St. Nazaire U Boat Pens ~ A visitor's guide.
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- čas přidán 6. 12. 2015
- This video gives an overview of what there is to see at the St. Nazaire U Boat Pens in France. There is also a brief detail of the pens and an indication of where to park.
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The movie "Das Boot" has scenes shot in one of those remaining pens. If You want to get an impression how it would have looked with U-Boats inside, watch that movie!
La Pallice surely ?
isn't das boot strictly set in 1941? it has been one of my pet peeves that there are no media showing the uboat war in the later stages of the war
Fantastic movie
Visited here in 1993. As I recall the roof was doubled up to protect the subs hence the 8 metre thickness. Its a very impressive site and well worth a visit.
The fact that the U-boat pens are still there in spite of the RAF attacks tells us how strong they were made. Very interesting to say the least.
@John Brighton Even a Grand Slam could not penetrate these pens. They were indeed formidable.
@John Brighton whatever a dvda is supposed to be
Look at The Greatest Raid of All Time; that'll open your eyes
They could use the 10 ton grand slam bombs
I went to these pens, briefly, in 1992, I was driving back from the south after a family holiday and engineered a stop at St Nazaire, unfortunately, my wife and young kids at the time were not as enthusiastic as I was and we only had around half-hour there. Its always been a place I've wanted to revisit and spend an entire day there...many thanks for posting.
Its a valid reason to get a divorce and severe ties with your children.
My father was a member of the 199th Field Artillery unit during WWII. He arrived near Lorient just after D-Day. Camp was set up near Lochrist, France. Coordination with the Free French was excellent and many "Boche" were pointed out to GI's before they could cause any casualties. The mission of the 199th's batteries was to draw down upon the Germans in the area of Saint Nazaire, Bouvron, Plouhinec, Plouharnel, Quiberon, Morlvenez, Port Louis, Hennebont, Nostang and eventually Lorient as Lorient was the location of their other Kriegsmarine base. Forward spotters for his unit would gain a tactical advantage in say a church tower or by flying overhead and look for German howitzers or anti aircraft guns etc and would unleash extreme fire barrages upon each objective thereafter. German artillery spotters also needed height for spotting and frequently used church towers as well. Sadly that church would become the focus of artillery such as the church at Plouhinec. Churches were also used as command posts such as the monastery at St Benedictine near Plouharnel before an assault on the Quiberon peninsula. Bridges like Pont Lorois defended by German artillery (88's and 37mm guns) would need to be taken out. His unit collapsed that bridge into the river. Eventually pinning the Germans back to Lorient and cutting off all land supply to the base. The Germans fiercely defended the submarine base until the end of the war and Lorient itself paid a god awful price from artillery and allied bombers as fighting was done to free this area. He used to say it is easy to blow things up, it is the getting along that is sometimes hard. He did remark how gentlemanly the German prisoners they took were and frequently shared candy and tobacco rations with them. He spoke with many of his German artillery counterparts who marveled at the 199th's shooting and ability to remain mobile and stealthy. Shortly after VE day 1945, my Dad returned to England and married my Mother whom he had met in Bideford, England shortly before D-Day. They remained married 67 years!
Brittany was never freed
When I was young ,I deed a lot of exploration inside the tunnels .End also reading the German inscriptions inside the alcoves for submarines ..
On the roof it was possible to see the anti shelling installation some time dammaged .
Always I was impressed of this concrete building ...
wow that is a piece of history which should be taught in school. It's something modern engineers should study and learn about. You can see how well build and how heavy it is and how well it stood it's time so far. It's part of the dark German history but it is also something to remember so we learn from the past and show our new Generation what once was and what it had cost us.
Great video ! I do not foresee that I'll have a chance to visit this place, thank you for sharing.
What a piece of History glad it has`nt been demolished................. loved the video
The Allies, particularly the British did try to demolish some of these pens and basically stuffed it up and created a completely useless and hazardous wreck in the process. By leaving the structures in place they can at least be used in one way or another.
look what stands in the middle of Vienna. high-rise bunkers! can't they cant be demolished too, just to resistent.
Fascinating video - I am glad you got up onto the roof, the view showed us how the layout works very well....
The anti bomb arrangements on top of the pens were particularly interesting to view (I had only seen drawings of them before)..
The theory behind the design was that the arrangement of concrete beams and the spaces and layers between them would deal with the bomb before it reached the main meat of the roof - having ideally detonated on contact with one of the cross beams the void spaces and other beams between them would contain, dissipate and reduce the explosive force of the blast....the science is, as with so much of the German wartime effort, very advanced - not only that, it worked ! - no 'Tallboy' or 'Earthquake' or any large bomb dropped by the Allies did significant damage to the pens and NO U-Boat sheltering in them was ever lost to air attack - at the time, as was hoped, they were pretty much impregnable...
You will notice another interesting detail from your views of the roof - the defences are unfinished....a large part of the roof is missing its anti-bomb cross beams as can clearly be seen - this is because the need for concrete and labour elsewhere was so high that the 3rd Reichs supply system was simply not able to meet all of the numerous demands - the pens were never fully completed as a result....
Thanks for the tour. Nicely filmed.
Great video, Nick. Visited in 1978 but didn't get inside one of the pens.
Interesting tour nicely photographed. Thank you.
wow Nick you made a really excellent video! Even included parkingspots and fares! Cudos to you Sir!
As a lover of history and boyhood facination of submarines, I chanced upon this video by laying sick in bed reading a 2006 book 'For crying out loud' by Jeremy Clarkson who laments on the lack of a decent gift shop with relevant souveniers when he visited this place. Your excellent video shows a lost opportunity by some savy knowledgable tourist operator to show people around (and sell some 'submarine souveneirs!). Is is a part of French history that they just don't want to acknowledge?...if nothing else it was an engineering marvel that strangley is not getting the historical recognition it deserves - especially when you consider how the submarine wolf packs impacted upon the near defeat of England...all ignored and forgotten it seems except for a trickle of curious history lovers. Oh...and how absurd to have a photography ban there!...glad you circumvented it.
The so-called Battle of the Atlantic has been blasted into British living rooms since the dawn of TV.
Thank you for taking the time and effort to video these pens. Lest we ever forget.
Very interesting and informative thank you very much for taking the time to do this.
Good video, interesting and clear, thanks for the upload / tour.
Thank you+ so much mr. Nick for the upload and a walk back in time.
Thanks for making this video and hello from Melbourne Australia.
I stumbled across these pens in 2001 and was astonished at their size and strength. Even the RAF Blockbuster 10 ton bombs couldn't get through the roof, so the only way the RAF could deny their use to the Nazis was to flatten the surrounding area after warning the populace that they were going to do it. There are signboards in the town stating this.
The other thing, besides the size, was how cold it was inside them, even in summer. They are very ugly because of their dark grey, ageing concrete colour, and their size, but still impressive.
Thanks! Nice video and commentary. I've always wanted to visit there.
nice guide, thanks for taking the time to make it
Very informative thank you. Going to visit and photograph the site this summer.
Excellent ! Thank you...Greetings from the Philippines.
Interesting video Nick. Thank you .
There were used in several games I played , really nice to , see what they are really like ,thank you !
Great vid. These must have been, in part, the inspiration for the the various "Underground laires" written into the James Bond films . . let alone Austen Powers !
The roof of one of the blocks at Lorient has a double-skinned concrete roof. And during the war it was hit by several heavy armour piercing bombs (Mainly dropped by the RAF - the 500 pounders dropped by the US 8th Airforce just bounced off) causing the top outer skin to partially collapse . . .but the inner roof skin remained intact.
I imagine that Lorient would have been the prestige target as Donnitz's (The U-boat fleet commander) head quarters was located nearby.
Thank you Sir! Excellent video
Interesting to learn that this complex is open to the public - the ones at La Pallice are not. Apparently still under French Navy control - we visited the port of La Rochelle a few years ago and were advised the pens were a restricted area.
Plan to visit this place,thank you.
Thank you very much for the great video. 🙏🏻 it is on my to do list. 😁
Informative video, thank you.
Very good doku.Thanks for your work.You done done awesome.job⚓✌
Great vid
eo...very easy to understand the subject!
I wonder if anyone has ever done scuba dives in the pens. I would imagine there's all kinds of neat, interesting things on the bottom that were either lost or tossed overboard.
It's a shame that the salt water probably ruined whatever could be down there
It has already been done after the war.
Great presentation, thank you
great footage & talk thru👌👍!!
Absolutely amazing!
Wow , I am going to put that on my agenda next time I am in Europe, in my way to Normandy. Great info.i did not know this still existed .
Normandy and all of north-western France is full of WWII places and relics.
Nice video and info
Very interesting. The U-Boat pens in Trondheim Norway are somewhat similar.
Thanks, I will never be able to visit anything myself anymore because of a dislocated disc, so I am very grateful for vids like this.
Lovely video and helps someone get prepared before going. I see you are doing visitor guides to WW2 sites, wonder where you are going to visit in 2016? maybe the V weapon sites.
Keep it up.
Hi Nick, thank you for sharing with us. As much as I hate the regime that generated the German War Machine and the fortifications they have left behind. I've always admired the Atlantic Wall fortifications (more so the efforts the Allies did to penetrate them).
This has been on my places to visit since first reading about Operation Chariot and raid to stop Tirpitz using the docks at St Nazaire
Very cool place to visit!
I'd love to see this.
Thanks! I'll visit here from Bayeux Sept 17.
One of the proposed uses for the early uranium gun-type atomic bomb was as bunker busters for those sub pens. They had a perfect form factor for penetrating large amounts of concrete before going off.
Great military strategy and engineering for the times.
I noted their website says "no photography". Glad you got around that.
I have always lived on the edge!!!!
The attack on St Naziare and the blowing up of the Cambletown was not an attack on the pens. St Nazaire was the Atlantic base for the Bismarck class battleships of the German Fleet, like Tipitz, it had the largest dry dock on the Atlantic coast, the aim was to put the dry dock out of use to stop the Germans using St Nazaire as a base for Tirpitz, Eugen and Bismarck. The pool in front of the pens is called the basin. U boats would have been moored here, the pens were puely for protecting them when they were being loaded with torpedoes and stores, that is when a submarine is at it's most vulnerable, all hatches are open.
This drydock is still in use. They build big cruisers still there.
I think the navy ship seen in the video is one of the Mistral Boets, build in Saint Nazaire for Saudi Arabia and sold to Egypt.
The french should buy a real Uboat for a pen, this would be a massive money maker..
You would have to fill the boat with money to keep it afloat and maintained tho. :-(
So impressive and clearly built to last.
ÓTIMO VÍDEO ! FROM BRASIL.
Great look around Nick. Thanks! Cheers from New Zealand.
Is the drydock that HMS Cambeltown rammed still there?
Yes, the dry dock is still there and still in use. It was repaired after the war.
Thank you.... seeing something I will never see in person.
A very interesting video.
very good, well done.
A place I must visit.
Nice one Nick
Truly amazing the engineering and construction , I can only imagine the price in human lives it cost
Very good thanks!
Whilst on holiday, parents went there in 1974. Stupidly I turned down the offer of a visit and stayed on the beach at Pornic. Apparently, during the official tour, there was a "Tumbleweed" moment when one of the German visitors told the guide, "Well, of course, you French could not have done anything like this" . . . . . . . gasps . . . . then deathly silence.
Subsequently, I visited La Pallice (La Rochelle) pens in 2007 (Where Das Boot was filmed) and, after being refused entry at the Commercial Port entrance (Because I hadn't applied in writing to the port director in advance), slipped in by stepping over a knee height chain fence at the seaward side dock entrance and managed my own unofficial guided tour one lunchtime.
At that time some of the facilities were still occupied by the French Military but the port was beginning to become commercialised.
Looking at Google Earth and Street View recently, I see that there has been substantial commercial re-development on the site and the perimeter security has been completely sewn-up. You'd have a scale one of those six-foot steel picket fences with the pointy-tops to get access sans notice.
Went to Lorient pens in 2008. That's more orientated to public visits and has guided tours. The outside of the bunkers was decaying quite badly at the time of my visit, with extensive netting deployed on the side walls to catch falling pieces of concrete dislodged by the rusted and "Blowing" steel reinforcement rods.
Made a half-hearted attempt to get into Brest in 2010, but I not sure whether public access there is encouraged as its near one of the French Naval Academies.
Nice video nick
Quantas histórias tem esse local vídeo maravilhoso
Thank you!
Thx for this video
That really is a lot of reinforcement. It's almost mostly steel.
Very good thank you
It most certainly ghasts the flabbers ... and that Campbletown/drydock affair was also worthy of more recognition than most folks these days care to give it ...
John Hunter ...We must not upset the Germans and their stinking ,corrupt E.U. Fourth Reich. by mentioning the war.
Elizabeth Reign Castillo - You will rounded up with the rest of the rest of the remainers and shot a dawn :)) - czcams.com/video/nJjdFtcQP3U/video.html
The purpose of the attack on St Nazaire by seaborne British Commandos (Operation Chariot) was to deny access of the German Capital Ships such as Tirpitz, Scharnhost, Gniesenau, Prince Eugen to the huge dry dock which could have been used to repair these pocket battleship and cruisers. The dock was originally designed for overhauling and repair of the liners such as Ile de France and Normandie.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Nazaire_Raid
Were the U-boat pens that were drydocks open to the public, or are they off-limits?
Very cool.
Real good, like you said, bakeries, hospitals, restaurant. Saw a 1 or 2 movies sorta based in the pens, but this is the first time I've seen the real thing. Were there any pens collapsed on a cupla boats like I've heard a cupla stories about? Thanks m8!
very good video
thank you
I've been to the U boat pens at Lorient. If anything even more impressive as the base is quite a bit bigger
The amount of construction activity that went on in Occupied France during WW II is staggering to say the least. Remember that most of these works were done with far more manual labour (forced and imported) and less machinery than we would use today.
you can't beat free labor... #machschon
All the photos of Atlantic Wall construction I have ever seen lacked any earthmoving equipment. I think I saw a solitary German bulldozer in one picture.
Thanks.
The fact that a lock is used to enter the basin means the pens were river water, not salt water. Correct? Anybody?
Yep, the basin was fed by the Loire
It's really amazing what German engineering could do those days. Unfortunately, all for WW2
Thanks..
Will be going here in the next year...can't wait. German engineering at its finest.
would have been amazing to see it during its operational days... must have been amazing
@@NapFloridian Without question...simply amazing to think of the day-to-day operations, in war-time conditions.
unbelievable perfect engineering by Germany in WW 2...
greets from Bucharest
.....
What makes the engineering so great?
@@kbanghart what makes you question that the engineering is so great?!
@@_Game0ver_ it was a question
@@kbanghart idk. the structural strength. you could bomb this for weeks or months and nothing would happen. the allies needed to level a city so the pens would have 0 supplies because it was almost impossible to take them out. while the people inside would be ok. they are still standing today after being bombarded hundred to thousands of times. they are over 75 years old and still very strong. imagine being punched thousands of times by mma fighters and boxers and come out unscathed.
@@kbanghart the fact that it took less than 8-10 years is crazy.
I think the Germans planned on staying there and not leaving anytime soon.
Have you seen the AA towers in Berlin?
Built to outlast the 1000 year Reich.
(err... 7-ish)
@@KermitFrazierdotcom 13 years
Of course.
Offices inside were wood paneled and carpeted. Nice setup for deadly business. Lots of lives lost in a short time 👩🔧🇺🇲🛠️🇷🇺
Bravest of the brave 🇬🇧 ❤
Entertaining
I used to live not too far from St Nazaire. My old neighbour and his younger brother were apprentices in the dockyard and made to work for the Germans. One day, I think it was in 1944 there was a daylight bombing raid on the docks and my neighbour who was 16 was jumping up and down with his mates shouting "bravo les Anglais", although I wonder if it was the Americans as it was during the day. He arrived home two hours later only to find out that his brother who was only 14 was killed in the raid.
sad indeed
05:30 In this sweeping shot that looked like "Charles DeGaulle" aircraft carrier tied-up.
Reminds me of the medal of honor mission on the ps2
Spare a thought for the poor bastards that were forced to build the place !. Many worked to death. When the Cambletown blew up, German soldiers heads were found on top of the pens. What man has done to his fellow man......
They deserve remembrance.
After the war they thought about destroying them but heavily fortified. The British tried bombing them with 1000 lb.block buster bombs and barely scratched them. Thanks for the tour.
Is that the pen that was bombed by the grand slam
You would think they would be in use as a marina or something
Krauts are some awesome engineers......
Did they film Das Boot scenes there?
Yes, in a similiar remaining one, that in La Rochelle.
We have some evidence of"concrete cancer" developing in some of the walls, caused by salt water soaking and insufficient concrete cover of the steel reinforcement bars.
Well, the French should fix it. But I doubt they would want.
Gosh! The French wanted it, too!
They got a souvenir shop?
And what would they sell? Little statues of Herr Hitler? Or maybe a model of an American merchant ship being sunk by one his submarines?