Submarine bunker in Lorient

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Sketch of the location of the bunkers on the Keroman headland

The submarine bunkers in Lorient were built during the Second World War on behalf of the Wehrmacht under the direction of Organization Todt (OT) . During the submarine war , the port of the French city of Lorient on the Blavet River , about 5 km from its mouth in the Bay of Biscay , was the largest base for the Navy submarines from June 1940 to August 1944 .

The bunker systems extended over several complexes. They differed from all other submarine bunkers built by the Germans during the Second World War in two extraordinary constructions :

  • The slipway with a turntable and two so-called cathedral bunkers
  • The towing system with transfer platform at the Keroman I and II bunkers

Immediately after the French defeat, the German commander of the submarines visited Dönitz Lorient on June 26, 1940 . As a result, the decisions to expand this and the four other bases for submarines were made. The first two Kéroman bunkers were completed by December 1941. In addition to Brest , Saint-Nazaire , La Rochelle and Bordeaux, they were part of the "Atlantic Wall" and the " Atlantic Battle " on the French Atlantic coast ( trade war with submarines )

The bunkers in World War II

The cathedral bunker

Western cathedral bunker, recent extension on the right. The windows were only added to the steel doors after the war.

At the end of a basin of the fishing port, at the beginning of the German occupation in June 1940, there was already a slipway for fishing boats that ended in a turntable around which six docking places were arranged in a star shape. This system was structurally reinforced by the Germans in order to be able to tow and park at least submarines of the small type II . Two of the docking areas were roofed over in 1941 with around 80 m long, tent-like bunker structures with a concrete thickness of 1.5 m. The protection principle relied less on the material thickness than on the shape of the roof, which should cause the bombs to slide off. The front sides of the bunkers were secured with steel sliding gates.

This bunker principle was also used in the shelters for the 28 cm railway guns in the Calais area .

The Scorff bunker

The next bunker project carried out was a complex with two wet boxes for four boats, which was built in the naval port near the confluence of the Scorff River into the Blavet, not far from Lorient city center. The bunker is 145 m long, 51 m wide and 15 m high. The concrete ceiling is 3.5 m thick, because of the muddy subsoil it was not possible to install a thicker ceiling. For static reasons, it was also considered that reinforcement at a later date was not necessary. Since the access area to the boxes and the boxes themselves were exposed to heavy mud deposits, which often had to be dredged, the bunker was ultimately only used as a berth for submarines until Keroman I / II was completed and then served as a workshop for submarines Towers.

Keroman I and II

View of the transfer platform and Keroman II. In the background on the left the open steel gates of the box for the transfer car, above the barracks level.
U 67 entering the Keroman II bunker (1942)

The first large bunkers built in Lorient - on the promontory called Keroman - could not easily be implemented in the otherwise usual design (with boxes at sea level) because of the rocky soil, in which the submarines moved into the boxes with their own power. The rocky subsoil guaranteed the load-bearing capacity for a massive, bomb-proof concrete ceiling. There was no blasting and construction was carried out on the rock. In order to move the submarines to the level, which is therefore several meters above the water level, a towing system with a wedge-shaped carriage was constructed. This was located on the side of Keroman I facing the river and was also overbunkered. At the foot of the tunnel-like facility, the boats drove on a dock wagon, with which they were transferred after being towed onto a transfer platform with a transfer car. This stage ran between the two bunkers, so that with its help all storage boxes in Bunker I (5 dry for one boat each) and II (7 dry for one boat each) could be reached. The entire procedure from driving into the dock wagon to taking it to the bunker took about 35 minutes. In Keroman II there was also a box for the two transfer cars, which was equipped with barracks for 1000 men in the upper area.

The two bunkers were completed in September (I) and December 1941 (II) and have a ceiling thickness of 3.5 m.

Keroman III

The next bunker was built at the tip of the headland in a conventional design with 2 wet boxes and 5 boxes, which, equipped with docking gates, were designed as dry docks . In contrast to the cathedral bunkers and Keroman I and II, there was a total capacity of 13 berths or docking places due to the different sizes of its boxes (for one to three boats). The moving of the boats required far less effort here than the towing.

The bunker was completed in January 1943. It measures 170 m in width, 138 m in length and is 20 m high. Compared to the previous buildings I / II, the ceilings are reinforced by up to 7.5 m and were supplemented with air grids during the war, but not over the entire roof area.

Keroman IV

Another large bunker, located northeast of Keroman I, which should be accessible from the fishing basin via a lifting platform and which should offer space for 24 boats of the modern type XXI , was only partially completed (Keroman IV a), a supplementary building (IV b) only planned. All work was stopped in April 1944.

In the vicinity of the submarine bunkers, six 40 × 23 m bunkers for the storage of torpedoes were also built.

Kernével

From November 1940 to March 1942 on the headland opposite Keroman, Kernével was in the villa of a sardine merchant, which was popularly known as the sardine can because of its size , the command post of the Commander of the U-Boats (BdU) , i.e. the headquarters of Admiral Dönitz , and thus the control center of the Atlantic battle .

Air war in Lorient

The “tunnel” in Keroman I after removal of the lift, view in north direction, status in July 2001

Because of its importance as a submarine base, Lorient was exposed to massive bombing attacks by the Allied air forces during the German occupation. If the bunkers remained largely undamaged, the city itself was badly affected. Individual districts were almost completely destroyed. The population suffered a heavy toll in blood.

Resistance

The French naval officer Jacques Stosskopf , who spoke fluent German due to his Alsatian descent and offered himself as a collaborator , worked on the construction of the bunker systems . However, Stosskopf secretly worked with the Resistance and was executed by the German occupiers in 1944. After the end of the war, the French submarine base in Lorient received its name.

The bunkers today

After 50 years of use by the French Navy , in which the systems and their equipment (e.g. the immersion pot) secured the jobs of 2000 people - including civilians - all bunker systems have been used for civilian purposes or lie idle.

The bunkers pose a major problem for the municipality of Lorient as a whole, as both the use and maintenance as well as the demolition of the buildings require financial expenses that are beyond the possibilities of the municipality. The city has therefore decided to include the submarine base in a tourist concept. For the Keroman peninsula, this envisages, in addition to the economic use of Keroman I and II, the site, the diving tower and Keroman III remain as an exhibition object and the port basin converted into a sports boat harbor.

Dombunker

The slipway has been removed, the turntable removed, but the pit of the turntable can still be seen. The slipway has been replaced by a device for watering larger yachts. The bunkers, of which the western one still has the original door mechanism, are used as a warehouse and workshops. In the harbor basin, it is mainly large racing boats that are launched. (As of August 2009)

Scorff bunker

The Scorff bunker in 2017.

The bunker is located in the area of ​​the naval shipyard , its current use is unknown. (Status: July 2003)

Keroman I

The area of ​​the shifting system between Keroman I (left) and II (right) in July 2001, the pile in the background .

The towing system has been dismantled, the "tunnel" is under water, but can be seen from the outside through a pedestrian bridge on the sea side. The transfer table with a transfer car still exists, but the rails that led into the bunkers themselves have been removed or covered with asphalt. Parts of the bunker are used by a shipyard as a warehouse for sports boats and boat parts. The French submarine Flore is on the carriage as a museum boat . During use by the French Navy, recesses were made in the center of the door lintel in some boxes to do justice to the higher French submarine towers. The openings of the boxes are closed by modern gates. A boat yard is housed in a new building at the southern end. Between the new building and the actual bunker, there is an annex from German times, which cannot be further defined, which was a connecting part between the train station (largely demolished) and the Keroman I bunker.

In a further, smaller extension on the west flank there is a training facility for emergency exits from submarines with diving rescuers , which was already built by the German occupiers and continued to be used by the French navy. This immersion pot or "Tour Davis" has become an integral part of a museum and can therefore be visited. The entire training facility is largely accessible in its original state, with the exception of minor modifications such as a later built-in heater for the training pool or a pressure chamber for diving accidents. (As of August 2009)

Keroman II

The bunker, whose armored gates have been replaced by glass walls and gates, serves as a shipping warehouse. Inside there is at least one part of a museum about the submarine Flore. (As of August 2019)

Keroman III

The Keroman III bunker as seen from the yacht harbor opposite in Kernével, as of June 2006.

The bunker is largely empty and can be visited on guided tours. The tours include both the interior of the building and an excursion to the bunker roof with an interesting panoramic view of the fishing port area, the Blavet river and Kernével. In the harbor basin in front of the wet boxes, the Germans sank two ships ( Stralsund and Regensburg ), which had gone to France as reparations under the Versailles Treaty , in order to fend off a direct attack with torpedoes dropped by aircraft. (As of August 2009)

Keroman IV

Left the preserved wall of the unfinished Keroman IV, right Keroman I.

Parts of the ruins were demolished, in particular to create traffic routes to the various port facilities. A wall parallel to Keroman I has been preserved; it partly serves as a rear wall for storage buildings on the fishing port side. There is also a vacant part of the building facing Keroman III, which was last used as barracks during the war. (As of August 2009)

literature

  • Jak P. Mallmann-Showell: German submarine bases and bunker systems. 1939-1945. Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 3-613-02331-8 .
  • Lars Hellwinkel: Hitler's Gate to the Atlantic. The German naval bases in France 1940–1945. Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-86153-672-7 .
  • Karl-Heinz Schmeelke, Michael Schmeelke: German submarine bunkers yesterday and today (= weapons arsenal, highlight 11). Podzun-Pallas Verlag, Wölfersheim-Berstadt 2001, ISBN 3-7909-0714-6 , (Limited reprint of Waffen-Arsenal Special 15).
  • Eckhard Brand: Bunkertours - The tours in the footsteps of our grandfathers . Part 2: Atlantic Wall - France from the submarine ports of the west coast to Normandy . Projects Verlag Cornelius, Halle 2012, ISBN 978-3-86237-727-5 .

Web links

Commons : Submarine Bunker in Lorient  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Stefan Simons: The submarine screwdriver from Lorient. In: Spiegel Online . January 9, 2020, accessed January 18, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Frz. Marine Museum (la-flore.fr)
  3. ↑ on the protection principle see here
  4. ↑ Explanation of the construction of safety grids in the article U-boat bunker
  5. ↑ Andrew Williams: Submarine War in the Atlantic . (BBC Worldwide Ltd 2002), Heel Verlag, Königswinter 2007, ISBN 978-3-8289-0587-0 , p. 196.
  6. ↑ a b English tour of the Keroman plant
  7. ↑ a b c Own inspection Aug. 2009

Coordinates: 47 ° 43 ′ 48 ″  N , 3 ° 22 ′ 16 ″  W.