Military History | Base sous-marine de Saint-Nazaire — Serious Damage Was Not Expected

Fourteen pens went up on the port at Saint-Nazaire from 1941, eight of them drainable for repair and six kept afloat. The French state's heritage register counts about five thousand travailleurs volontaires ou requis on the site. A plaque in the entrance passage, put up in 2017, calls them exiled and interned Spanish Republicans and forced labourers of every nationality, compelled by the Nazis to build it. The roof was thickened twice, the second time in June 1943, and a bomb-burster structure added that August. The occupier was not treating it as finished.

In the Commons on 17 March 1943, Mr Cary asked whether the objectives at Lorient justified raids "on a scale and of a severity generally reserved for objectives in enemy territory". Churchill answered that overcoming the U-boats had first priority in British and American plans and that destroying the bases was essential to it, and that the coastal population had repeatedly been urged to leave, much of Brest's and Lorient's having been evacuated. He did not mention Saint-Nazaire. Mr Stokes then asked whether there was evidence the bombs broke through "the U-boat kennels, as they are called". The Prime Minister said he would have to have notice of that question.

On 15 April he answered it. "Some damage has been done to the shelters, but serious damage was not expected. The object of the attacks was to cause dislocation to the repair, transport and power facilities afforded by these bases to U-boats. In this respect a considerable measure of success has been achieved."

Gilbert Le Guen, in the Annales de Bretagne in 1953, counted what stood when the garrison surrendered on 11 May 1945. Of about eight thousand houses in the commune, a hundred remained intact and 3,690 no longer existed.

The base belongs to the city now. It holds a museum, the tourist office and a music venue; pens 1 to 5 are a working factory; the register records the label Architecture contemporaine remarquable, awarded in 2009. Two plaques share one pier by the entrance.

📸 Cover: the base from across the water, all fourteen pen mouths open to the basin, scrub and a white radome on the roof, industrial buildings at the far right. Photograph by Seb35, 8 July 2012, CC0 via Wikimedia Commons.