Uboat pens present day

[Kapt Z]

Are the pens that still exist in France open to the public? Are they being used for anything? Is there museums connected with them?

Just curious as I have seen recent photos of some and might visit France again in the future.

[bookworm_020]

They still exist, and they are still in use. The movie Das Boot used the the real thing for the movie. Some are open to the public as a museum, others are in private hands.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_pen

[Task Force]

wouldnt mind haveing one, Would be nice to have a uboat in it to.

[Drakken]

In Williamson's book "Wolf Pack", the author mentions that some uboat storage facilities in Germany were completely sealed off after the war, some with Uboat still in them. :hmm:

[gandalf71]

In Williamson's book "Wolf Pack", the author mentions that some uboat storage facilities in Germany were completely sealed off after the war, some with Uboat still in them. :hmm:
That´s true, but this bunker is gone completly today.

The Elbe II bunker at the old HDW wharf in Hamburg was partly destroyed by air raids in the closing days of WWII. Three Type XXI boats, almost ready for comissioning, were trapped and scuttled in the damaged bunker pen. They were partly salvaged in the late 40´s and the remains were accessible, during low tide water, up until the mid 90´s.

Today the bunker is completly gone, they tried to blast it in 2001...with little effect...and knocked it down, piece by piece in the following two years. Nowadays is a container storage area, where the bunker was located.

There are still some remains under the waterline, as you can see on the following areal shot:

http://wikimapia.org/1836033/Elbe-II-U-boat-Bunker

And here are some photos and an article on u-boat.net and a more comprehensive article on lostplaces.de (sorry german only), where you can see the remains of the boats, before the pen got filled up:

http://www.uboat.net/history/hamburg_elbe2.htm

http://www.lostplaces.de/cms/content/view/168/33/

Cheers,
Michael

[RealJambo]

This book makes for interesting reading about the pens, both during the war and present day :up:

http://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&id=9eLekoQ8-t8C&dq=u-boat+bases+and+bunkers+gordon+williamson&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=Oeb5WJoCWU&sig=bAsEbik_L7DTZlty82LAa3GHnMc&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PPP1,M1