U-boatbunker "Valentin"
The U-boatbunker "Valentin" can be found in Farge, Germany.
The city Farge can be found north of Bremerhaven, you can follow the direction Bremerhaven/Cuxhaven.
In the city itself you can't missed the huge bunker.
The bunker can't be visited without permission, the only possibility to visit the bunker is with a special tour, just as we did.
The purpose of the bunker was to construct U-boats, the 9 parts of the specific U-boat, U-boat XXI, were already finished. In the bunker they would put all the parts together and then a complete U-boat would leave the bunker.
The bunker is build next to the "Weser", the plan was to dig a channel to the bunker so the U-boat could easily get in and out, they never had the time to do this.
The construction of the bunker started around 1943, the bunker was never finished but in 1945, almost 90% of the bunker was finished but not a single U-boat was constructed in the bunker.
The plan was that the U-boats would follow several construction areas and then finally arrive in the
dry-dock were they could leave the bunker.
So the bunker was diverted in several parts, in each part a construction part was added to the U-boat and then finally the U-boat would be complete.
The Germans used by the construction of "Valentin" a lot of forced labours and prisoners of war, during the construction 1750 people died.
After the construction was stopped, the forced labours and the prisoners were brought by train to the concentration camp "Bergen-Belsen".
They never reach there destination because the camp was already liberated by the Allies, so the prisoners were transported trough northern Germany for 7 days, during the transport a lot of people died.
After 7 days they reach the sea were they put the prisoners in three ships, unfortunately two of the ships were sunk by Allied bombers, only 458 people of the 7500 that were on board of the two ships survived the tragedy.
We can't forget that during the construction of this bunker a lot of people died so when you visit the bunker you can keep this in your mind, you will find in front of the bunker a memorial.
After the war, the Allies used the bunker for the testing of new weapons.
In 1966 the German Navy took over the place and used it for the storage of all kinds of equipment and material, till today it is still in use by them and therefor hard to visit.
Technical data:
Length-426 m
Width eastside-67 m
Width westside-97 m
Height-22 m/25 m till 30 m/33 m
Area-35.375 m2
Concrete-550.000 m3
Steel-20.000 t
Weight-12.0000.000 t
Total cost: 120.000.000 RM
