Machine gun bunker, armed with three machine guns. Built by Engineering battalion in 1937. The three machine gun casemates were protected by four armoured plates. The bunker was prepared for combat in summer 1939: gunports for machine guns were cut in the front armour of the casemates, machine guns were installed, ventilation system and running water system were installed. By the beginning of the war the bunker was fully in combat readiness.
On February 3, 1940, the bunker was under fire from a mortar for several hours. The frontal armour of the casemates was under fire of high-explosive grenades of caliber around 100-152 mm from distance of 500 meters. The frontal armour of the right machine gun chamber cracked in several places but stayed on its place. The second armoured plate cracked and armour between gunports and observation slits fell out, cracks appeared on the second, third and fourth armoured plates.
Casemates remained suitable for combat. Repair works: one cubic meter of reinforced concrete added to the armoured plates on the roofs of the casemates; the right casemate remained in weak condition, while the left remained in satisfactory condition.
 |
Drawing by a Soviet correspondent M. Hrapovski made on March 2, 1940 The two right casemates of Ink6. PIcture source: Receive us, beatiful Suomi, Volume 2, page 147.
The frontal armor plate of Ink6 bunker after bombardment by Red Army artillery. Picture taken by the Finns in 1944. Picture source: Talvisodan Historia, Volume 2.
 |
The left (eastern) casemate, which is even now in good condition. Armoured plates were dismantled for scrape metal after the war. The artifact in the center of the casemate is a standard wooden carriage for Maxim machine gun that was used in most of the bunkers of Mannerheim Line.
 |
Remains of the two right (western) casemates. Explosion inside the casemates turned the massive concrete structure inside out.
Another view of the two western casemates. Walls of the casemates flew off quite far from the original place - the bolt in the foreground of the picture was the point of fitting the frontal armor plate.
Spare entrance to the long corridor of the bunker looks quite dangerous here.
Inside the corridor is full of dry sand that had infiltrated the bunker through the cracks in the walls - result of the explosion. Again, beware of the well!
The staircase into the bunker from the eastern casemate is almost completely intact.
The explosion in the wesern casemates moved the massive concrete wall and the doorway into the corridor of the bunker "closed" as if it were an elevator.
© Bair Irincheev 2001 - 2004