THE VALENTINE BUNKER Author: Oscar Bakker
UNCIVIL ENGINEERING: U-BOOT BUNKERS PART 2 Part 1 of the ‘Uncivil Engineering: U-boot Bunkers’ article was published in the previous edition of the ConcepTueel. This will be the second and last part about the U-boot bunkers. First, we start with a small recap; At the end of the previous article, we were at the end of the construction of the Keroman III bunker at the German naval base in the occupied French coastal town of Lorient. In the original plan, the Germans planned to build at least two more bunkers, collectively named Keroman IVa and IVb. However, the last of the planned Keroman IV bunkers were not completed. Only the foundation was finished after work ceased in April of 1944. By also using several smaller pre-war
FIG. 1
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French bunkers, the Lorient submarine base could house a maximum of 30 U-boots at the same time.
Indestructable Fortresses During the war, the Lorient submarine base and the city itself were heavily bombed, especially in the spring and summer of 1943. The Allied bombers were unable to destroy the bunkers, even with the enormous Tallboy (12000 pound) and Grandslam (22000 pound) bombs. Therefore, they decided to cut off the base from their supplies by destroying the city itself: more than 500 highly explosive bombs and 60.000 tons of other ordnance were dropped on Lorient during the
U-boot bunker in Lorient | Photo: Jaenecke (2014)
war, destroying more than 90% of the city itself. Many other towns with U-boot bunkers suffered a similar fate. However, the Allied air offensive never managed to destroy the Lorient submarine base itself. Only the Allied invasion of Normandy would put a stop to the Lorient submarine base: in August 1944, the last German U-boot here set sail for Norway. Other German U-boot bases in France suffered a similar fate. Often, these towns were designated as ‘Festungen”, fortress towns, to be held at all cost. As a result, most of these ports held out for months deep behind the actual frontlines. Often, U-boots were even chartered to secretly supply the garrisons of these besieged towns.
