French U-boat Bases
Following the German invasion the official end of the active fighting in France came with an armistice, signed on 22nd June 1940. Despite isolated areas not fully submitting for several weeks, hostilities were over as of 0135 hrs on 25th June and German occupation began immediately. A partitioning line was established that allowed Southeastern France nominal self-government under Maréchal Pétain's newly established Vichy regime. This state of affairs was destined to end when the entire country was occupied two years later, after the successful November 1942 Allied landing in Vichy-held North Africa. However, in 1940, Hitler demanded that whereas France could maintain garrisons and naval bases along the Mediterranean coast, Germany must have control of the Atlantic coast and areas which encompassed the bulk of French industry occupied during the advance, and his troops moved to their new garrisons. Within Brittany men of the General von Pragen's XXV Army Corps took up their occupation posts during December 1940, its headquarters in the beautiful resort area of La Baule.
Brest, for hundreds of years a major French naval installation, was the homeport to some of the proudest ships of their fleet. Founded in Roman-Gallic times as an armed camp the settlement's strategic value was first recognised as a potential naval base in 1631 by Cardinal Richelieu who had wooden wharves constructed. These humble beginnings were augmented by masonry constructions jutting into the Rade de Brest, built under orders of Jean Baptiste Colbert, Minister de la Marine to King Louis XIV. By the Twentieth Century the harbour was a stronghold of fortifications and facilities added over the intervening centuries. Around its harbour and along the winding river Penfeld, Brest contained some of the most sophisticated repair and docking facilities for la Marine Nationale or "la Royale", as the French Navy was still sometimes known. It was, and still is, also the site of an imposing building, overlooking the harbour, which housed the Naval Academy, engaged in producing young officers for their large fleet. An elegant city with architecture that could be traced to medieval times, and often beyond, Brest had begun life as a fortified camp before Roman occupation. Now it was to become a fortified camp once more. This was the springboard for France's Atlantic operations, in conjunction with the Royal Navy. Of all of France's Armed Forces the Navy was perhaps the most advanced. The country's Air Force had once been considered the most technologically impressive in Europe, but, like the Army, had fallen to decay. Inaccurate internally generated statistical studies led to conclusions upon which was based military strategic thinking and decisions as obsolescent as the Armed Forces' equipment itself. While Naval thinking was not free of the invisible dogma of defeatism which permeated Government and High Command planners, at least the weapons with which the Navy were expected to fight were in large part effective modern designs more tha equal to the tasks they were given. The emphasis for Admiral Darlan, Chief of Staff for the French Navy since 1937, was actually on operations in the Mediterranean where vital links to the country's North African Empire had to be protected. Containing the possible actions of the Italian Fleet was seen as France's primary role, leaving the English to deal with the Kriegsmarine. Since 1936 a new unprecedented military co-operation with England (who Darlan privately detested) had been established, and with Germany obviously rearming, a large portion of France's heavy ships would still remain for service in the Atlantic. After consultation with leaders of the British Admiralty France's duties of convoy protection and patrolling were defined for areas of responsibility encompassing the following four regions:— the small area of French North Sea Coast
— Southern English Channel (le Manche to the French)
— Gulf of Gascogne and east of the line Ouessant to Villano
— the Mediterranean (with the exception of Gibraltar).
Admiral de Laborde held overall command of France's Western Naval Theatre, his Atlantic Coast command divided into military regions. The Brest area fell within the 2nd Region and lay under the control of Vice Admiral d'Escadre Traub, Préfet Maritime, while the ancient city itself was under the Naval command of Vice Admiral Cayol.
Brest fell to the Germans on 19th June 1940 (Click here for a fuller text on the fall of Brittany). During World War One Brest had become a vital link in the chain of reinforcement for Allied troops destined for the mud and blood of Flanders. In 1917 the harbour was the largest American military port outside of territorial waters, and thousands of troops were disembarked here. Convoys regularly stopped in the harbour or passed her narrow entrance channel bound for destinations further a field. With these developments came the inevitable German counter-measure - U-boats. Mine laying and attack submarines were regular visitors to Breton waters, sinking a huge amount of valuable Allied shipping, but the port was never in danger of complete German domination. However in 1940 the German Army had achieved in six weeks what they failed to achieve in four years previously and France was subjugated. This time the U-boats would not skulk around the harbour entrances, this time the harbours were theirs.
As Germany's submariners began to operate from Brest their boats were hidden beneath large camouflage nets at the base of the Penfeld River. With originally only seven or eight U-boats to contend with, these mooring facilities had proved adequate, but not for much longer. Coupled with expanded flotilla strength was the increased attention from the RAF. The decision was made to build safe enclosed bunkers for anchorage and maintenance work. These bunkers were huge construction projects, involving hundreds of Organization Todt workers and French labourers, which took years to finish. They provided a safe anchorage and point of repair for the German submarines, as well as a constant target for the Allied Air Forces.
In Brest harbour, 1st U-Flotilla, commanded by Korvettenkapitän Hans Cohauss, arrived from Kiel in June 1941 to be stationed permanently in the port. The premiere flotilla of Germany's submarine force this unit had begun fomation in September 1935 and was originally named “Weddigen” after famed First World War U-boat ace Otto Weddigen of UB9. Their headquarters were established in the French Naval Academy, and officers were able to gaze over the beautiful harbour towards the Crozon Peninsular from their new quarters. By November of the same year, 9thU-Flotilla was created, under Kapitänleutnant Jürgen Oesten, to share the harbour. They were housed in separate quarters, the grounds and buildings of Brest's Hôpital Morvan, an imposing structure whose entrance gates were soon crowned with the swordfish flotilla emblem. A resort area for U-boat commanders was established in the requisitioned Hôtel des Bains situated on the beautiful expanse of Trez-Hir beach. Here commanders could relax and refresh themselves for the fresh challenges of their next patrol. Further leisure facilities were provided at Chateau de Trévarez, inland among the rolling Breton farmland overlooking the small town of Chateauneuf de Faou. This red brick structure built in the late 19th and early 20th century by then Member of Parliament Marquis de Kerjégu, towered over sumptuous grounds that again allowed the opportunity for submariners to unwind in more pleasant surroundings than naval barracks.
(LINK: Kriegsmarine leisure facilities near Brest)
Brest also saw the creation of a Kriegsmarinewerft (Naval Shipbuilders) outside of Seeko control when the ‘Deschimag' company of Bremen began construction of vessels and marine engines in November 1940 within the old French Arsenal. Korvettenkapitan August Vollheim took initial command of this unit that eventually incorporated several varied construction services, torpedo supply and repair and personnel services.
In 1940 before the arrival of German troops, Lorient, which lay on the Western bank of the River Scorff, was part of the 5th Naval Region, the seaward approaches to its entrance channels guarded by the slender Ile de Groix. This city's Préfet Maritime was Vice Admiral d'Escadre de Penfentenyo de Kerveguer, Lorient itself commanded by sector commandant C V Labourer. On 1st September 1939 in Brest, Lorient and Saint-Nazaire there were created Centres d'Armement Militaire des Bâtiments de Commerce that proceeded, eight days later, to arm merchant ships for the threatened convoy war. Many were also to be converted into auxiliary warships. Beginning in 1930 the French Commander-in-Chief of the Navy had drawn up a plan of requisitioning whereby the navy had free reign to decide which vessels were suitable for conversion to auxiliary military use. Those designated as auxiliary naval vessels were given a military number prefixed with a letter: X for Auxiliary Cruisers (X1-X22) and Specialist Ships (X23-X84). Specialist ships included such vessels as cable layers, hospital ships, colliers, submarine tenders and mine layers.); P for Patrol Boats; AD for Minesweepers; VP for small port security vessels. However, the French collapse of June 1940 brought German troops racing towards the French Atlantic coast.At Lorient on 18th June 1940, a total of fifteen French warships and thirty-five smaller vessels left the harbour, bound for England or North Africa. Only a single vessel was lost to enemy action. This ship, the large trawler La Tanche of Fécamp, struck a German mine and sank 150 metres West of the Truies buoy marking the entrance to Lorient. She was carrying nearly 200 people as well as a 30-man crew. Among her passengers were Polish soldiers, French airmen, mechanic apprentices and several of the French sailors' wives and children. The explosion was so violent that she sank in seconds and only twelve people were rescued. After the remainder of the evacuation was completed without further incident the port was declared an open city and surrendered by Admiral Hervé de Penfentényo de Kervériguin on the 21st June. At 1400hrs the first German troops entered the sullen outskirts of Lorient.
Lorient immediatley had a Kriegsmarinewerft installed under the direction of Korvettenkapitan Waldemar Seidel, commandant of the Lorient Arsenal, as did Saint-Nazaire and other German military ports further to the South. Units of Netzsperrflotille West provided protection from submarine attack before both Brest and Lorient. Anchored in place and suspended from large buoys these thick steel mesh anti-submarine nets stretched across the entrance channels to both ports, moved aside by steam tugboats to allow vessels free transit between port and open sea.
Lorient saw the arrival of 2nd U-Flotille “Saltzwedel”, commanded by Korvettenkapitän Heinz Fischer, from Wilhelmshaven in June 1940. The first boat to arrive was, Kapitänleutnant Fritz-Julius Lemp's U30 (of Athenia infamy) on 7th July 1940, making Lorient the first fully operational Atlantic U-boat base. German engineers of the M.A.N. Mascchinen Fabrik arrived to work at reinforcing slipway facilities to cope with hefty submarine tonnage. In January 1942, the 10th U-Flotille was also formed in the port, placed under the command of Korvettenkapitän Günter Kuhnke. Lorient — soon known as the “Port of the Aces” — became arguably the most famous of the French bases. The port was distinguished by presence of so many of the highest scoring U-boat commanders — men like Prien, Lemp, Kreschmer, and Bleichrodt — who quickly became household names worldwideThe seven highest scoring boats of the war were stationed here at some point: U48, U99, U103, U123, U124, U107 and U37) Again, the Kriegsmarine provided extensive facilities for commanders and crew to relax between missions, even so far as to create a bierkellar near the golden sands of Carnac beach. For two years, the world held its breath as U-boats battled with Allied convoys in one of the most decisive arenas of the war. It gradually became apparent who the victor was. The staggering statistics of German U-boat losses attest to the dangerous nature of their service and how the tide of war had turned against them. Allied weapons developed a new and deadly efficiency during the war, and a staggering percentage of operational U-boat crews never returned.The bunkers at Lorient were more complex, sprawling to include several different sites. Like at Brest, U-boats were initially serviced in the open beneath netting and tarpaulins, but early air raids threw into sharp focus the doubtful benefits of this practice. In November 1940, Fritz Todt — head of the German labour organization to which he lent his name — visited Lorient with then head of the Kriegsmarine,Grossadmiral Raeder, and his deputy, Konteadmiral Dönitz. The three planned an ambitious project to build three separate submarine bunkers at a place named Keroman. Two huge, arched bunkers (named “Cathedral Bunkers” or Dombunkers) constructed first already functioned as dry docks, capable of handling two U-boats each, but they alone were not sufficient.Work, begun in January 1941, was completed in stages: bunkers Keroman I, II and III were finished in September 1941, December 1941 and January 1943 respectively.
Keroman I measured 120m long by 18.5cm wide, sufficient room for five dry-dock pens (designated K1 to K5) and a slipway for lifting submarines from the water. Keroman II was on dry land immediately behind Keroman I and was fed with submarines raised using the latter's mechanical slipway. This “dry bunker” measured 138m long by 128m wide with a height of 7m, and held seven pens designated K6 to K12. The final bunker, Keroman III, was 158m long, 186m wide, and 20 metres high. Keroman III had two repair pens, each capable of accepting two boats side by side (in four sub-pens designated K13 to K16), and five mooring docks (K17 to K24) again capable of handling two boats apiece. These remarkable facilities enabled a swift transfer of vessels between water and repair yard — the time taken to lift a boat on its cradle from the sea and transfer it to the farthest pen a mere one hour. Imposing steel doors three feet thick could be swung closed across each pen, and two ships were moored in Port Louis Bay immediatley before the bunkers. These two retired warships — Crapaud and Strasbourg (the ex-German light cruiser SMS Regensburg, a veteran of the Battle of Jutland, taken by France at the end of the First World War) provided further shelter for the pens, and each had tethered to them fat barrage balloons, that drifted lazily in the air above to discourage low-level aircraft attacks. Of course the ever-present anti-torpedo nets lay suspended from their steels buoys almost as a final gesture of impregnability. Further concrete submarine bunkers were established in Saint-Nazaire and Bordeaux, the latter the only French U boat base inland of the coast, positioned as it was along the expansive Gironde River.
Coupled with this major installation was the presence in Lorient of another key element of the U-boat war Konteradmiral Dönitz, Head of the KriegsmarineU-boat arm since 1935, Dönitz lived and worked in a requisitioned chateau positioned near the entry to Lorient's harbour, which included three separate villas for himself and his staff. Immediatley that France had surrendered Dönitz despatched staff officers to select a site for his headquarters. The Chateau du Ter was an inspired choice standing on the Western side of Le Ter River at Kerneval and facing the foreshore of Keroman with its precious submarine facilities. Here, as Befehlshaber der Unterseeboote (BdU, or, Commander-in-Chief U-boats), he ran the wolf packs that nearly strangled England's Atlantic lifeline (Dönitz was forced against his will by his superior Raeder to move from there to Paris in May 1942, after the successful British commando raid on the port of Saint-NazaireWith British commandoes becoming bolder in their attacks, often as intent on capturing Germans for intelligence reasons as destroying installations, there was real fear that Dönitz would be a target for such a raid). The Kerneval nerve centre — christened “Berlin” by those within — became a veritable fortress with underground bunkers, artillery and machine-gun emplacements, an anti-tank ditch and continually increasing anti-aircraft installations. Indeed the first RAF bombs fell on Lorient's Scorff River installations on 2nd September 1940.
Eventually men of both the 2nd and 10th U-Flotillas would be accomodated outside of Lorient in special camps, the main site being known as Lager Lemp.
Based on map from "Lorient" Fahrmbacher/Matthiae, Weißenburg, 1956
The civilian port of Saint-Nazaire had been a stronghold of maritime industry for decades. Sprawling ship yards stretched East from the city, following the North bank of the mighty Loire River and scarring the flat landscape with the massive tools of its trade.
The operational home of the 12th U-Flotilla in Bordeaux had opened for service as the fifth U-boat base on the French Atlantic coast during January 1943 with the arrival of U178 from the Indian Ocean.
Previous to that date other surface units of the Kriegsmarine's 4th Sicherungsdivision as well as the Italian Betasom boats had shared the harbour. Bordeaux became the only U-boat base in France to not be directly located on the coastline, lying some 80 kilometres from the sea along the Gironde River, itself vulnerable to enemy aerial minelaying. The 12th U-Flotilla had been formed on 15 October 1942, differing from the majority of combat flotillas in that it consisted solely of long-range combat boats, transport and resupply submarines. In command was K.K. Klaus Scholtz, Knight's Cross holder and veteran captain of the Type IXB U108.
Soon after designation as a U-boat base the now familiar edifice of virtually bomb-proof concrete shelters were erected to accommodate the boats of the 12th U-Flotilla. Situated in the third basin of Bordeaux's working port - the Bassin Alimentaire - and accessible through two locks the U-boat pens stretched over 41, 400m² of ground, building begun in September 1941, the first pens ready by January 1943. Unlike other sites where the Organization Todt constructed such shelters, the ground chosen at Bordeaux was solid enough to be built immediately on top of without the aid of extensive foundation work, thus reducing the time necessary for completion. In total there were eleven separate pens; seven of them dry-docks. As well as attached workshops a separate bunker 800metres behind the main pens held 4,000m³ of fuel and lubricating oils, channelled to the U-boat pens by subterranean pipeline.
The bustling streets of nearby Bordeaux city centre, architecturally impressive in many quarters although slightly decayed at the edges, provided enormous attraction for both Italian and German submariners between patrols. While the Kriegsmarine also requisitioned chateaus within the nearby countryside for their men, the Italian commander Ammiraglio Parona politely refused offers from his Kriegsmarine liaison, and later FdU West, K.K. Hans-Rudolf Rösing to do the same, stating that his men liked to be near to the city, not stranded in some 'god-forsaken wilderness'.
LINK: French U-Boat Bases Today