Hitler's U-Boat War: The Hunters

Well, if you're looking for a comprehensive book on the u-boat war in all theatres during WWII, this is it. If you're looking for a humongous doorstopper to hold up your desk, it'll serve that purpose too. I got about half way through before the detail threatened to make my head explode and I started to lose the thread of the overall campaign. I was also slightly disappointed because my history teacher used a quote from Clay Blair that implied he thought the u-boat war was never particularly dangerous, but although you do get the impression it could've been a lot worse, what happened seems bad enough to me.

An exhaustive (and exhausting to read) catalogue of every u-boat action, and every attempted u-boat action, along with great technical detail about the u-boats themselves and the convoy system and the commanders and...  Yeh, you get the picture.  I suspect it's the biggest book I've ever seen, except maybe the Bible (which, admittedly, I have read all the way through twice over now, including once in 90 days which was pretty fun), and this was only part one.

I don't think it was meant to be read all the way through.  In fact, although it starts off feeling pretty readable, the sheer quantity of information and detail just makes it impossible to read right through.  As a reference, I suspect it's incomparable, with a heck of a lot of detailed research work going in to work out exactly which sub sunk which ship and when torpedoes malfunctioned and which ship was doing weather reports when.  So if you fancy having a reference to every u-boat operation during WWII, and a nice and to be fair rather interesting, chunk at the beginning about the development of the u-boat arm and the specifications of the ship, this is the book to get.

One other thing I will mention that struck me was the sheer number of times the German torpedoes malfunctioned.  Although the Battle of the Atlantic initially went rather disastrously for Britain, the number of ships saved by the torpedoes failing to detonate, or because the magnetic torpedoes which would 'kill' a ship with one torpedo rather than the contact pistols which usually needed two or three torpedoes per ship were utterly useless is quite astounding.  In the end, the Germans resorted to copying British torpedoes which kept depth far better.  So we were better with them at some things...

An interesting book then, if you've got a lot of time to read it or if you want to use it as a reference.

The Battle of Britain

Well worth reading. Oh, just to clarify, this is the one that's just come out by James Holland. Not perfect, perhaps, but incredibly wide-ranging. To be honest, calling it a book on the Battle of Britain is a bit of a misnomer. It starts with the invasion of France and the Low Countries, it ends in October with the beginning of the Blitz. It doesn't just cover the air-fighting, but instead the war at sea, the war in France, the politics, the attempts to draw in America, the beginning of Lend-Lease, and, of course, the dog-fighting over England. Also gives brief mention to E-boats and the British bombing campaign. In short, a wide-ranging book, which perhaps isn't as detailed on the air-fighting as some books I've read but that's hardly to be expected when it covers such a vast swathe of the conflict. Oh, and covers the invasion planning, the Home Guard, Churchill's consolidation of power, supply and maintenance, and a myriad of related topics, also including the morale of pilots.

It's not overburdened with statistics and diagrams, it's not full of complex explanations of exactly how each aircraft works, and it's not narrowly focussed, although at the end it does seem to drop the story of the E-boats and doesn't give as much detail to the Battle of the Atlantic as perhaps it could, focussing instead on the air fighting. Uses a lot of first hand accounts, and well written enough that I quite happily sat in a library and read it for well over two hours without moving (other than to turn the pages). It is a big book, and I found the section on the Fall of France very interesting as it's not something that's all that easy to find books on.

On the other hand, I didn't agree with some of the analysis of why Britain won. Well, more specifically, I don't agree that the Me-109 (oh, and I've finally found out why it's alternately the Me or the Bf, it actually depends on when the aircraft was produced as the factory was initially called Bayerische Flugzeugwerke and later the name was changed to that of the chief designer, becoming Messerschmitt) was better than the Spitfire. It was interesting that apparently British pilots were more wary of pushing the Spitfire to the edge than the German pilots were of pushing the Me-109, but surely it's better to have an aircraft that can be flown well by everyone rather than an aircraft that can be flown reasonably by most and excellently by a few. The trouble is, while the Messerschmitt was faster and had a better rate of climb, it didn't have as good a turning circle. And in a dogfight, a turning circle was needed, and because of the way the fighters were being used as escorts for the bombers, dogfights were inevitable. Ideally, the Me-109 should have been flown in from the sun, drop down on an unsuspecting Spitfire or Hurricane, shoot it down, climb out the way and scoot off. But radar could be used to estimate heights and as the battle progressed they could be estimated quite accurately by increasingly experienced operators, the Germans did not then have the element of surprise that they had in France. So because of the way the aircraft were being used, the Spitfire was probably the better fighter.

That out the way, I was pleased to see that Holland didn't just say that because the numbers of fighter aircraft were equal that made it much easier for the British than previously assumed. Ah, not quite. Cos they did still have to shoot the bombers down, couldn't just let them meander off over England. It was the bombers that they had to focus on, truth be told, because it was the bombers that could do the damage. The fighters could only damage other fighters; if it was just fighter sweeps coming over England there'd be little point in meeting them.

The E-boat sections were fascinating, I would've liked to see a bit more made of that side of the story. However, I suspect that space was getting limited (as in, 600 pages full of words already and maybe not so great to put that many more pages in). And the politics was well told too, on both the British and German sides and in terms of relations between Britain and America. I think the point could have been made that although Beaverbrook did kick British aircraft production up the bum so to speak, he did so at the cost of various longer term projects, including four-engine bombers, and that there's no way he can be totally responsible for results coming in by the end of the week in which he was appointed. Further, what he did was a short term solution--people can't work the hours he was insisting on long term, not without burning out and starting to make mistakes.

In short, this was a thoroughly enjoyable book and I'm sure it will become a recommended read for anyone studying WWII. It wasn't quite as balanced as it could have been between the different aspects of the campaign--there was little on the British bomber campaign although to be fair it did get a mention which is unusual. And it is, as far as I'm aware, the first time the 'story's' been told like this, in such a wide-ranging interpretation of the Battle of Britain.

Definitely recommend it, might actually buy a copy when it comes out in paperback (borrowed it out the library--hardback history books are pretty expensive to buy loads without any real idea of whether they'll be all that great). So if you see one floating around at the library (although if the queue's anything like it was at mine to get hold of it, as in, about seven more people waiting after me and I thought I'd had to wait a long time for it you might not see it for a while), it's definitely worth taking the time to read it.

The Battle of the Atlantic

How many books have I read with this title now?! This is the one by Marc Milner. And it's pretty reasonable, although I wasn't as impressed as I thought I'd be from reading the blurb. I thought it was going to say much more exciting things, but for the most part it just followed pretty standard lines. Was well written, did make some interesting points though, I'm inclined to recommend this as a good book to read on the Atlantic Campaign as it did cover the whole thing, and there was a good sense of perspective in terms of the air support and the shore based institutions, along with the politics that influenced the battle and the actual convoy battles. Made a very good point at the beginning that yeh, Germany's u-boat arm was dangerous and yeh, Britian didn't have much in the way of ships to fight it, but ships to fight u-boats were much easier to produce in war time under crash programmes than battleships and carriers, which were needed to effectively counter the German surface fleet--which was Raeder's priority before the war.

What else? Well, for a book that according to the blurb was gonna show that Enigma wasn't such a war winner as other things, it sure gave a lot of credit to Enigma and the ability to re-route convoys initially to avoid wolf packs and then to find them so that the u-boats could be fought and destroyed once effective means of fighting them had been found. Did go into the aircraft side of things, which seemed to be, at least according to this guy, the main reason the Battle was won, as it removed the u-boats ability to stay on the surface and re-charge batteries. In turn, that was only effective once decent radar was found to fit to the aircraft so that they could actually find the u-boats. Interesting, if not particularly new, documentation of all stages of the battle. Well written.

I guess the main reason I was a little disappointed in this book was because I've already read a fair bit on the Battle of the Atlantic and the blurb led me to think it was gonna be quite revisionist with a totally different take on things to usual. That wasn't really the case, but it was a pretty decent book.

The Battle of the Atlantic

Well, I did say I'd read three, didn't I? :) This was the most recent one I read, in fact, I've only just finished it. Admittedly, I have read an awful lot of other books in the period between the book I just reviewed and this one that I haven't written about yet, but I think this one is worth posting about. Just to clarify, this book is by Bernard Ireland.

First off, I have two complaints that could easily have been rectified with a little forethought, problems that are particularly unjustifiable because Pen and Sword is supposed to be a military history specialist. There were absolutely no footnotes, endnotes, or even a short bibliography. In short, although the blurb claims it draws on a wealth of source information, there is absolutely no evidence that this is the case. There aren't even suggestions for further reading. The only sources given were a number of statistical charts and tables (which I confess I rather ignored, as they interrupted the flow of the writing, and the information was also given in the text). The second complaint is this: typos. Not a huge number, certainly not as many as I'm liable to make in a first draft, but again something that I think is somewhat inexcusable and could be rectified with decent proofreading. One or two made sentences hard to understand as the grammar was dodgy, the rest were just irritating.

That aside, I have a mixed response to the book. It was, again according to the blurb, supposed to be somewhat revisionist, suggesting that the Battle of the Atlantic was never really up in the air. In fact, the suggestion seemed more that after America entered the war the ultimate result of the Battle of the Atlantic was never in real doubt, something which I certainly wouldn't class as all that revisionist. The main reason I got the book out the library was because I was expecting a nicely controversial, well-argued alternative to what we've been given in class (to be fair to John, he has told us about the alternative view point but I agree that the Battle of the Atlantic could have been decisive prior to America's entry into the War). Instead, I found a book that was mostly of mediocre quality, did not talk all that much about Ultra (again something touted in the blurb which attracted me to the book), and had an over reliance on acronyms, which you were told about once and which then popped up much later in the book when you couldn't quite remember what they stood for. The referral to Germany as 'the enemy' was also confusing, as in some contexts it sounded at first like the author was talking about Britain as Germany's enemy. Certainly there was nothing all that new in the first few chapters, although the narrative was quite interesting and I determined to finish the book.

I was glad that I finished it, it must be said. The last three chapters were excellent, covering the end of the war (these chapters being significantly longer than the chapters in the previous book, I know three chapters doesn't really sound like a great deal) in the Atlantic, after the battle was technically won. The use of aircraft is covered excellently, something I hadn't realised was lacking in the BBC version. In fairness, the BBC version did not cover this period of the campaign in any sort of detail at all. The new technologies and the German attempts to counter them were well written, and the hunting down of u-boats was, again, something that fell outside the scope of the previous books I'd read. In short, while the first part of the book was mediocre, I found the second part particularly fascinating. However, on the basis of the flaws mentioned above, I would still recommend the BBC book above this one, for the simple reason that the main part of the campaign is better covered in the other book, with only the ending being well covered in this one. And, of course, there is still the issue that not a single source for this information is given.

In short, the blurb did an excellent job of making me want to read the book, but most of it was average rather than outstanding. The omission of any references and the typos could, I'm sure, be easily rectified to improve the book in general, but the writing was, to be honest, not as great as in the BBC account of the same title. I was disappointed with all but the last few chapters, which gave a detail and balance that I had previously been unaware with, in terms of how the ultimate hunting down and persecution of u-boats was conducted. Flawed, but still interesting. Perhaps worth getting out the library and just reading the last three chapters.

The Battle of the Atlantic

Yes, I know I reviewed a book with the same title not so long ago (well, okay, a fair while ago but I've not been posting for a while because I've been busy at college), but it seems to be a popular title. I have actually now read three books with this title, this being the second, and I would class this as the best history of the campaign as a whole from the three.

It's the BBC version, written by Andrew Williams, and proved not only informative with regard to both sides of the story, but also liberally filled with first hand accounts which brought the campaign to life. It's a well produced book, with good organisation of chapters, an excellent section on Enigma, and I didn't notice any typos which is always encouraging. Very readable and enjoyable, it was also informative enough that I used it as a reference source for an essay plan on British incompetence and lack of resources 1939-1941. I was particularly impressed with the focus on the intelligence battle and on the information about the u-boat service from crew members through to the command systems. An enjoyable read as a book and not just as a history book on a campaign you should probably know about, I was certainly impressed. Where it lacks is that it relegates the last two years of the war, after the battle was won, to a single chapter. Certainly understandable, it in no way detracts from the excellent narrative of Autumn 1939-Spring 1943.

In short, if you want to learn a little about the Battle of the Atlantic, a battle vital to keep Britain fighting in World War Two as the island was hugely dependent on imports both to feed the population and to provide raw materials for the war industry, this book is the right one to get. There're good explanations of the important technical points, and a welcome reluctance to use obfuscating terminology that makes you rely on a technical dictionary to understand the text. It's also an interesting read as a book.

The Battle of the Atlantic

A well written and interesting account of the battle, it had one major flaw. Admittedly, it wasn't really the books fault--the information was only declassified after this book was published--but it does highlight the problems of using books published only a short time after the events they describe (I guess I count fifteen years after the end of WWII a short time in this case). In fact, if there's a more recent edition with an extra chapter or so and some modification to the rest of the text, I would highly recommend getting it. The classified information absent from this book was the cracking of the Enigma code, which had a huge impact upon the Battle of the Atlantic. In this account, the use of Enigma was hidden under that of High Frequency Direction Finding equipment or Huff-duff, which enabled u-boats using their radios to be detected. As radio was a key part of the wolf pack tactics, it was obviously of use, but the ship-based ones were difficult to use and not introduced until later in the war.

It describes in detail the tactics used by both sides, and illustrates with interesting examples of convoys sunk in convoy. A great book, with the exception that it's not quite complete. Read in conjunction with a book on the Enigma code (like Station X, more on that in a sec or two), it does give a useful account of the Battle of the Atlantic--one of the most vital campaigns in WWII. Without success in the Atlantic, Britain would be starved out of the war, without success in the Atlantic, Britain could not be turned into an oversized military camp prior to D-Day as there was no way troops could be sent across an insecure Atlantic. Thus, without the Allies winning the Battle of the Atlantic, Britain would have been completely unable to fight on. Interestingly at the start of the war, despite the success achieved by German u-boats in WWI, nobody seemed to grasp that the u-boats would be a threat once more. The British believed that the use of convoys (introduced this time right at the start of the war, rather than when shipping losses all but crippled the country) and Asdic would nullify the threat posed by the u-boat, and Hitler didn't really seem that fussed about the Navy at all and particularly not about the u-boat arm. It was only when he saw the spectacular success of the sinking of the Royal Oak in harbour that he allocated a greater amount of money to build more u-boats.

D-Day

This was the Antony Beevor one. And, after waiting for over a month for the library to pass it on to me, I was disappointed. I think the person on the waiting list after me will also be disappointed. It was a good book, don't get me wrong. But it was not as good as I'd heard it was supposed to be, and it certainly wasn't worth the excitement over the fact that it had finally got up to me.

I will give Antony Beevor his due. It was well written. It was, for the most part, quite readable. It did highlight certain aspects of the campaign that I was unaware of, most notably the high civilian casualties (apparently the Allies killed more French around the Normandy campaign (build up and during) than people were killed in the Blitz). There was also a highlighting of the problems of friendly fire, particularly in terms of air support bombing the wrong people. And I think I mentioned before that Beevor reckoned that unit casualties were higher in Normandy on both sides than they were on the Eastern Front.

However, there were a number of bad points too. The emphasis on friendly fire incidents got to the point where it was both tedious and you started to get the impression he thought the Allied soldiers and Air Forces went to Normandy with the sole intention of incompetently shooting each other, and it took away from the descriptions of the actual fighting. There was a huge focus on the inferiority of the British and American tanks, which also got tedious. Every time there was a mention of a Tiger (the German one), there was the reminder that 'this tank often accounted for three or four Shermans without getting destroyed. It had better armour and a longer range gun, so it could start shooting before the Shermans were within range'. As you can imagine, after the third or fourth time, it was rather irritating. The format of the book was also confusing. Chapter titles seemed to bear little to no relevance to what filled the chapter--they might relate to the first half, but then the author would move on to something else and not bother to change chapter. It got rather confusing to try and follow what was going on, particularly as there was some skipping about in terms of time and place. Beevor's attitude towards Montgommery seems to shift depending on what section of the narrative he's in--at times he seems to suggest that he's had an unfair bad press, at others that he completely deserved it. As the overall commander, Eisenhower gets surprisingly little mention. The use of different notation for Allied and German divisions (one was infantry, one was referred to as infantarrie, I'll let you work out which was which...) did solve a problem which I've sometimes had in working out which was which. However, that did not prevent the descriptions of Allied divisions sometimes becoming difficult to follow. This may have been because the generals kept getting moved about; in reality I suspect that it was a little bit more to do with the fact that despite the repeated emphasis on the failings of our tanks, there was no attempt to make sure that this part was repeated at least vaguely as a reminder of who was who. Perhaps a cast list would've been helpful?

Another point to keep in mind is that this book is not, despite it's title, mostly about D-Day. There is virtually no mention made of the intricate planning that took place before hand, and the actual events of D-Day make up a tiny fraction of the book. One thing I will say: I thought that Max Hastings was being overly harsh towards Typhoon pilots in his book Overlord; Beevor does confirm these statistics, but makes the point that they were quite effective against unarmoured supply vehicles and that tank crews would often leap out of their tanks and hide when Typhoons attacked. He agrees with what I would say, in that over-exaggerated claims don't mean that the attacks were ineffective. You're always going to get exaggerated claims because, let's face it, if you're in a hostile area flying low to the ground are you really going to turn round and check to make absolutely certain that you did destroy that tank?

I suspect I sound overly critical of this book. Perhaps I am being so, but I get annoyed at books that are overrated, particularly when the inside jacket claims they're basically the best, most comprehensive coverage of the battles in Normandy you're gonna find. It wasn't. I don't suppose that in a one volume book you're likely to get all that close to comprehensive, because there was a lot of fighting. There was massive over-emphasis upon the shooting of prisoners, and whether one side or the other engaged in it more (I got the impression that if you became a POW, particularly if you were taken by the Allies, you were more likely to get shot than to survive, which I'm pretty certain was not the case). There was, it began to seem, before every battle a discussion of how many men were casualties because they got bombed by their own side. I'm not saying it's not worth knowing that there were friendly fire casualties; I am saying that surely the actual fighting deserves more emphasis than friendly fire. There were more statistics relating to friendly fire incidents than there were relating to how many were killed fighting the Germans, or at least it felt that way. There was a lot about the miseries of being a civilian, and you were subjected to the same rant about this every time a village was liberated. The poor French were torn between welcoming their liberators and viewing with horror the devastation caused to their country. Fine. But that's not necessary to be put in every time a village is liberated. We're not that stupid.

I'm starting to rant a bit now, I apologise. This book was not completely awful. There were some interesting segments. Unfortunately, it suffered from poor organisation and over-emphasis on certain aspects which, while worth a mention, are not the main part of the story. There was also little about the German perspective, though there was a 'chapter' on the bomb plot to kill Hitler. Fine, but a good portion of the chapter was not about that, and while there's a good amount on what it was like to be an Allied soldier (if you were in a tank at least), there was little of this on the German side. It did show the improvements made during the campaign, which was a little lacking from Max Hastings book. However, on the whole, Overlord is a much better book than D-Day. Neither, however, actually talk all that much about D-Day itself and focus more upon the campaign in Normandy. I have yet to find a book that's just about D-Day, though I have one by Stephen Ambrose to read, which I suspect might be.

If you see this book on the shelf in the library, it is fairly good. It might be worth reading, just for the odd insight here and there. However, I wouldn't recommend you go out and buy it. It's not that good.

Overlord

This book is by Max Hastings, and deals with the Normandy Campaign. It's well written and interesting, though he completely disparages the contribution of the Air Forces in helping to win the battle--he basically claims that the RAF/USAAF cooperation with the ground forces was negligible, played no really significant part, and even suggests that in parts it did more harm than good. Hmm... I know I'm slightly biased on the whole RAF thing because I absolutely love aircraft and aviation history, which would tend perhaps to go the other way and exaggerate the achievements of that branch, but I suspect he was going a little too far. The same was true of my opinions regarding his book on Bomber Command, which basically said exactly the same thing (the RAF/Bomber Command was pretty useless), which I can't agree with. Okay, the bombing did not achieve the results expected, but it sure as heck achieved something. Maybe it should have been more concentrated, maybe there should have been a focus on the synthetic oil plants, maybe a million things, but it's impossible to deny that it did something. You cannot drop that quantity of explosives on something (even if some did miss), without attaining some results. But his complete criticism of the ground/air cooperation seemed a little OTT in this book too. He cited an example where an aerial controller was killed and there was no one to take his place. Well, let's just make a couple of points. Controlling aircraft from the ground is not going to be an easy task. You have to know enough about flying to know what landmarks should be pointed out and which should be ignored on the basis that they won't be visible. You need to have equipment that works, that you can carry around (wireless was hardly what you'd call easily portable), you need training. So it's unsurprising that there was no one to replace them really. Another thing that annoyed me in this respect was the way in which Hastings suggested that things did improve in the campaign, but failed to actually go into this properly, leaving the overall impression that the air domination was utterly useless.

It was, however, quite well structured, and provided a good overview of the operation. It lacked some depth in parts, for example with relation to the use of airborne troops, but on the whole it was a good book. The pictures in the middle bits again were poorly labelled and didn't do much for the story, but this criticism can be levelled at almost any history book. Even D-Day by Anthony Beevor, which I think so far to be the better of the two, has not integrated the pictures very well at all. However, these considerations may come from the publishers on the basis that its uneconomical to put a lot of words onto the picture pages, as obviously the glossy paper is more expensive to use. There were little sections thrown in that gave a sketch picture of a piece of equipment and information about it. These would perhaps have been better in their own section for reference too, with a little note as to which were included in the section when they first showed up, and the quality of the sketches was also pretty poor--it was hard to distinguish much in the way of features, and they almost may as well have been a mere silhouette. Again though, this is a criticism that would perhaps more fairly be directed towards the publisher.

On the whole then, it was a good book, but not spectacular. A good coverage of the subject, but it was by no means comprehensive, and certain aspects were skimmed over with the explanation: these have been well documented in other books. Fine, but this book itself is now pretty old as far as getting hold of copies is concerned, and probably out of print (one sec while I check that...), hmm, seems to be the case. There was an edition came out near enough four years ago, and there's another coming out in a couple of months, but the trouble with that is that the library I live near has a nasty tendency to stick older books away somewhere in the bowels of the library system and you have to go fishing on the computer to dig them out. So while there might have been a spate of books on that particular subject at the time of writing, it's no guarantee that they're still hanging about now. I have to say, I'm finding the Antony Beevor one a better book, but I'll let you know for certain when I've finished (unfortunately, this one isn't out in paperback yet, and therefore on the basis of comparing how much the two books cost, I'd have to go with Overlord as being better value for money as they make very many similar statements and are both well written and equally readable, though D-Day seems to take into account a more balanced picture). One thing it was good on was the German perspective, detailing hte experiences of various groups of Germans in opposition to the Allies--this is something that lacks from D-Day. Both are good books, but if you're getting them from the library I'd have to go on the side of D-Day on the basis that it seems slightly more comprehensive.

One thing I will add: don't read this book if you're looking for a detailed account of D-Day itself. Were Cobra and Goodwood really a part of Overlord? I was always under the impression that was just the initial period, the actual landings. Maybe I'm mistaken here, but it seems as though the book goes a little outside the scope you'd assume from the main title, though beneath it adds that it is about the 'Battle for Normandy'.

Denmark and Norway 1940 - Hitler's Boldest Operation

Another Osprey book, in the campaign series, and it was fascinating. The operation describes is a little known 'incident' shortly before the evacuation at Dunkirk, and it seems to have been rather overshadowed by its successor. I've seen it described as the 'practice' for Operation Dynamo (the evacuation of Dunkirk). Hitler, encouraged by one of his generals, started to feel a bit nervous about Norway. If the Allies took it over, they could effectively trap him in, and, though not a primary concern at the moment because the USSR was still part of the non-aggression pact, it would open a trade route through to Russia. So he decided upon a pre-emptive invasion, and set things in motion for the capture of these two neutral states (he took over Denmark in order to link in to Norway). He set up a puppet government in Norway under a guy called Quisling, which is where we get the word quisling from, meaning a traitorous git, basically. He used elite mountain troops, and though Britain tried to stop him, the counter operation was something of a fiasco. Well written, if somewhat dry, it serves as a good introduction to the campaign, and left me with something of an interest in finding out more. The explanations of what happened etc were very well done, and I must admit I think I prefer the Campaign series to the Essential History ones (both published by Osprey, and available in e-book format, although I read them normally).