This video gives an overview of what there is to see at the St. Nazaire U Boat Pens in France. There is also a brief detail of the pens and an indication of where to park.
The movie "Das Boot" has scenes shot in one of those remaining pens. If You want to get an impression how it would have looked with U-Boats inside, watch that movie!
Visited here in 1993. As I recall the roof was doubled up to protect the subs hence the 8 metre thickness. Its a very impressive site and well worth a visit.
My father was a member of the 199th Field Artillery unit during WWII. He arrived near Lorient just after D-Day. Camp was set up near Lochrist, France. Coordination with the Free French was excellent and many "Boche" were pointed out to GI's before they could cause any casualties. The mission of the 199th's batteries was to draw down upon the Germans in the area of Saint Nazaire, Bouvron, Plouhinec, Plouharnel, Quiberon, Morlvenez, Port Louis, Hennebont, Nostang and eventually Lorient as Lorient was the location of their other Kriegsmarine base. Forward spotters for his unit would gain a tactical advantage in say a church tower or by flying overhead and look for German howitzers or anti aircraft guns etc and would unleash extreme fire barrages upon each objective thereafter. German artillery spotters also needed height for spotting and frequently used church towers as well. Sadly that church would become the focus of artillery such as the church at Plouhinec. Churches were also used as command posts such as the monastery at St Benedictine near Plouharnel before an assault on the Quiberon peninsula. Bridges like Pont Lorois defended by German artillery (88's and 37mm guns) would need to be taken out. His unit collapsed that bridge into the river. Eventually pinning the Germans back to Lorient and cutting off all land supply to the base. The Germans fiercely defended the submarine base until the end of the war and Lorient itself paid a god awful price from artillery and allied bombers as fighting was done to free this area. He used to say it is easy to blow things up, it is the getting along that is sometimes hard. He did remark how gentlemanly the German prisoners they took were and frequently shared candy and tobacco rations with them. He spoke with many of his German artillery counterparts who marveled at the 199th's shooting and ability to remain mobile and stealthy. Shortly after VE day 1945, my Dad returned to England and married my Mother whom he had met in Bideford, England shortly before D-Day. They remained married 67 years!
The Allies, particularly the British did try to demolish some of these pens and basically stuffed it up and created a completely useless and hazardous wreck in the process. By leaving the structures in place they can at least be used in one way or another.
When I was young ,I deed a lot of exploration inside the tunnels .End also reading the German inscriptions inside the alcoves for submarines .. On the roof it was possible to see the anti shelling installation some time dammaged . Always I was impressed of this concrete building ...
wow that is a piece of history which should be taught in school. It's something modern engineers should study and learn about. You can see how well build and how heavy it is and how well it stood it's time so far. It's part of the dark German history but it is also something to remember so we learn from the past and show our new Generation what once was and what it had cost us.
As a lover of history and boyhood facination of submarines, I chanced upon this video by laying sick in bed reading a 2006 book 'For crying out loud' by Jeremy Clarkson who laments on the lack of a decent gift shop with relevant souveniers when he visited this place. Your excellent video shows a lost opportunity by some savy knowledgable tourist operator to show people around (and sell some 'submarine souveneirs!). Is is a part of French history that they just don't want to acknowledge?...if nothing else it was an engineering marvel that strangley is not getting the historical recognition it deserves - especially when you consider how the submarine wolf packs impacted upon the near defeat of England...all ignored and forgotten it seems except for a trickle of curious history lovers. Oh...and how absurd to have a photography ban there!...glad you circumvented it.
I wonder if anyone has ever done scuba dives in the pens. I would imagine there's all kinds of neat, interesting things on the bottom that were either lost or tossed overboard.
Great vid. These must have been, in part, the inspiration for the the various "Underground laires" written into the James Bond films . . let alone Austen Powers ! The roof of one of the blocks at Lorient has a double-skinned concrete roof. And during the war it was hit by several heavy armour piercing bombs (Mainly dropped by the RAF - the 500 pounders dropped by the US 8th Airforce just bounced off) causing the top outer skin to partially collapse . . .but the inner roof skin remained intact. I imagine that Lorient would have been the prestige target as Donnitz's (The U-boat fleet commander) head quarters was located nearby.
The attack on St Naziare and the blowing up of the Cambletown was not an attack on the pens. St Nazaire was the Atlantic base for the Bismarck class battleships of the German Fleet, like Tipitz, it had the largest dry dock on the Atlantic coast, the aim was to put the dry dock out of use to stop the Germans using St Nazaire as a base for Tirpitz, Eugen and Bismarck. The pool in front of the pens is called the basin. U boats would have been moored here, the pens were puely for protecting them when they were being loaded with torpedoes and stores, that is when a submarine is at it's most vulnerable, all hatches are open.
This drydock is still in use. They build big cruisers still there. I think the navy ship seen in the video is one of the Mistral Boets, build in Saint Nazaire for Saudi Arabia and sold to Egypt.
One of the proposed uses for the early uranium gun-type atomic bomb was as bunker busters for those sub pens. They had a perfect form factor for penetrating large amounts of concrete before going off.
Hi Nick, thank you for sharing with us. As much as I hate the regime that generated the German War Machine and the fortifications they have left behind. I've always admired the Atlantic Wall fortifications (more so the efforts the Allies did to penetrate them). This has been on my places to visit since first reading about Operation Chariot and raid to stop Tirpitz using the docks at St Nazaire
It most certainly ghasts the flabbers ... and that Campbletown/drydock affair was also worthy of more recognition than most folks these days care to give it ...
Elizabeth Reign Castillo - You will rounded up with the rest of the rest of the remainers and shot a dawn :)) - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-nJjdFtcQP3U.html
Whilst on holiday, parents went there in 1974. Stupidly I turned down the offer of a visit and stayed on the beach at Pornic. Apparently, during the official tour, there was a "Tumbleweed" moment when one of the German visitors told the guide, "Well, of course, you French could not have done anything like this" . . . . . . . gasps . . . . then deathly silence. Subsequently, I visited La Pallice (La Rochelle) pens in 2007 (Where Das Boot was filmed) and, after being refused entry at the Commercial Port entrance (Because I hadn't applied in writing to the port director in advance), slipped in by stepping over a knee height chain fence at the seaward side dock entrance and managed my own unofficial guided tour one lunchtime. At that time some of the facilities were still occupied by the French Military but the port was beginning to become commercialised. Looking at Google Earth and Street View recently, I see that there has been substantial commercial re-development on the site and the perimeter security has been completely sewn-up. You'd have a scale one of those six-foot steel picket fences with the pointy-tops to get access sans notice. Went to Lorient pens in 2008. That's more orientated to public visits and has guided tours. The outside of the bunkers was decaying quite badly at the time of my visit, with extensive netting deployed on the side walls to catch falling pieces of concrete dislodged by the rusted and "Blowing" steel reinforcement rods. Made a half-hearted attempt to get into Brest in 2010, but I not sure whether public access there is encouraged as its near one of the French Naval Academies.
@@kbanghart idk. the structural strength. you could bomb this for weeks or months and nothing would happen. the allies needed to level a city so the pens would have 0 supplies because it was almost impossible to take them out. while the people inside would be ok. they are still standing today after being bombarded hundred to thousands of times. they are over 75 years old and still very strong. imagine being punched thousands of times by mma fighters and boxers and come out unscathed.
Lovely video and helps someone get prepared before going. I see you are doing visitor guides to WW2 sites, wonder where you are going to visit in 2016? maybe the V weapon sites. Keep it up.
The amount of construction activity that went on in Occupied France during WW II is staggering to say the least. Remember that most of these works were done with far more manual labour (forced and imported) and less machinery than we would use today.
All the photos of Atlantic Wall construction I have ever seen lacked any earthmoving equipment. I think I saw a solitary German bulldozer in one picture.
I stumbled across these pens in 2001 and was astonished at their size and strength. Even the RAF Blockbuster 10 ton bombs couldn't get through the roof, so the only way the RAF could deny their use to the Nazis was to flatten the surrounding area after warning the populace that they were going to do it. There are signboards in the town stating this. The other thing, besides the size, was how cold it was inside them, even in summer. They are very ugly because of their dark grey, ageing concrete colour, and their size, but still impressive.
Real good, like you said, bakeries, hospitals, restaurant. Saw a 1 or 2 movies sorta based in the pens, but this is the first time I've seen the real thing. Were there any pens collapsed on a cupla boats like I've heard a cupla stories about? Thanks m8!
I used to live not too far from St Nazaire. My old neighbour and his younger brother were apprentices in the dockyard and made to work for the Germans. One day, I think it was in 1944 there was a daylight bombing raid on the docks and my neighbour who was 16 was jumping up and down with his mates shouting "bravo les Anglais", although I wonder if it was the Americans as it was during the day. He arrived home two hours later only to find out that his brother who was only 14 was killed in the raid.
After the war they thought about destroying them but heavily fortified. The British tried bombing them with 1000 lb.block buster bombs and barely scratched them. Thanks for the tour.
Spare a thought for the poor bastards that were forced to build the place !. Many worked to death. When the Cambletown blew up, German soldiers heads were found on top of the pens. What man has done to his fellow man......
Over a 100 million years when these concrete goliaths will be the only thing left of our civilisation, future archeologists from the squid people that will rule earth, will wonder what and who on earth could have built these things. A race of supreme giants.
@John Brighton regardless they poured a lot of concrete whom ever did it... I know the Nazi's not only had the concentration camps but they used those people to work on jobs too....
in the 50's there were quite a few Germans working in the Falkland Islands, they did an excellent job building roads around the Capital. Most of the roads are still in use. Some have been dug up and replaced. Of interest is how well made they were despite not having re bar steel reinforcing. Outstanding work with much of it being done by hand. They were a religous group, and later moved on to Chile to find and build thier Utopia....which no doubt they did, with the work ethic they had.
We have some evidence of"concrete cancer" developing in some of the walls, caused by salt water soaking and insufficient concrete cover of the steel reinforcement bars.
I looked a bit further and it is clear that the Todt Organization (O.T.) built these pens and the Atlantic wall, Paul Williams book, Hitler the Atlantic Wall and John D Granger's book Traditional Enemies, both are clear slave labour was used to build these u boat pens. French Companies could bid for the work and be supplied by O.T. slave labourers. Many died on the construction work from malnutrition and exhaustion Should these sites also be considered war graves?
