Saint-Nazaire submarine base, Maritime museum in Saint-Nazaire, France.
The Saint-Nazaire submarine base is a 300 m long, 130 m wide and 18 m high reinforced-concrete U-boat shelter at the water's edge, its facade a row of ten massive piers with deep rectangular openings and angled buttresses. The roof is about 8 m thick, built of four layers including a Fangrost grid of steel beams, and carries steel frameworks and a lattice tower. Inside are 14 pens, numbered 1 to 14 from north to south.
Construction began in February 1941 on the site of the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique docks, with pens 6–8 finished by June. Pens 9–14 followed from July 1941 to January 1942, pens 1–5 from February to June 1942, and an annex tower was added from June to December 1943. A fortified lock, 155 m long, was built in 1943–44.
Since 1994 the Ville-Port project has converted the bunker into cultural space. Two pens hold Escal'Atlantic, a walk-through reconstruction of a transatlantic liner, and the submarine Espadon, built in 1960, is displayed nearby. The roof opened to the public in July 1997 and looks over the Loire estuary, the Saint-Nazaire bridge and the Chantiers de l'Atlantique shipyards.
The roof has been open to the public since July 1997 and gives a view over the Loire estuary, the Saint-Nazaire bridge and the Chantiers de l'Atlantique shipyards. Two inter-box passages, between pens 5 and 6 and between pens 12 and 13, lead to the upper levels. The base lies at the water's edge, in the Ville-Port district.
The roof carries one completed and one unfinished M19 Maschinengranatwerfer automatic 5 cm mortar bunker, plus a R 633 land-defence work — the only example of such a structure built on a U-boat base roof. Since July 1997 the roof has been open to the public, giving a view over the Loire estuary, the Saint-Nazaire bridge and the Chantiers de l'Atlantique shipyards.
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