So the article that I started at was "Palisade", which I has looked up for my story I'm writing for my Novel class.
A palisade is basically a simple defensive wall made of wooden stakes, often entire logs that have been cut down, but sometimes just pieces of them. The ends are often sharpened into points to make it harder to get a firm grip on the time to climb over and to make it potentially dangerous to do so. Palisades were also often reinforced with a degree of terraforming, such as digging a ditch or elevated the ground leading up to the palisade. Palisades were useful in that they could be set up quickly using local materials, since they were just made of wood. But of course, that also made them relatively weak when compared to more permanent structures.
The next article I went to was "Cave Castle", which was listed in the Fortifications category box at the bottom of the Palisade page.
I thought the concept of a castle constructed in a cave was really interesting, so I looked into it. The basic idea behind the castles is that it greatly decreases the number of directions from which the castle could be attacked. With the rock surrounding three of its sides, it made for an excellent defensive position, forcing attackers to come directly at the front of the castle. In addition to that, the caves could be used to create a secret escape route if they were enlarged or altered properly. That could be used to escape if necessary, or to sneak in food in the face of a siege.
The next article I arrived at was "Hardened Aircraft Shelter", which was also off of the Fortifications category box at the bottom of the Cave Castle page.
A hardened aircraft shelter, or protective aircraft shelter, known commonly in shorthand as HAS and PAS respectively, is a type of reinforced hangar used to protect military aircraft from enemy attack. However, such shelters are not cheap to build and additionally, due to the practicalities of building them, only fighter size aircraft could be stored within them. Their effectiveness dropped significantly over time, as modern smart bombs could pierce such shelters and destroy the aircraft within them.
The final article I ended up at was "Undergound Hangar", which was a direct link from the Hardened Aircraft Shelter page.
Generally speaking, an underground hangar was basically a far larger and more effective version of a hardened aircraft shelter. They would be dug into the side of a mountain, which made them much harder to destroy or capture. They could store much larger amounts of aircraft, and could also contain facilities reminiscent of a military base in order to keep the aircraft properly operational, such as fuel and ammunition storages and maintenance areas.
Image of the cave castle Predjama in Slovenia.
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