I can’t imagine that any gang would plan an all-out attack on a safe deposit vault in a situation where they knew that they would be pushed for time.
That’s some garage wall- the concrete looks 10 or 12 inches thick at least, and as a large commercial building it might not have the barriers expected in a vault wall like tordbar or tangbar, but I bet it still had rebar. Hats off to the Germans again, they don’t mess about! All that before they even started on the ‘proper job’.
Its common for joe public and anyone who doesn’t know to see the breaking open of the individual boxes as a feat in itself, they almost seem to imagine them as kind of ‘mini high security safes’, but they are only intended to offer a level of dual control security when the vault is open. If a customer is in the vault accessing their own deposit box, there is no easy way for them to start opening and accessing others, that’s all they’re really intended to provide.
There are countless ways they use to force open the different types of boxes in an attack, from pullers to drill and punch, but doing so would be the easy part of the job, and insignificant compared to successful opening of the door itself or accessing the vault through a wall as is most common.
There was a pretty good documentary I saw a few years back which highlighted a few big attacks on bank and deposit vaults in Germany. One which really stood out was an attack on a vault where they also attacked and opened several bankers grade safes inside- now that’s a serious feat of effort, determination and confidence for you. Mind you, not surprisingly they didn’t do it on the banks hour break for lunch, like most other attacks it was another well planned and executed over a long bank holiday weekend.
