Ruck machine gun post
Encyclopedia
The Ruck machine gun post or Ruck pillbox is a type of hardened field fortification built in Britain during the invasion crisis of 1940–1941
British anti-invasion preparations of World War II
British anti-invasion preparations of the Second World War entailed a large-scale division of military and civilian mobilisation in response to the threat of invasion by German armed forces in 1940 and 1941. The British army needed to recover from the defeat of the British Expeditionary Force in...

. It was designed by James Ruck and was made from prefabricated concrete sections
Precast concrete
By producing precast concrete in a controlled environment , the precast concrete is afforded the opportunity to properly cure and be closely monitored by plant employees. Utilizing a Precast Concrete system offers many potential advantages over site casting of concrete...

 and paving slabs
Paver (flooring)
An interlocking concrete paver is a pre-cast piece of concrete or brick commonly used in exterior hardscaping applications. Pavers were developed in Europe and introduced into the United States in the early 1970s....

, sandbag
Sandbag
A sandbag is a sack made of hessian/burlap, polypropylene or other materials that is filled with sand or soil and used for such purposes as flood control, military fortification, shielding glass windows in war zones and ballast....

s and rammed earth
Rammed earth
Rammed earth, also known as taipa , tapial , and pisé , is a technique for building walls using the raw materials of earth, chalk, lime and gravel. It is an ancient building method that has seen a revival in recent years as people seek more sustainable building materials and natural building methods...

. The Ruck machine gun post was relatively widely used in Lincolnshire and along the east coast of England, but is now extremely rare with just a handful of extant examples. Today, just five Ruck machine gun post sites are recorded in the Defence of Britain database.

Design

James Ruck was the north midlands regional works adviser to the Ministry of Home Security
Ministry of Home Security
The Ministry of Home Security was a British government department established in 1939 to direct national civil defence during the Second World War.-Background:...

. His principal duties related to the provision of air-raid shelters. In June 1940, he offered the military a design for a machine gun post:

Ruck's design was based on precast half-arch concrete sections produced by Hydroprest Concrete Ltd at Scunthorpe
Scunthorpe
Scunthorpe is a town within North Lincolnshire, England. It is the administrative centre of the North Lincolnshire unitary authority, and had an estimated total resident population of 72,514 in 2010. A predominantly industrial town, Scunthorpe, the United Kingdom's largest steel processing centre,...

. Four 12 inches (30.5 cm) sections formed an arch with inside dimensions 5 ft (1.5 m) wide, 7 ft (2.1 m) high and 2 ft (61 cm) long. Any number of the arches could be assembled together to form a structure of a desired length, but for Ruck’s design 20-inch gaps between the arches would be left to serve as embrasure
Embrasure
In military architecture, an embrasure is the opening in a crenellation or battlement between the two raised solid portions or merlons, sometimes called a crenel or crenelle...

s, with an inside length of 12 ft (3.7 m). The arches were clad with two layers of mortar and concrete paving slabs; this filled in the gaps except where an embrasure was required and gave a wall thickness that varied between 6 and 9 in (15.2 and 22.9 cm). The ends were walled up with hollow concrete blocks filled with bricks; the wall at one end had an embrasure, the other end had an entrance. The concrete offered only limited protection, so the structure would be partly buried and then surrounded by an outer wall of sandbags to the level of the embrasures and the gap between the wall and the concrete filled with rammed earth.

According to Ruck, who enthusiastically promoted his design, the principal advantages of the machine gun post were that it could be quickly constructed by unskilled labour and made economical use of materials. The precast components could be produced at the rate of 70 posts per day and Ruck claimed that six unskilled men could complete three precast units in a day. Ruck also emphasised that his design made use of "some hundreds of thousands of tons of this material lying in stocks in makers yards throughout the country requiring no fresh drain on cement or steel". Ruck estimated the cost of a post to be just £40 [equivalent to £ in ].

Construction

In July 1940, instructions were issued for the order of 1,600 posts, by September 1940 some 4,000 posts had been constructed and there were orders for a further 2,000.

Today, the Ruck machine gun post presents something of a mystery. Despite the substantial numbers constructed, traces of them are rare – just 5 were recorded by the Defence of Britain project. Of all the pillbox designs, the Ruck machine gun post is one of the most readily disassembled and this may have been the fate of many of these posts. Because the post had to be partially buried, it was best employed on rising ground; it may be that many were deployed in soft cliffs and dunes along an ever-changing coastline and have been lost to erosion. Finally, there may be extant examples that are simply unrecognised for what they are.

See also

  • British anti-invasion preparations of World War II
    British anti-invasion preparations of World War II
    British anti-invasion preparations of the Second World War entailed a large-scale division of military and civilian mobilisation in response to the threat of invasion by German armed forces in 1940 and 1941. The British army needed to recover from the defeat of the British Expeditionary Force in...

  • British hardened field defences of World War II
    British hardened field defences of World War II
    British hardened field defences of World War II were small fortified structures constructed as a part of British anti-invasion preparations. They were popularly known as pillboxes by reference to their shape.-Design and development:...

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