ProCamera App: The motion detection shutter release, which will only trigger the shutter release if you can hold your camera still.

I set ProCamera to manual mode with ISO speed set as low as possible to achieve at least a shutter speed of 1/20 and set ProCamera to save the photos in RAW format. In a dedicated blog post, you can learn about how to shoot RAW on iPhone.

The research

Once I returned home, I started my research to learn more about this building and the entire area. Long story short: The building I discovered was an administrative building of a World War II camp. The purpose of this camp was to store V2 rockets. From here, these deadly rockets were transported to the front lines and launched - mainly against London.

During my research, I also discovered a laser-scan map of the entire area that would reveal this camp's dimensions and that more remains should be found. So I visited and explored the area again in 2021.

The former WWII camp revisited

I inspected the abandoned administrative building again and found two artifacts that could be closely related to the history of this area.

The first artifact was a still intact cartridge. The second one was a hint about when this building was abandoned. It's a laundry detergent box. It mentions the 50th anniversary of the brand: That was in 1957! It would be interesting to learn how this camp was between the end of World War II and 1957.

Then, I headed towards an area where, according to the laserscan map, I should find more structures. After making my way through the thicket, I saw another building that looked like a water tower.

Unfortunately, it was boarded up. But I found a small gap and could take a peek (and photo) inside the utterly empty building.

Behind the water tower, I came across the remains of something that looked like one or two bunkers, separated by a trench.

I was pretty excited to discover these new structured during my second visit. If you've been following my blog for a while, you know I have a soft spot for lost places and abandoned structures. In the blog, you can read more about lost places I've discovered and photographed.