All language subtitles for Abandoned.Engineering.S02E07.Germanys.Lost.Warship.1080p.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-squalor_track3_[eng]

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Original subtitles

Rob: A technological masterpiece lost to a Norwegian fjord.

When you get up close,

you realise there's a lot more than meets the eye.

Tom ward (narrates): An ambitious arctic structure

that became an environmental hazard.

Man: Nothing had ever been built like it.

It was one of the greatest feats of arctic engineering

that's ever been.

A mysterious concrete giant on an icy mountain peak.

Buzludzha is this amazing structure

that is a little bit mysterious.

It reminds me of something out of a 1970s Sci-Fi film.

And a fantastical castle in the middle of the Hudson river.

He left an incredible building

which was an icon all over the world.

Once they were some of the most advanced structures

and facilities on the planet

at the cutting edge of design and construction.

Today, they stand abandoned, contaminated, and sometimes deadly.

But who build them and how?

And why were they abandoned?

(Theme music)

Deep beneath the Norwegian fjord near the port of narvik

lies a forgotten engineering masterpiece.

From among the scattered debris littering the sea floor

rises a corroded bulk of metal 37 feet wide.

When you first see this mass of twisted rusting steel

in the otherwise beautiful setting of Norwegian fjords,

you think, "hang on, someone's just been

dumping junk down here."

For 390 feet,

it climbs towards the rocky shoreline of rombaksfjord

where it protrudes out of the water.

Yet something appears to have crushed

and warped this metal structure.

When you get up close

and actually you see just how twisted

and mangled this mass of rusty steel is,

you realise it's not just the roof of someone's shed

that they've lobbed down there to disintegrate into the seas.

Actually, there's a lot more than meets the eye.

What is this mysterious metal wreck?

Why is it here in the pristine nordic wilderness?

And why was it abandoned?

On 1 march, 1940,

Adolf Hitler ordered the invasion of neutral Norway,

looking to exploit the country's long coastline

and intent on obtaining essential raw materials

for its growing war machine.

One of these was high-grade iron ore flowing from the port of narvik.

But these waters were patrolled by britain's royal Navy,

still the most powerful Navy in the world.

To compete, the German Navy needed a modern fleet of the fastest

and most manoeuvrable ships, destroyers.

James: Destroyers are not mini battleships.

They are, to some degree,

expendable weapons with relatively small crews.

And they're capable of a multitude of operations.

They're an essential part of the Navy.

Destroyers were originally developed in the late 19th century

in response to the emergence of torpedo boats.

Through the interwar years, they were light vessels

with little endurance

but packed with armour and capable of high speeds.

They could escort merchant convoys

but were increasingly built as weapons

to counter submarines and aircraft.

In the 1930s Germany, in breach of the versailles treaty

began building destroyers again.

They create a warship that represents

the absolutely apogee of German technology.

And these destroyers are gonna be the best warships on the sea.

Hitler's new fleet were the type 1934 destroyers.

And this is the 'Georg tiller'.

At the cutting edge of warship technology,

it cost around 67 million pounds in today's money to build

and she entered service in 1937.

The 'Georg tiller' was one of the first of Hitler's

new breed of warship that he believed was gonna win him

the war on the waves.

It was bigger, it was faster and much more heavily armed

than anything it was gonna come up against.

On 6 April, 1940,

Georg tiller and nine other high-speed

heavily armed destroyers headed for narvik.

On board were three thousand elite mountain troops

spearheading the German invasion of Norway.

Viggo kristensen is an author of the epic naval battles

that took place at narvik.

They had very sophisticated machinery,

high-pressure boilers

delivering high-pressure steam to the turbines.

And that gave the German destroyers very high speed,

more than 40 knots.

Comparing to the English destroyers,

the highest speed was about 32 knots.

Despite her speed and sophistication,

her modern design was overcomplicated.

And compared with royal Navy destroyers,

mechanical breakdowns were common.

The Germans build warships that, on paper, are excellent,

but, on through high seas,

they just can't perform properly.

One of the ships' key design flaws was that

she was top heavy, making her unstable in rough seas.

To avoid the threat of capsizing,

her fuel tanks had to remain just 30% full at all times.

And that wasn't her only weakness.

They were so heavy at the front

they'd really dip into the water in heavy weather

and take on hundreds of gallons of water.

The engines were unreliable and the guns were too big.

Their powerful arsenal consisted of 5 inch guns,

437mm anti-aircraft guns,

and eight 21 inch torpedo tubes.

For all its defects,

this was still a fierce fighting machine.

On April 10, 1940,

the ten destroyers powered towards narvik.

They actually, very successfully,

landed in a surprise attack on narvik,

landed their invasion force

which fairly quickly seized the railhead

and the town of narvik,

drove out the defending Norwegians.

Yet victory was short-lived.

A royal Navy attack force thundered in to retake narvik.

Lynette: They were coming with these highly tuned

German sports cars of destroyers

and they were coming up against

these clunky royal Navy Land Rover destroyers.

And the Germans, they fight very well.

The 'Georg tiller' unleashed hell,

taking out one of the royal Navy destroyers.

But outnumbered

and in the narrow confines of the fjord,

she was unable to take advantage of her superior speed and firepower.

Suffering seven major hits in the process,

14 of her 325-man crew were killed.

You're operating an impossible situation.

You're in an enclosed area,

you can't effectively use your torpedo,

and the British have brought in cruisers

and much heavier ships.

British firepower sent six German destroyers

to the bottom of the fjord.

Trapped, low on ammunition and fuel,

the surviving German destroyers fled.

But the 'Georg tiller' stood defiant,

firing her last torpedo

as British destroyer hms 'eskimo' closed in.

'Georg tiller's' last torpedo rolled the boat off the eskimo.

The royal Navy set its sights on the 'Georg tiller'.

Badly damaged, there was no escape.

Well, the only option they had was to ram their ship

as fast as they could onto the shore.

That would allow their crew some chance of escape onto land

and would effectively scuttle the ship.

She headed for shore at a speed of 45 knots,

beaching herself on rombaksfjord.

What a sight that must have been.

It's pretty much a third of the ship

that made its way up onto land

to allow its crew some chance of escape.

But just a phenomenal sacrifice

that those captains made of the technology

and potentially of their crew as well.

With her fate sealed, the ship's crew fled

and escaped into the surrounding hills.

The battles of narvik however had cost the German Navy dearly,

half their total destroyer force was lost.

Breaking in two, the stern of this German war machine

sank deep into the rombaksfjord while the bow rolled onto its side.

It was left mangled and abandoned.

Today, the twisted steel plates of 'Georg tiller'

still lie in this Norwegian backwater

never able to fully unleash here superior speed,

manoeuvrability, and firepower,

she was ultimately defeated by the surroundings

in which she fought.

Well, in another 20-30 years or so,

it's likely what's left will disintegrate

and slip further down

and finally come to rest on the seabed,

joining its sister ships down there.

And maybe that is a more fitting end

to the last remaining survivor of Hitler's long-vanished fleet.

Around 3,500 miles west,

high in the chugach mountains of Alaska

is one of the world's first fleets of arctic engineering.

Wedged in a glacier lined gap,

178 feet above the fast-flowing copper river,

this rusting steel bridge is almost 500m in length.

Man: Nothing had ever been built like it.

It was one of the greatest feats of arctic engineering

that's ever been,

and it's been copied many times since.

It really required some innovative thinking

and the challenges were pretty demonstrable.

Supporting the steel bridge are three huge concrete legs,

each 64 feet long and 21 feet thick at the base.

To get all of that material

in a very pristine Alaskan wilderness,

it is truly mind-blowing.

Yet a closer look reveals some unusual elements

to this mammoth structure

that hint at the unique challenges this construction faced.

We have these concrete blocks coming out of the water.

Why?

What are these concrete wedges?

And why was this seemingly intact structure abandoned?

In 1900, Alaska was rich in undiscovered natural resources.

Deep in the territories wrangell mountains,

prospectors discovered high-grade copper ore

and set up the kennecott mine to extract the valuable mineral.

But that was only half the battle.

How would they transport this priceless ore to civilisation?

The mines' owners jp Morgan and Daniel guggenheim

sank $25 million into the copper river railway.

At 196 miles long,

the route faced a multitude of obstacles thrown up

by the Alaskan climate and landscape.

Dougal: Whenever you have engineering projects

in high latitudes, the arctic regions,

antarctic regions, it's a problem.

It might be easier to work there in winter

when the ground's more solid.

You've got that dynamic problem of a melt season.

As you've got lots of snow, when you get the summer,

a short summer, you get lots and lots of water,

so you get big rivers.

So, all of these things make engineering projects

in such environments very, very difficult.

Standing in its way were steep canyons,

Gale-force winds, rivers, and glaciers.

In particular, two formidable walls of ice,

the Childs and miles river glaciers.

Barely 3 miles apart,

they blocked both banks of the copper river.

The only solution was to build this, the miles glacier bridge,

better known as the million dollar bridge.

Andrew: The million dollar bridge is aptly named

because that's what it cost to construct.

It was a completely unique engineering challenge.

Luke borer is a local businessman

and has intimate knowledge of the challenges they faced.

It was new technology for everything.

Nobody had a glacier on both sides of the bridge

that's dumping 1,000 tonne icebergs

and 100 mile an hour winds

and 60 below zero temperatures across a river

that has a current of 10 knots.

Plus the fact access to here was near impossible.

This impossible bridge had to be light enough

to stretch across the river

but strong enough to take the river's current

and the strain of two fully loaded trains

meeting in the middle of the span.

To achieve this economically,

engineers built four steel truss spans

mounted on three concrete piers.

Roma: So, this bridge is a Pennsylvania truss bridge.

Now, engineers love trusses

because they're full of triangles and triangles are a strong shape.

It also means you've got thinner pieces of steel

and you're cleverly channelling loads

and forces through it into the foundations

to create and efficient structure and a light structure.

Construction of the miles glacier bridge

began in April 1909.

The workers were in a race against time.

The melt season released 1,000 tonne icebergs

that could potentially sweep away all their hard work.

They finished in a breakneck 13 months

and improvised the structure

to deal with these potentially devastating battering rams.

Roma: You try and deflect them.

You try and stop those massive pieces of ice

from actually hitting the bridge itself.

There's two ice-breakers,

one in front of pier one and one in front of pier three.

They're both approximately 53 feet long,

31 feet wide buried about 20 feet into the bed of the river

and sticking out of the water all of about 18 feet.

The iceberg had come down and hit that

and are either split or deflected by the ice-breakers

so that the ice doesn't hit the piers themselves.

With the bridge complete and now protected,

the first 1200 tonne load of high-grade copper ore

travelled across the miles glacier bridge in 1911.

For the next 27 years, the bridge withstood the elements

to bring its investors a massive return.

So, even though the bridge is called the million dollar bridge,

for its day, which was a lot of money,

the amount of money that came out of the mine,

almost over $200 million,

more than paid for the extravagant sum

that was spent at the time.

The bridge proved a vital and hugely profitable lifeline.

But in November 1938, having exhausted its resources,

the kennecott copper mine shut down

and plans were made to transform

the railway bed into a high wave of vehicles.

Then at 5:36am

on march 27, 1964, disaster struck.

The earthquake that struck Alaska

in 1964 recorded as the second largest earthquake

every recorded in human history.

Whole communities were destroyed

and 139 people killed in an earthquake

with a magnitude of 9.2.

Lucas: The '64 earthquake knocked down stand four.

It fell down into the water basically intact.

But the reason it fell is the pier supporting it

had sliced itself in half

because there was no structural reinforcement

in the concrete.

Armour rails were embedded in the surface of the concrete,

running vertically to just above the high water Mark.

This was to protect it from icebergs.

Above these armour rails, the concrete was sheared off

by the force of the earthquake.

It left engineers grappling with a problem

for the next 40 years.

If the rest of the bridge collapsed,

it could create an environmental disaster,

not only blocking the copper river below

but poisoning its waters with its lead coating.

The engineers were torn

between repairing or demolishing the bridge.

But in the end, its fate was determined

by financial considerations.

It was less expensive to repair it than it was to take it out.

In excess of $100 million was estimated

to take the bridge out,

and they spent 17 million on phase one to fix the bridge.

In 2004, work began to rebuild the damaged pier

and raise the fallen span back into place.

Despite the repairs, the bridge was redundant

as the highway it served could no longer reach it.

The miles glacier bridge was abandoned.

Today, the bridge serves no purpose but remains a tourist attraction

as well as being an environmental ticking time-bomb.

Andrew: It requires upkeep. It's too expensive to get rid of.

So, what are you gonna do with it?

Today, the million dollar bridge is literally a bridge to nowhere.

Over 5,000 miles away, across the Atlantic,

high up in the central Balkan mountains of Bulgaria

is a structure that appears out of this world.

Through the cold swirling mist,

a strange curved concrete surface emerges,

punctuated by oblong openings.

An amazing structure

that is a little bit mysterious I think I'd say.

It reminds me of something out of a 1970s Sci-Fi film.

Eerie light and haze Pierce the decaying copper roof

that covers this abandoned 22,500-tonne structure.

It looks like ufo or a flying saucer

with a concrete spire going above it.

The 230 foot high tower tapering to only 30 feet

at its base rises from the concrete disc.

But its purpose is almost impossible to decipher.

If you told me it was the control centre

for nuclear missiles, I'd believe you.

If you told me it as some paganist cult worship centre,

I'd believe you.

It's confusing.

What is this extraordinary complex?

Why is it here 4,600 feet up in the central Balkan mountains?

The answer lies behind the iron curtain

of the 1970s.

At this time, Bulgaria was the Soviet union's

most loyal eastern ally

thanks to the country's communist dictator todor zhivkov.

As head of state,

he looked to a common cause in Bulgaria's history

and a unifying project on a grand scale

that would ignite nationalist spirit

and unite his people under the communist banner.

He chose a site of huge national pride and significance.

The location's important to Bulgarians

because it's built on the site of a 19th century battle

between Bulgarian rebels, which became the communist party,

and the forces of the ottoman empire.

After battling against five centuries

of ottoman occupation

and founding the Bulgarian communist party here,

this was also the site where partisans lost their lives

fighting fascist forces during world war ii.

All combined to make this a national symbol

of heroism and self-sacrifice

and the perfect location for this, the buzludzha monument.

The first impressions when you see the monument

are sort of bewilderment.

When you see monuments, there's classical shapes.

This is not classical anyway.

And so it's strikingly strange.

For me, buzludzha pretty much exemplifies

the methods communism used to keep people

under the thumb and to exert the power

over the people through their brutalistic

and oppressive architecture.

The project began on 23 January, 1974.

However, creating such a massive structure

on top of this inhospitable mountain range

was no easy task.

Dan: Constructing anything of large size

in a remote area is challenging.

And I think it was sort of

classical socialist will that decided,

you know, "we're gonna build "this building right here.

"And no matter what it takes,

"we're gonna cart "all this material up this mountain.

"We're gonna dynamite "the top off the mountain

and this is what we're gonna do," and they did.

530,000 cubic feet of rock

were blasted away to level the top of the mountain,

dropping its height by an incredible 30 feet.

At such high altitude, the progress of construction

was at the mercy of the elements.

Workers battled heavy snowfall, high winds, and enveloping mists.

They worked around the clock to achieve the build

in the narrow weather window from may to September.

With such a demanding schedule,

a constant supply of materials was vital.

Roma: Now, this thing's made out of concrete.

So, you need to get the aggregates up there,

you need to get the wet concrete up there.

You need to mix it up and make sure that it's all,

you know, properly moulded together.

You need to get the formwork up there

so that you can actually shape the concrete.

It's really a big logistical challenge.

Despite these difficulties, 70,000 tonnes of concrete

and 3,000 tonnes of steel were used to construct the monument.

At its core was a y-shaped base

that took the whole vertical load of the unique saucer.

Centred around a simple interior structure,

it was the futuristic outer shell that posed the greatest challenge.

Dora Ivanova is an architect and runs the buzludzha project.

She works to reconstruct the monument

and preserve it for future generations.

The design of the monument was a great challenge

for the engineering in the '70s.

The shape and the concrete was calculated

by computers in Moscow.

When you're trying to make something as curved

and as sinuous as this structure that we're looking at here,

then you need to think about,

"well, how am I actually going to achieve that?"

So, it's a really interesting challenge for engineers,

especially in that era,

to create these really smooth curves against

which they then want to pour the concrete.

And the principle can be actually explained

with a turned up umbrella.

There are thick steel ropes that are pre-stressed

and concreted in order to create this overhang of 25m.

The futuristic design was inspired by a fascination with space.

This was the era not only of the first man in space

but the first Bulgarian in space.

An impressive 30 tonnes of copper cladding

covers the roof of the saucer

which can be heated to melt heavy snowfall,

preventing the roof from collapse.

One of the biggest challenges

that the engineers would have had to consider

in designing this is the amount of snow

that the roof would need to resist.

So, having the shallow dome shape is actually a fairly good shape

because it will allow some snow

to kind of move its way off and to flow off.

A striking element of this construction is the tower

that soars from the mountain top towards the sky.

Its summit takes the load of two 39 feet high red glass stars,

each weighing a colossal 3.5 tonnes.

Dora: They were the biggest illuminated stars in the world.

They could be seen from hundreds of kilometres away

by good weather.

No expense was spared

on the lavish interior of the structure.

Rob: From the outside,

you see this brutalist concrete version

of the millennium falcon.

On the inside, the feeling's quite different.

They used 35 tonnes of mosaic

and stained glass to decorate the inside

to give it the atmosphere that they wanted.

The mosaics were not just for decorative purposes.

Every element within the monument

was a reminder of the communist cause.

From the one side, could be seen the faces

of Lenin, Marx, and engels.

And from the other side, the Bulgarian communist leaders.

A 538 square foot mosaic of the hammer and sickle crowns

the centre of this monumental achievement.

It took 7 years, 6,000 volunteers,

and more than 25 million pounds in today's money

to construct buzludzha.

The grand opening on 23 August, 1981,

was attended by the world's top communist leaders.

The site was immediately glorified

through the communist world as a beacon of power.

Many of the communist structures

that we see were almost monuments to either individuals

or to military control

to the power of that communist party.

They weren't necessarily beautiful

or maybe they were beautiful in their own way.

There was certainly a lot of concrete involved.

It served as a mecca for communism.

Visits had a ritualised character

and took the form of an organised pilgrimage.

It also doubled a meeting place for the Bulgarian communist party.

Dora: People were really impressed and astonished by the building.

They still remember until today their visits.

And in this sense, buzludzha was a really effective tool

of creating communist mythology.

For eight years, it served as the emblem

of Bulgarian communism and drew 3 million visitors,

all requiring written permission before making the trip.

1989, however, saw the dawn of a new age.

It was the beginning of the end for the ussr.

And todor zhivkov's fall from power rendered

the buzludzha monument a relic of the past.

With no interest in preserving this symbol of communism,

the new regime closed its doors and it was abandoned.

Today, having suffered decades of looting and vandalism,

buzludzha monument is a ruined shell clouded in mist.

And its future looks bleak.

On 24 November, 2016, the Bulgarian government

passed a new law banning public displays

of communist symbols.

So, are they going to tear it down

or will this hill return to its former glory?

Future generations may never know

that here stood a powerful icon of Bulgarian communism.

Say what you like about Eastern Europe communist regimes,

but they could certainly make a statement structurally.

Dora: It can explain the story of its creation.

It can be a very interesting museum

about history-Bulgarian history.

And it will overcome the trauma of the communist past.

Deep in the forests of upstate New York

hides a remote island on the Hudson river.

And on it what appears to be the remnants of a mighty castle.

When you first see these ruins,

it looks like just another castle over a brooding Scottish loch.

Scattered ruins sprawled across the island,

concealed amongst the trees are multiple turrets

and towers typical of a palace or medieval castle,

fortified with battlements and arrow slits.

So, what is its purpose?

The giveaway is in the letters along one of its walls.

What was this impressive fortification trying to protect?

And why was it abandoned?

In the year 1900, at the centre of New York City,

millionaire businessman Francis bannerman vi

ran a successful military surplus empire.

His store of military materials on Broadway covered

almost an entire block.

But he needed a warehouse big enough to store his explosive supplies,

including some 30 million munition cartridges left over

from the Spanish-American war of 1898.

Neil caplan head of bannerman castle trust

runs this fantastical castle.

The city did not want him to store black powder there

because it's very, very volatile and just a small cup

could blow up an entire building.

A solution was found 50 miles up the Hudson river

from New York City,

on a piece of land considered haunted

by some native American tribes,

the uninhabited polipol island.

Bannerman purchased the rocky land for $600

and created a series of structures to house his dangerous supplies.

And it evolved into this might fortress.

Bannerman's island arsenal, better known as bannerman's castle.

Andrew: This is no Scottish castle.

It's no British stately home or ruined French chateau,

this is an ammunition warehouse.

It was close enough to New York to carry on business

and where his lethal catalogue of good

wouldn't pose a threat.

Placing his own unique stamp on the island,

bannerman turned his hand to design.

He was an amateur architect, there were no blueprints.

He actually drew on napkins and on paper.

And when he built something, he said,

"I want you to build it up to here."

And if he didn't like it, he would say,

"break it up

"and put another window in or something."

And the whole place was built like that.

Work began in spring 1901, blasting away tonnes of rock

to create a level platform for a three-storey warehouse.

As business boomed,

so too did bannerman's island creation.

In 1905, he constructed two more buildings

and a harbour wall to receive and store his expanding arms empire.

Rather than design them in simple fashion,

he wanted something far more elaborate

and he drew on his family heritage for inspiration.

If I just passed by bannerman's castle randomly

and I didn't know where in the world I was,

I'd look at the kind of quite classic,

you know, traditional stone appearance of it,

the fact that it's quite castle-like,

I'd think I'm in northern Scotland somewhere.

Andrew: Why did bannerman design the building that he did?

Well, he was a proud scot

and he was paying homage to his homeland.

So, anything he could use

to make the structure look sort of castle-esque,

that's what he wanted to do.

His building methods were anything but ordinary.

To create the harbour, he sank multiple barges

filled with junk and rubble to act as foundations.

Frank bannerman was a practical businessman

who made his fortune selling junk.

What does that mean?

It means he never wasted a thing.

If he couldn't sell it, he used it.

Old bedsteads, pieces of battleship,

he used them to reinforce his building.

Incredibly, his unconventional approach to building also extended

to all of the structures on the island.

When you think about the way this building's

actually been put together, which is a complete mishmash

of all kinds of different materials with a bit of brick

and a very thin layer of concrete actually surrounding that,

I mean, that sounds questionable enough

for someone to live in or to reside in.

But then you put explosives in there.

And I think that that's quite frankly a terrible idea.

Yet in 1908, this structure stored

one of the largest private collections

of army surplus and ammunition ever seen in the United States.

In this respect, bannerman was a pioneer.

Andrew: Army surplus stores are everywhere today.

But that wasn't always the case.

It's thanks to bannerman. He's the one who bought this stuff.

Nobody else cared.

And before long, Hollywood, Broadway,

they're turning to him and him only for their props.

Bannerman's military equipment and uniforms filled

the sets of Broadway and Hollywood.

But to be closer to all this new ammunition,

bannerman moved his family into his own purpose-built castle.

Its amateur construction and explosive stock

however was a recipe for disaster.

It was a ticking time-bomb.

He realised,

"hmm, this is not the work "of a master craftsman.

This has a flavour of diy to it."

And that's what's so interesting.

From a distance, impressive. Close up, not so much.

Roma: I love the idea of taking scrap bits of metal and material

and making something fantastic out of it.

The one thing I wouldn't recommend

is doing that on a structure

because, ultimately, if you're gonna live in there,

it needs to stand up.

I definitely wouldn't want to live there.

Francis continued building

and enlarging the complex until his death in 1918,

when the business passed to his wife Helen.

Then on 15 August, 1920, disaster struck.

His wife was here, Helen bannerman.

She was up at the residence sitting in her hammock.

And as soon as she got up,

she went into the house to get a cup a tea,

she turned around, and the building blew up

and a piece of that building went right in the hammock

where she was sitting.

200 pounds of black powder stored in a munitions house

exploded throwing a 25-foot section of wall

across the river and onto the railway tracks.

Miraculously, bannerman's castle complex

survived the explosion.

For 30 years, as bannerman's business dwindled,

his island complex fell into disrepair.

Then in 1969, a catastrophic fire

that burned for three days sealed its fate.

Bannerman's castle was abandoned.

Today, the ruins are stabilised and bannerman's island

has become a popular tourist attraction,

hosting guided tours, theatrical events, and film nights.

Francis bannerman's fantasy castle continues

to fascinate all those who visit.

Neil: He left an incredible building here,

which is an icon all over the world.

People come and ask about bannerman island.

Andrew: Clearly, bannerman's building

is in a state of disrepair.

It will require millions to restore.

But I think we should make the effort

because this is a slice of history that, frankly,

I don't think should be forgotten.

Now abandoned,

they were once on the cutting edge of human engineering.

Within these decaying structures are the echoes of history.

They speak of war and terror

but also of exploration and human endeavour.

Captioned by ai-media ai-media. TV

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