The only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the
U-boat peril - Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
Churchill, as a former First Lord of the Admiralty, was well versed in
the importance of Britain protecting itself at sea. In the opening years
of the Second World War, Germany's U-boat (submarine) fleet was tasked
with attacking and destroying the supply ships that Britain depended
upon for its survival.
The U-boats were under the command of Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz who,
for much of the war, effectively guided that strategy. There was a very
real possibility that the British people would starve if the U-boats
succeeded in their campaign. When France fell to the German forces in
1940, Hitler's Ubootwaffe gained a significant asset in five important
ports along the Brittany coast - Brest, Lorient, St. Nazaire, La Palace
and Bordeaux. The use of these ports put Germany's submarine force
hundreds of miles closer to the action in the North Atlantic, the routes
of the Allied supply convoys which were operating mainly between
Halifax, Nova Scotia and various English port cities. This afforded the
U-boats several more days at sea on their deadly patrols than was
possible while they had been based in Germany and German-occupied
Norway.
In this new publication from Philip Kaplan, the massive bunkers or
'pens' constructed in Brittany by the laborers of the German
Organisation Todt are revisited. These giant structures, some of which
sheltered more than a dozen submarines at a time, still exist because
they were built with concrete ceilings more than three meters thick.
With equally impressive supporting walls, they suffered relatively
little damage in the wartime bombing raids of the Royal Air Force and
the US Eighth Army Air Force. Illustrated with more than 150 rare and
compelling photo images, this book is a richly rewarding journey back
across time to some of the most intriguing and electrifying sites from
the war years. The story of the pen shelters and their part in that war
is both fascinating and enduring.
