User:White Shadows/German U-boat bases in occupied France

German U-boat bases in occupied France existed between 1940 and 1944, when the Kriegsmarine (German Navy) converted several naval bases in France into U-boat bases following the surrender of all French armed forces during the Second Armistice at Compiègne. French coastal cities became available to the German Navy after the Battle of France in May–June 1940. U-boats stationed in France were generally used to extend the German Navy's range of operation in the North Atlantic and English Channel. These naval bases were used to house U-boats that would take part in the interception of Allied convoys that crossed the Atlantic Ocean to the United Kingdom.

German invasion of France and the Low countries
Germany invaded France, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands on 10 May 1940. The Netherlands fell after five days of fighting and Belgium surrendered on 28 May. Following the trapping of the Anglo-French armies around the port city of Dunkirk after the fall of Belgium and the subsequent evacuation of those forces in Operation Dynamo, German troops marched unopposed into Paris on 14 June 1940. On 10 June Italy declared war on France and invaded her through the Italian Alps. On June 17 the French government asked the Germans for an armistice which was signed on 22 June 1940 in the forest of Compiègne. France was then divided into two zones, a German occupied zone in the north and north-east of France and an unoccupied "free" zone in the south of France that was headed by a German collaborationist government located in the town of Vichy.

Brest
In the early summer of 1940, Allied forces demolished much of the harbour facilities in the French port city Brest because it was about to be captured by the Germans. The German 5th Panzer Division took control of the city in 18 June 1940 and restoration of the facilities began in September of that year. The fisr German U-boat to enter the port of Brest was U-65 who entered the city in August 1940 for repairs. By the middle of September 1940, the port facilities in Brest were repaired and fully operational. Brest's port became the base of the first and the ninth flotilla in 1941, and a U-boat bunker was built there around the same time. Many attacks from the Allies were directed at the base and the bunker, until they were able to capture the city in September 1944. <!--

German use of French ports
During the German occupation of France, several French naval ports were transformed into U-boat bases that were used to attack Allied shipping in the North and South Atlantic and the Caribbean Sea. All French harbours became available to the German military following the Battle of France and the signing of the Second Armistice at Compiègne. Soon after, planning for U-boat deployments from these coastal towns and the creation of bunkers and storage facilities at those bases began.

Five U-boat bases were built in coastal cities along the Bay of Biscay in 1940 and eight flotillas were stationed in France, some moving from Germany whilst others were created during 1941 and 1942. The first of these flotillas was the 1st flotilla which was stationed in Brest. The 2nd flotilla was located at Lorient and the 7th flotilla at Saint Nazaire from June 1941. These first three flotillas were later followed by the 3rd flotilla which moved to La Rochelle and the 9th flotilla which moved to Brest in October 1941. Three more, the 10th, 6th and 12th flotillas, had been created in France by 1942. In 1943, a U-boat base was set up in Toulon which became the home base for the 29th flotilla until the city was captured the following year during Operation Dragoon.

The German Kriegsmarine operated several hundred U-boats from various French bases during the war until the liberation of France in mid to late 1944 following the Allied landings in Normandy.

Brest
The German 5th Panzer Division captured the French port city of Brest on 18 June 1940. Prior to its capture Allied forces managed to destroy the harbour facilities, rendering the city's ports useless. Brest's ports were rebuilt by the Germans during September 1940. The first German U-boat to use Brest as a home port was U-65 which reached the city in August 1940. The 1st flotilla later moved from its former base in Kiel to Brest in June 1941 and the first U-boat from that flotilla to enter the city was U-204. By the end of the year, the 9th flotilla had also established itself in Brest.

Construction on a U-boat bunker in Brest began in January 1941. By September 1941, U-372 entered the first U-boat pen of the bunker. Once it was finished, the bunker was 333 m wide, 192 m long and approximately 17 m high. The bunker was essentially two structures in one and took up 52,000 square metres of space. The first building was made up of 13 pens, consisting of A to E and 1 to 8, and the second building held pens 9 and 10. The roof of the U-boat bunker in Brest was 3.6 m high in the first building and 4.3 m high in the second. One more layer of concrete was laid down over most of the existing roofing making the overall thickness of the bunker's roof 6.2 m.

During it's existence, the U-boat base in Brest as well as the bunker were attacked over 80 times by Allied aircraft. The first of such attacks began in January 1941. They finally ceased in mid to late 1944. Due to the massive defenses that guarded the U-boat base at Brest, over 50 Allied aircraft were lost during these air raids. It took until August of 1944 for any real damage resulting from air raids on the bunkers to occur. During one attack that month, the 617th Squadron of the RAF attacked the bunker with several Avro Lancasters carrying 12,000 pound Tallboy bombs measuring over 6 m in length. These attacks took place on August 5, 12, and 13. Twenty-six aircraft each dropped one Tallboy on the U-boat bunker, scoring nine direct hits and two near-misses. Of the nine that hit the bunker, only five of them penetrated the thick roof. However, these bombs caused little damage to the inside of the bunker or to any of the U-boats inside.

By September 1944 the city was under siege by the Allies. As a result the U-boats stationed in Brest were evacuated. The last U-boat to leave was U-256 which departed the city under the command of Korvkpt. Lehmann-Willenbrock on 4 September 1944. She was taken to a German U-boat base in Bergen, Norway, arriving there on 17 October. Both the 1st and the 9th flotillas were disbanded in September 1944 and all U-boat activity at the base ended. Brest was captured by the Allies on 21 September 1944 following a month-long siege which resulted in more than 10,000 Allied casualties and destroyed much of the city.

Lorient
German troops captured Lorient on 21 June 1940. Just over two weeks later on 7 July 1940, U-30 was the first German U-boat to enter the port city. By early 1943, Lorient was at its peak of its U-boat activity; there were as many as 28 U-boats in the base at any one time. Construction on the U-boat bunkers never ceased in Lorient. By the time the Allies re-took the city in 1944, the facility was still not completely finished as per the original plans. Nevertheless, it was the largest and most complex of all the U-boat bases in occupied France. Of the 1,149 major U-boat overhauls undertaken in all the French bases during the war, 492 of them took place in the dockyard at Lorient.

In November 1940, with the port rapidly expanding, Admiral Karl Dönitz and his staff moved their headquarters from Paris to Lorient. The new headquarters for the German Kriegsmarine operating in France was a requisitioned house at Kernevel, facing the Keroman bunkers. However, following the raid at Saint-Nazaire in 1942 the headquarters in Lorient was considered too exposed and by March 1942 had been moved back to Paris.

The strategic importance of Lorient caused it to be heavily fortified during the German occupation. A large number of anti-aircraft positions were added and the base was declared Festung Lorient (Fortress Lorient). After the Allied invasion of Normandy on 6 June 1944 Lorient was cut off from the rest of Germany. The first Allied forces to reach the city were members of the American 4th Armoured Division, who began fighting for the outskirts of the town on 7 August 1944. Most of the U-boats stationed there had left the city during the first two weeks of August with the last one to leave being U-155 on 5 September. However, the Allied advance bypassed Lorient for the most part due to the fact that the city was heavily fortified. The 15,000 man garrison in the city held out under the command of General Wilhelm Fahrmbacher until 8 May 1945 when all German forces in Europe surrendered.

Two flotillas were stationed at Lorient during its time as a U-boat base, the 2nd and 10th flotillas. As the position of the Germans in France became more tenuous the 2nd flotilla was transferred to Norway. As U-boat activity came to an end at Lorient the 10th flotilla was disbanded in October 1944. Two U-boats were found in Lorient when the base surrendered following the end of the war: U-129, which had been scuttled in front of the bunker Keroman III on 18 August 1944 and U-123, which was still inside Pen K3. The badly damaged U-129 was raised and scrapped. U-123 was in good shape and was commissioned into the French Navy in 1947 as S-10 Blaison.

Saint-Nazaire


The first U-boat to reach Saint-Nazaire was U-46 under the command of Oblt. Engelbert Endrass on 21 September 1940. This city was to eventually become the base for two U-boat flotillas: the 7th, which moved from Kiel to Saint-Nazaire in January–June 1941, and the 6th, which came from Danzig in February 1942. The base was in full use from October 1942 onwards and reached peak activity during July, August, and September 1943. Among the famous boats stationed at this base were U-48, U-552, U-96, U-567 and U-97.

The construction work on the U-boat bases at Saint-Nazaire began in February 1941. Between 1941 and 1942, over 4,000 laborers from the Todt Organization constructed the U-boat complex in St. Nazaire. The construction on the U-boat pen itself required over 313,000 cubic meters of concrete. The bunker was built on the western side of the basin at Saint-Nazaire and was 295 m wide, 130 m long and 18 m high. It contained 14 U-boat pens. After only four months of construction the first pens were ready; Admiral Dönitz opened the U-boat bunker in Saint-Nazaire on the 30 June 1941. U-203 under Kptlt. Rolf Mützelburg was the first U-boat to use the newly completed bunker. Later a sluice bunker was also built which the U-boats used to reach the sea.

An attack on Saint-Nazaire took place in March 1942 when British special units attacked a list of targets in the city. The bunker itself was not on the list of targets and was to only be attacked if an opportunity arose. However, no such attack on either the bunker or any of the U-boats stationed in Saint-Nazaire took place during the raid. In addition, 30 air attacks by RAF and USAAF aircraft during the course of the occupation of Saint-Nazaire resulted in only 18 hits on the bunker, whilst the Allies lost 62 aircraft in the process. By July 1944 Saint-Nazaire had been struck with over 2,000 tons of Allied bombs, almost wiping out the entire town but not touching the U-boat bunker itself.

After the Allied landings in Normandy on 6 June 1944, the 6th flotilla was disbanded in August of that year and the 7th flotilla was moved to Norway. The base was declared a fortress and held out under the command of Generalleutnant Hans Junck until all German forces in Europe surrendered on 8 May 1945. Most of the remaining U-boats left in August and September with U-267 being the last to leave Saint-Nazaire on 23 September.

During the siege of Saint-Nazaire, the Germans used U-boats to supply the city. In November 1944 the Befehlshaber der U-Boote (BdU) sent two supply U-boats, U-722 and U-773, to Saint-Nazaire. They were only armed with one torpedo for self-defense and were filled with vital goods and ammunition. The two U-boats left Saint-Nazaire on 7 December. The next two support U-boats to reach the besieged city were U-868 in February 1945, and U-878 in March 1945.

The last U-boat in the base at Saint-Nazaire was U-255, which had sustained damage and was unable to leave the base. In October 1944 a Heinkel 115 aircraft brought in spare parts to fix U-255 and in March 1945 a new commander for the U-boat, Oblt. Heinrich, came to Saint-Nazaire in U-878. U-878 then left the base in April and headed to La Pallice for fuel and on the 30 April laid mine barriers by the town of Les Sables d'Olonne. U-255 left Saint-Nazaire on 8 May and surrendered at sea four days later.

When the base was captured by the Allies following the surrender of all German forces in Europe, Allied soldiers discovered that U-510, a Type IXC U-boat, was still inside one of the pens, having just returned from the Far East on 23 April 1945. She was in perfect condition and was commissioned during 1946 into the French Navy as S-11 Bouan. She remained under French operation until 1963.

La Rochelle/La Pallice


From September 1940 the port city of La Rochelle and its major seaport, called La Pallice, served as an alternative base for the Italian Betasom submarines which mainly operated out of Bordeaux. In April 1941 the German General staff decided to build a U-boat bunker at La Pallice. The first two pens of the new bunker were finished in October 1941 just as the base was taken over by the 3rd flotilla on 27 October. The U-boat bunker was 195 m wide, 165 m long and 19 m high. The first U-boat in the bunker was U-82, which entered on 19 November 1941. She was followed by U-332 on 16 December and U-432 on 24 December.

In August 1944 five U-boats from the then surrounded base at Brest entered La Pallice. They were U-309, which entered on 12 August, U-763 on 14 August, U-953 on 19 August, U-766 21 August, and U-963 21 August. All but U-766 then left for Norway later that month. The last U-boat to leave the base during the fall of 1944 was U-382, on 10 September 1944.

Shortly before the end of the war two more U-boats reached the base. The Norwegian-based U-485 entered La Rochelle on 22 April 1945 and stayed there for five days to obtain fuel and food. She left the city on 29 April and surrendered at Gibraltar on 14 May. On 3 May 1945 U-255 arrived from the besieged port of Saint-Nazaire and spent two days in the base delivering fuel and food to the garrison in La Rochelle before successfully returning back to Saint-Nazaire. She then left port on 8 May and surrendered in Loch Alsh, United Kingdom on 19 May.

The German garrison at La Rochelle/La Pallice held out until 8 May 1945 when it surrendered along with all other German forces on the European continent. When the base was occupied the Allies discovered U-766 in one of the pens. The boat was commissioned into the French Navy as S-09 Laubie in 1947.

Bordeaux
When Bordeaux was captured in the fall of 1940, the Germans based the Italian Betasom flotilla in the harbor beginning in the fall of 1940 and within a month they were leaving for patrol. Despite attempts to attach 25 Italian submarines to the flotilla, and to cooperate with the German wolf pack attacks, they were not as successful at sinkings as their German counterparts.

Admiral Dönitz decided during the summer of 1941 to build a protective U-boat bunker in Bordeaux. Construction began in September 1941 and on completion, the bunker was 245 m wide, 162 m long and 19 m high. The roof of the bunker was 5.6 m thick and 3.6 m thick above the rear servicing area. The first U-boat to use the bunker at Bordeaux was U-178 which entered it on 17 January 1943.

From October 1942 Bordeaux was the home base for the 12th German flotilla which was created there under the command of Korvkpt. Klaus Scholtz. The base also became the home of most of the supply boats, Type XIV "milk cows", and the long range Type IXD2 U-boats belonging to the 12th flotilla. Type XB mine-layers and Type VIIF torpedo transports were also stationed there. Some of the longest U-boat patrols of the war began at Bordeaux; these included two patrols undertaken by U-181 and a 225-day patrol undertaken by U-196.

In September 1943, following the Italian surrender to the Allies, the 12th flotilla took over five Italian submarines and converted them for transport duties. The last U-boats to leave the base were U-534 and U-857 which left for Norway and Germany three days before the Allies occupied the base on 25 August 1944. Two U-boats could not escape from the base before the occupation. These were the Type IXD2 U-178 and the Type IXC/40 U-188, which were not seaworthy; they were scuttled on 20 August. When Allied troops entered the German U-boat pens in Bordeaux they discovered the former Italian U-boat UIT-21, which had been scuttled there; it had never seen service due to its poor condition.

Toulon
The French port of Toulon was occupied on 27 November 1942 by the German 7th Panzer division, supported by the SS battalion Langemarck (from the "Das Reich" division) and the 10th Panzer division. As the Germans advanced on the port, the crews of the French ships stationed there proceeded to destroy the vessels of the French fleet which were moored in the harbour.

On 20 January 1943 the Kriegsmarine made the decision to use Toulon as a U-boat base despite there being no bunkers at the port. In a meeting between the U-boat chief in Italy, Rear Admiral Kratzenberg, and the Kriegsmarine chief in Italy, Vice-Admiral Weichold, there was discussion of a possible transfer of the 29th Flotilla from La Spezia in Italy to Toulon. They decided that for the time being Toulon was not prepared to harbour the U-boats. It was decided to address the situation by planning construction in three phases to gradually provide the required facilities. The first of these would provide facilities for anchoring five U-boats and accommodating up to 450 men.

After two months of work, on 9 March 1943 the first U-boat, U-602, sailed into the base at Toulon for a refit after its third war patrol. Two days later U-458 arrived and at the end of the month U-602, U-458, U-561, and U-431 had arrived for fuel and supplies. All of the U-boats used the old French Mourillon submarine base which was still operational under German command.

Following the Allied invasion of Italy, the situation on the Italian peninsula and the surrounding area was very uncertain and in August 1943 the headquarters of the 29th flotilla were moved from La Spezia to Toulon.

On 24 November 1943 the first allied bombardment of Toulon took place. A total of 100 B-17 aircraft from bases in Tunisia damaged U-380, U-73, U-450, U-371, and U-593. Only U-410 and U-642 were unharmed. After this attack, the base was reinforced with extra anti-aircraft batteries. Toulon was bombed 12 times between November 1943 and August 1944. This resulted in the loss of the following U-boats: U-380, U-410, U-421, U-586, U-642, U-952, U-967, U-471 and U-969. By the end of July 1944 the 29th flotilla only had 8 operational U-boats. After the final preparatory bombardments for Operation Dragoon (the Allied landings in Southern France) struck Toulon, the only operation submarines were U-466, U-967 and U-230. Finally, on 17 August, the only serviceable U-boat left was U-230. It became the last U-boat to depart the Toulon base, leaving that same day. Its crew scuttled her four days later.

The Allies landed in the region in August during Operation Dragoon. On August 21 the battle "for the base at Toulon began." A week later the 19 months of German occupation ended with the surrender of rear Admiral Ruhfus and his men. -->