Louis Joubert Lock

The US Army had undertaken various development projects around Saint-Nazaire, including the construction of a refrigeration plant in the docks for storage of imported meat and dairy products.

However, scale problems encountered during the construction of the Île de France and the opportunity to build the proposed super passenger liner which would become the Normandie resulted in a reassessment of the project.

The original strategic purpose of the combined Royal Navy and British Commandos raid was to make the lock – the only location on the Atlantic seaboard capable of servicing the German battleships Bismarck (already sunk in May 1941) and Tirpitz – inoperative.

[1] This gave the port a strong strategic importance to the Axis Powers, and it was decided that if this drydock could be put out of action, any offensive sortie by the Tirpitz into the Atlantic could be much more dangerous for her and probably not worth the risk.

The first ship to be accommodated after the repairs was the former German ocean liner Europa, which on refit became the SS Liberté, given to France by the United States in compensation for the loss of the Normandie in New York.