Submarine bunker Dora

Dora 1

Dora 1 and Dora 2 are two submarine bunkers in Trondheim ( Norway ) that were built by the German occupiers during the Second World War .

history

Two Type VII and IX submarines in front of the bunker after the end of the war (May 19, 1945)

The bunker Dora 1 from the air (2010)

Because of the strategic location of Trondheim (on the one hand protected in Trondheim Fjord and the other directly on the North Atlantic ) operated from June 1940 to the capitulation of the submarines of the 13 U-Flotilla in May 1945 Navy from here.

Construction of Dora 1 began in May 1941 because the Navy had a great need for ports outside Germany where repairs could be carried out. At the same time, they had to be easy to defend. In Trondheim, therefore, anti-aircraft cannons and other defensive structures were built on the hills in the city and the surrounding area , the concrete foundations of which can still be seen today. Particularly noteworthy in this context is the island of Munkholmen in front of the city , on which there were several flak positions.

Trondheim was to be expanded into a large military base with up to 300,000 soldiers and their families (more than Trondheim has residents today). There were plans that a large settlement - " Neu Drontheim " - should be built outside of Trondheim .

Dora 1 was handed over to the Navy on June 20, 1943, while the second bunker (construction started in January 1942) was still being built. Dora 2 was never completed and is now in ruins.

After the war it was considered to blow up these buildings. This would have required so much explosives that the rest of Trondheim would have been damaged.

Today there is a bowling hall in Dora 1 as well as an archive of the Technical and Natural Science University of Norway and departments of the city and state archives. We are also talking about setting up a rock music museum. Parts of the facility are under monument protection.

Dimensions

Dora 1 is 153 meters long and 105 meters wide, Dora 2 168 meters and 102 meters respectively. They were built from reinforced concrete . The side walls are 3 meters thick and the ceiling is even 3.5 meters thick.

Legend

Legend has it that prisoners who were involved in the construction were drowned in the concrete of the walls while guards worked. The corpses could have weakened the construction. The background to this legend was probably the report of an accident in which two workers fell from the scaffolding into the fresh concrete and were fatally injured. Structural engineers are said to have calculated that this one-off incident would not lead to a significant weakening of the construction, which is why construction was simply continued.

gallery

Full front view of the complex.
Corner view, showing the thickness of the concrete.
The fjord side has recently been renovated.
Close up of the ramps on the front.
Sign with buildings in the port area of the fjord with arrows pointing to the Dora complexes.
Construction of the bunker
Three submarines in a submarine bunker in Trondheim, May 19, 1945
German submarines of type VII and IX in Trondheim after the war on May 19, 1945
U-boats were able to enter the bunker through these locks (for a close-up, click here)