The submarine base of Saint-Nazaire is a large fortified U-boat pen built by Germany during the Second World War. Before the war Saint-Nazaire was one of the largest harbours of the Atlantic coast of France. During the Battle of France, the German Army arrived in Saint-Nazaire, in June 1940. The harbour was immediately used for submarine operations.
In December, a mission of the Organisation Todt inspected the harbour to study the possibilities to build a submarine pen invulnerable to air bombing from England. Work soon began under the supervision of engineer Probst.
The selected space was that of the docks and buildings of the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique, which were razed. Building began in February 1941. The adjacent dry-dock in Saint-Nazaire dock was the target of Operation Chariot, a British commando raid in 1942, the U-boat pens were a secondary target of the raid. The attack successfully disabled the dry-dock by ramming an explosive-filled destroyer into it, and by demolition teams wrecking the pumps and electrical system.
The base was equipped with 62 workshops, 97 magazines, 150 offices, 92 dormitories for submarine crews, 20 pumps, 4 kitchens, 2 bakeries, two electrical plants, one restaurant and a hospital. On the roof is one completed and one uncompleted M19 Maschinengranatwerfer automatic 5 cm mortar bunker.
The zone of the base was abandoned for a long time. In 1994, the municipality of Saint-Nazaire decided to re-urbanise the base, in a project name Ville-Port. The base now features several museums, including a mockup of a transatlantic liner called the Escal'Atlantic, and the French submarine Espadon.
References:Saint-Georges de Boscherville Abbey is a former Benedictine abbey. It was founded in about 1113 by Guillaume de Tancarville on the site of an earlier establishment of secular canons and settled by monks from the Abbey of Saint-Evroul. The abbey church made of Caumont stone was erected from 1113 to 1140. The Norman builders aimed to have very well-lit naves and they did this by means of tall, large windows, initially made possible by a wooden ceiling, which prevented uplift, although this was replaced by a Gothic vault in the 13th century. The chapter room was built after the abbey church and dates from the last quarter of the 12th century.
The arrival of the Maurist monks in 1659, after the disasters of the Wars of Religion, helped to get the abbey back on a firmer spiritual, architectural and economic footing. They erected a large monastic building one wing of which fitted tightly around the chapter house (which was otherwise left as it was).