French STH ???

[Robman2ka]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Nice ... _siren.jpg

i found this picture off of wikipedia and the caption said that it was a French air raid siren. I was wondering what model it was or were there some STH-10's in France?

[Chad]

It may be based of the STH-10, but I don't think Federal made that. I could be wrong.

It's suprising to see that it isn't mounted above ground level. Surely, those objects around it significantly lower the sound output.

[AllSafe]

That siren has some very oddly angled horns on it, possibly to reduce the amount of space the siren occupies. It is also sitting on the ground, on a concrete slab on the side of a public road going up the side of a hill. Whoever stood close enough to it while it was going off would get quite an earful.

[Blasty]

It's a conciderably older and larger model than the STH-10. At least dating to WWII.

You can hear and briefly see one of these in the movie, "Das Boot," although I don't know if they used the proper sound, as many movies don't. It sounds to me like they may have. Someone on the old board mentioned another WWII movie featuring this siren in more detail, but I don't recall it and have not seen it myself.

[quiksmith10]

Actually, the placement of that siren is not strange at all, besides the fact that it isn't on a pole. If you look in the background, you can see the city far below the mountain that the siren is mounted on. This siren was placed by the city up on the mountain so it could get adequate coverage to the city. I'm sure if the city is surrounded by mountains, I bet there are similar sirens with similar setups on the mountains around the city.

As far as the type of siren goes, I remember this siren being brought up on the old board. I'll do some digging around and see if I can't find that old thread.

[Daniel]

At the end of the film, Das Boot, the siren is seen in the distance on the roof of the U-boat pens, which were supposed to be in occupied France. Since these French sirens have nine ports like German ones do, they will rise to the same frequency. Any differences would be in the areas of rise/fall time and timbre, as altered by the horns. These sirens are huge, and many are mounted on towers rather than on rooftops as is common in Germany. This design dates from the 1930's and is still used throughout France. The STH-10 was first marketed in the 1950's and is a smaller siren by comparison. There is a photo out there of a roof-mounted French siren with horns removed. I'm not aware of any other European sirens having horns, since most of them (i.e. Norwegian, Finnish, Greek, Swiss, Austrian, etc.) are local versions of the German E-57 variety, differing only in the shape of the cowling.

[SirenMadness]

Another difference this siren poses to the general European sirens is that this siren's rotor gets more air than from most of the other European sirens; the other sirens, the ones with the "mushroom," have a portion of the motor in the intake area, still pretty efficient, though.
The horns aren't very strong. Also, I see a small bolt and washer on the air-intake: it could be a solenoid.