Word: brest
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Hitler's U-boat fleet was about done. While U.S. troops pounded at the gates of Brest, Lorient and St. Nazaire, the three greatest Atlantic bases of the Unterseeboote, President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill proclaimed the destruction of 500 of the sea serpents in four years and eleven months of World...
...Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz, it was a time of anguish. He must get the 1st and 9th Submarine Flotillas away from Brest, the 2nd and 10th from Lorient, the 6th and 7th from St. Nazaire. But where could he send them? The only other Biscay bases were La Pallice and Bordeaux, each with facilities for only one flotilla, which already crowded the pens. Farther north were Bergen and Trondheim, with berths for a single flotilla apiece. But the Allied navies patrolled the Atlantic looking for U-boats on the escape routes and the Mediterranean was an Allied lake, closed...
...three great U-boat bases at Brest, Lorient and Saint-Nazaire took terrific poundings from land and air, but the Germans held on doggedly. For U.S. troops there was no choice but to fight their way in; the ports were needed by the A.E.F. and every day they held out was a day more for the last-ditch defenders...
...Brest and Saint-Nazaire might be speedily put to use. The swiftness of the American advance had probably given the Germans little time to clog their harbors with destruction. But even if these ports and Lorient had been blocked and shattered, they were prizes of immediate value. They were the Germans' chief Atlantic U-boat bases. The Battle of the Atlantic, already beaten down to nuisance proportions, might be close...
...Germans had one good Atlantic base in France that was still not threatened by Allied soldiers: Bordeaux. Toward it last week, as U.S. troops entered Brest and closed on Saint-Nazaire, steamed seven German ships. Their presumed cargoes: key personnel and key supplies from the U-boat.base at Saint-Nazaire...