U-Bootstation Keroman

dombunkerne while Scorff and Keroman III had direct access from the sea.

Keroman III, which was the biggest of them all, was in 1944 equipped with double roof, where the bottom consisted of 3.5 meters of reinforced concrete and the upper beams of similar thickness. These had a distance of 1 meter between them. This device should get bombs thrown at the bunker to detonate in the upper roof and thereby not hit the bunker.

In the summer of 1943 the Germans launched  casting of Keroman IV. That bunker would be used specifically for their latest U-boat type XXI, but the massive Allied bombing delayed construction and the bunker was never completed. Today, only a portion of the exterior walls are left, just northeast of Keroman II.

Northwest of the uboat bunkers were built a munitions depot, with six ammunition bunkers for torpedoes.

Lorient was one of the towns outside of Germany was hardest bombed by the Allies, with over 30 powerful bombetogte. Nearly 95% of the city's houses were hit but never succeeded, the Allies to strike uboats. The many attacks were hampered, however, for the Germans to supply the base with water, supplies and other necessities.

All of Lorient, which was defended by almost 15 000 German marines were being circumvented by theallies after the Normandy landings. (D-day) Lorient remained in German hands until two days after the war ended in Europe when the base surrendered to American troops. This was the 10th May 1945.

Lorient was occupied by the Germans in June 1940. Already in July the first German uboat came and the port of Lorient remained the rest of the war the most active and largest uboat base.

In November moved Admiral Karl Dönitz, with his headquarters in a villa overlooking the harbor, but after the British command raid at Saint Nazaire in 1942, he moved, for security reasons, continue to Paris.

The first Allied air raid on Lorient occurred in September 1940 and shortly after the Germans began construction of bunkers to protect their uboats, two so-called dombunkers. These were cast in reinforced concrete, was 80 meters long and 16 meters wide and had a maximum thickness of 1.5 meters. They could each contain one uboat. The uboats was towed out of the water on a cart and brought into the bunkers.

This proved quickly however, not to be effective enough and in February 1941 began construction of a uboat bunker with five submarine pens called Keroman I. It came to measure 400 x 145 meters and was completed just south of the two dombunkers, six months later .

Almost simultaneously the Germans built a bunker, a little further up the river. This bunker measured 145 x 50 meters and had two uboat pens. The bunker was called Scorff bunker and was operational in August 1941.

Keroman was the name of the intire base and subsequent bunkers that were built were Keroman II, which began in May, with seven pens and Keroman III in October of that year also with the 7th.