Download or read book D nitz U boats Convoys written by Jak P. Mallmann Showell and published by Frontline Books. This book was released on 2013 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This provocative alternative history looks at the Second World War from a new angle - what might have happened had the Germans taken Moscow in 1941. Based on authentic history and real possibilities, this unique speculative narrative plays out the dramatic consequences of opportunities taken and examines the grotesque possibilities of a Third Reich triumphant. On 30 September 1941, the Germans fight their way into the ruins of Moscow and the Soviet Union collapses. Although Russian resistance continues, German ambition multiplies after this signal success and offensives are launched in Africa, the Mediterranean and the Middle East. Hitler's armies, assured of victory, make their leader's dreams reality and Allied hopes of recovery seem almost hopelessly doomed. David Downing convincingly blends actual history with the stimulating world of alternate events. The Moscow Option is a chilling reminder that history might easily have been very different.

Download or read book D nitz s Last Gamble written by Lawrence Paterson and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2008-07-23 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The tragic final year of Hitler’s once highly effective U-Boat campaign against Allied shipping is graphically and grippingly told here.” —Work Boat World By the end of 1943 the German submarine war on Atlantic convoys was all but defeated, beaten by superior technology, code-breaking and air power. With losses mounting, Karl Dönitz withdrew the wolfpacks, but in a surprise change of strategy, following the D-Day landings in June 1944, he sent his U-boats into coastal waters, closer to home, where they could harass the crucial Allied supply lines to the new European bridgehead. Caught unawares, the British and American navies struggled to cope with a novel predicament—in shallow waters submarines could lie undetectable on the bottom, and given operational freedom, they rarely needed to make signals, neutralizing the Allied advantages of decryption and radio direction-finding. Behind this unpleasant shock lay an even greater threat, of radically new submarine types known to be nearing service. Dönitz saw these as war-winning weapons, and gambled that his inshore campaign would hold up the Allied advance long enough to allow these faster and quieter boats to be deployed in large numbers. This offensive was perhaps Germany’s last chance to turn the tide, yet, surprisingly, such an important story has never been told in detail before. That it did not succeed masks its full significance: in the Cold War that followed, the massive Soviet submarine fleet—built on captured German technology and tactical experience—became a very real menace to Western sea power. In this way, Dönitz’s last gamble set the course of post-war antisubmarine development.

Download or read book D nitz s Last Gamble written by Lawrence Paterson and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the end of 1943 the German submarine war on Atlantic convoys was all but defeated, beaten by superior technology, code-breaking and air power. With losses mounting, Dönitz withdrew the wolfpacks, but in a surprise change of strategy, following the D-Day landings in June 1944, he sent his U-boats into coastal waters, closer to home, where they could harass the crucial Allied supply lines to the new European bridgehead. Caught unawares, the British and American navies struggled to cope with a novel predicament -in shallow waters submarines could lie undetectable on the bottom, and given opera.

Download or read book Donitz U Boats Convoys written by Showell Mallmann, Jak P and published by Frontline Books. This book was released on 2022-03-30 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book U Boats Beyond Biscay written by Bernard Edwards and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2017-05-31 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the outbreak of war in 1939 Admiral Donitzs U-boat flotillas consisted of some thirty U-boats fully operational, with only six to eight at sea at any one time. Their activities were restricted mainly to the North Sea and British coastal waters. When France fell in the summer of 1940, the ports in the Bay of Biscay gave direct access to the Atlantic, and the ability to extend their reach even to. The Royal Navy was unable to escort convoys much beyond the Western Approaches. In a short time, the Allies were losing 500,000 tons of shipping a month, every month. Donitz now looked over the far horizons, Americas Eastern Seaboard, the coasts of Africa, and the Mediterranean, where Allied merchantmen habitually sailed alone and unprotected. There was a rich harvest to be gathered in by the long range U-boats, the silent hunter-killers, mostly operating alone. This book tells their story.

Download or read book The Burning Shore written by Ed Offley and published by Civitas Books. This book was released on 2014-03-25 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On June 15, 1942, as thousands of vacationers lounged in the sun at Virginia Beach, two massive fireballs erupted just offshore from a convoy of oil tankers steaming into Chesapeake Bay. While men, women, and children gaped from the shore, two damaged oil tankers fell out of line and began to sink. Then a small escort warship blew apart in a violent explosion. Navy warships and aircraft peppered the water with depth charges, but to no avail. Within the next twenty-four hours, a fourth ship lay at the bottom of the channel— all victims of twenty-nine-year-old Kapitänleutnant Horst Degen and his crew aboard the German U-boat U-701. In The Burning Shore, acclaimed military reporter Ed Offley presents a thrilling account of the bloody U-boat offensive along America’s east coast during the first half of 1942, using the story of Degen’s three war patrols as a lens through which to view this forgotten chapter of World War II. For six months, German U-boats prowled the waters off the eastern seaboard, sinking merchant ships with impunity, and threatening to sever the lifeline of supplies flowing from America to Great Britain. Degen’s successful infiltration of the Chesapeake Bay in mid-June drove home the U-boats’ success, and his spectacular attack terrified the American public as never before. But Degen’s cruise was interrupted less than a month later, when U.S. Army Air Forces Lieutenant Harry J. Kane and his aircrew spotted the silhouette of U-701 offshore. The ensuing clash signaled a critical turning point in the Battle of the Atlantic—and set the stage for an unlikely friendship between two of the episode’s survivors. A gripping tale of heroism and sacrifice, The Burning Shore leads readers into a little-known theater of World War II, where Hitler’s U-boats came close to winning the Battle of the Atlantic before American sailors and airmen could finally drive them away.

Download or read book D nitz and the Wolf Packs written by Bernard Edwards and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2014-07-30 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On 17 September 1942 Admiral Karl Donitz, C-in-C U-boats, issued the following directive:To all Commanders - 'All attempts to rescue members of ships sunk, therefore also fishing out swimmers and putting them into lifeboats, righting capsized lifeboats, handing out provisions and water, have to cease. Rescue contradicts the most fundamental demands of war for the annihilation of enemy ships and crews'.This order ended what had hitherto been a war in which the opposing factions treated each other with a certain respect, seaman to seaman, showing mercy where mercy was due. It also marked the point at which the Battle of the Atlantic became a dirty war of attrition, with the U-boats hunting in packs snarling and snapping at the heels of the hard-pressed convoys. Ships began to go down like corn before the reaper, men were dying in their hundreds in the cold grey waters of the great ocean. This was a battle without quarter. A battle the U-boats would have won had it not been for the grit and determination of the convoy escorts and the unflagging resilience of the men who manned the vulnerable merchant ships.This book faithfully records the progress of the Battle of the Atlantic, which began within hours of the declaration of war on 3 September 1939 and continued without let-up until the last torpedo was fired on the night of 7 May 1945, just one hour before Germany surrendered. The story is told from both sides of the periscope.

Download or read book The U Boat War in the Atlantic written by Bob Carruthers and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2013-03-18 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the second of three volumes covering the U-boat campaign in the Atlantic during the Second World War.??This is the fascinating account, as told from the German perspective, of the Battle of the Atlantic, the longest-running, continuous military campaign in World War II, spanning from 1939 through to Germany's defeat in 1945. At its core was the Allied naval blockade of Germany, which was announced the day after the declaration of war, although it quickly grew to include Germany's counter-blockade. The name "Battle of the Atlantic", was coined by Winston Churchill in 1941 and he famously stated that the U-boats were the only thing that really frightened him. The U-boat war encompassed a campaign that began on the first day of the European war and lasted for six years, involved thousands of ships and stretched over thousands of square miles of ocean, in more than 100 convoy battles and perhaps 1,000 single-ship encounters. In the 68 months of World War II, 2,775 Allied merchant ships were sunk for the loss of 781 U-boats.??This is the story of that massive encounter from the German perspective. Published in three volumes, this work was compiled under the supervision of the U.S Navy Department and the British Admiralty by Fregattenkapitan Gunther Hessler. The author, though without previous experience as a writer, had first hand experience of U-boat warfare having commanded a U-boat in 1940 and 1941. For the remainder of the war he was Staff Officer to the Flag Officer commanding U-boats. He had access to German war diaries and other relevant documents concerning U-boat command, and this work based on these many documents, tells the story entirely from the viewpoint of that command. For this reason this work is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of World War II from primary sources and will be of enduring interest to those engaged in attempting to unravel the true nature of submarine warfare in World War II.

Download or read book Steel and Ice written by Lawrence Paterson and published by . This book was released on 2016-08-15 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the land war raged along the Eastern Front between 1941 and 1945, an equally fierce and unrelenting war ensued on the seas. From German Wolf Pack attacks on Russian convoy traffic and military vessels to close-quarter combat undertaken by small U-boats transported by land and river to the Black Sea, the Kriegsmarine wrestled for control of the seas fringing an embattled Soviet Union. Combined with the fortitude of U-boat crews who fought in some of the harshest weather conditions found at sea, ingenuity on behalf of German military engineers also facilitated the transfer of U-boats from Germany to Romania. From there, the Kriegsmarine engaged Soviet military might and pioneered the use of submarine-based rocket firing technology against land targets. The struggle between the Kriegsmarine s U-boats and the Red Navy lasted from the opening salvos of Operation Barbarossa to the final chaotic days of Germany s defeat. Available in English for the first time, "Steel and Ice" is well-illustrated, containing never-before-published color and black and white photos."

Download or read book Critical German Submarine Operations Versus Allied Convoys During March 1943 An Operational Analysis written by LCDR Bruce E. Grooms and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2014-08-15 with total page 39 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: German submarine operations against allied convoys, during March 1943 is critically analyzed from an operational perspective. The theater commander’s operational scheme is dissected for the purpose of identifying lessons which can be applied to the planning and execution of today’s theater operations. A brief historical account of the early phases of the war and the events and decisions which preceded the critical convoy battles will be followed by an analysis of the operational scheme employed by Admiral Dönitz. German victory during the spring offensive clearly demonstrated numerous operational successes, a reasonably well conceived operational plan, and proof positive of the potential for a larger scale victory. Yet history recorded Germany’s ultimate defeat in the Battle of the Atlantic. This analysis identified three significant flaws which led to the German demise; first, strategic guidance and operational means were inadequately reconciled which prevented the proper execution of the operational plan; second, operational intelligence and reconnaissance were inadequately exploited; third, Germany failed to coordinate and execute joint operations between service arms, specifically the lack of air assets in support of vital U-boat operations. Clearly one must conclude a reasonable operational plan has marginal chance for success when strategic guidance and joint coordination are incompatible with theater objective accomplishment.

Download or read book From Hunter to Hunted written by Bernard Edwards and published by Pen and Sword Maritime. This book was released on 2020-03-30 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author of Churchill’s Thin Grey Line shares case histories from World War II’s Battle of the Atlantic featuring the German U-boat. In the early stages of World War II, Donitz’s U-boats generally adhered to Prize rules, surfacing before attacking and making every effort to preserve the lives of their victims’ crews. But, with the arming of merchantmen and greater risk of damage or worse, they increasingly attacked without warning. So successful was the U-boat campaign that Churchill saw it as the gravest threat the nation faced. The low point was the March 1943 attack on convoys SC122 and HX229 when 44 U-boats sank 22 loaded ships. The pendulum miraculously swung with improved tactics and technology. In May, 1943, out of a force of over 50 U-boats that challenged ONS5, eight were sunk and 18 were damaged, some seriously. Such losses were unsustainable, and, with allied yards turning out ships at ever increasing rates, Donitz withdrew his wolf packs from the North Atlantic. Expert naval author and historian Bernard Edwards traces the course of the battle of the Atlantic through a series of thrilling engagement case studies. Praise for From Hunter to Hunted “Expertly written, it portrayed the perils and dramas of warfare in the North Atlantic between the convoys and German U boats . . . Reading [Edwards’s] accounts made me feel as though I was present. A cracking and informative read— I will definitely read more by Captain Edwards and I highly commend it.” —Adrian Greaves, author of The Zulus at War

Download or read book D nitz U boats Convoys written by Jak P. Mallmann Showell and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2013-08-21 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unique WWII history combines the memoirs of a Nazi Admiral with secret British naval reports for a comprehensive view of the U-Boat war. The memoirs of Admiral Karl Dönitz, Ten Years and Twenty Days, are a fascinating first-hand account of the Battle of the Atlantic as seen from the headquarters of the U-boat fleet. Now, noted naval historian Jak P. Mallmann Showell has combined Dönitz's memoirs in a parallel text with the British Admiralty's secret Monthly Anti-Submarine Reports to produce a unique view of the U-boat war as it was perceived at the time by both sides. The British Monthly Anti-Submarine Reports were classified documents issued only to senior officers hunting U-boats. They were supposed to have been returned to the Admiralty and destroyed at the end of the War, but by chance a set survived in the archives of the Royal Navy's Submarine Museum in Gosport. They offer significant and hitherto unavailable insight into the British view of the Battle of the Atlantic as it was being fought. With expert analysis of these firsthand sources from opposing sides of the conflict, Jak P. Mallmann Showell presents what may be the most complete contemporary account of the desperate struggle in the North Atlantic during the Second World War.

Download or read book Total Undersea War written by Aaron S Hamilton and published by Seaforth Publishing. This book was released on 2020-05-30 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the last year of World War II the once surface-bound diesel-electric U-boat ushered in the age of ‘total undersea war’ with the introduction of an air mast, or 'snorkel' as it became known among the men who served in Dönitz's submarine fleet. U-boats no longer needed to surface to charge batteries or refresh air; they rarely communicated with their command, operating silently and alone among the shallow coastal waters of the United Kingdom and across to North America. At first, U-boats could remain submerged continuously for a few days, then a few weeks, and finally for months at a time, and they set underwater endurance records not broken for nearly a quarter of a century. The introduction of the snorkel was of paramount concern to the Allies, who strived to frustrate the impact of the device before war's end. Every subsequent wartime U-boat innovation was subordinated to the snorkel, including the new Type XXI Electro-boat ‘wonder weapon’. The snorkel's introduction foreshadowed the nearly un-trackable weapon and instrument of intelligence that the submarine became in the postwar world. This exhaustive study, the first of its kind, draws upon wartime documents from archives around the world to re-evaluate the last year of the U-boat's deployment, all its key technological innovations, the evolving operations and tactics, and Allied countermeasures. It provides answers to many long-standing questions about the last year of the war: How and why did U-boats patrol so close inshore? How effective was acoustic and anti-radar camouflage? Why was U-boat wireless communication so problematic? How did U-boats navigate so effectively submerged? What were the health implications of staying submerged for a month or more? What does an accurate snorkel-configuration look like? This new study is destined to become the authoritative reference for all these issues and many more.

Download or read book The Convoy written by Angus Konstam and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-10-26 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Convoy represents a fresh approach to the story of the Battle of the Atlantic. It is also the first to deal with the more spectacular story of HG-76, a major turning point in the naval war. HG-76 sailed from Gibraltar to Britain in December 1941 and was specially targeted by the Germans. A wolfpack of U-boats was sent against it, and the Luftwaffe was heavily committed too in a rare example of German inter-service cooperation. German intelligence agents in Gibraltar and Spain also knew every detail of HG-76 before it had even sailed, seemingly stacking the odds in favour of the Kriegsmarine. Despite this the convoy fought its way through. Improved radar and sonar gave the convoy's escorts a slight edge over their opponents, while the escort group was led by Commander Walker, an anti-submarine expert who had developed new, aggressive U-boat hunting tactics. Previous Gibraltar convoys had been mauled by Luftwaffe bombers operating from French airfields. This time, though, HG-76 would be accompanied by HMS Audacity, the Royal Navy's first escort carrier – a new type of warship purpose-built to defend convoys from enemy aircraft and U-boats. Following seven days and nights of relentless attack, the horrors of which are brought home through a series of first-hand accounts, the convoy finally reached the safety of a British port for the loss of only two merchant ships. Its arrival was seen as the first real convoy victory of the war. Brought to life by expert naval historian Angus Konstam, The Convoy combines the story of the technical and tactical developments that won the Battle of the Atlantic for the Allies along with a narrative that reveals both the terror and the stubborn determination that defined the experiences of those that served on convoy duties.

Download or read book U Boats at War in 100 Objects 1939 1945 written by Gordon Williamson and published by Frontline Books. This book was released on 2019-10-30 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘The only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril,’ wrote Winston Churchill in his history of the Second World War. ‘I was even more anxious about this battle than I had been about the glorious air fight called the Battle of Britain.” In reality, the Kriegsmarine had been woefully unprepared for the war into which it was thrown. The Command-in-Chief of submarines, Karl Dönitz, himself a verteran U-boat captain from the First World War, felt that he could bring Britain to its knees with a fleet of 300 U-Boats. But when war broke out, he had just twenty-four available for operational use. Despite this, the U-Boat arm scored some incredible successes in the early part of the war, raising the status of the submarine commanders and crews to that of national heroes in the eyes of the German people. The ‘Grey Wolves’ had become super-stars. Small wonder then that the U-Boat war has fascinated students of military history ever since. This book, using a carefully selected range of both wartime images and colour images of surviving U-boat memorabilia from private collections, describes 100 iconic elements of the U-Boat service and its campaigns. The array of objects include important individuals and the major U-Boat types, through to the uniforms and insignias the men wore. The weapons, equipment and technology used are explored, as are the conditions in which the U-boat crews served, from cooking facilities and general hygiene down to the crude toilet facilities. Importantly, the enemy that they faced is also covered, examining the ship-borne and airborne anti-submarine weaponry utilised against the U-boats. The U-Boats began the war, though small in number, more than a match for the Allies and created carnage amongst merchant shipping as well as sinking several major warships. The pace of technological development, however, failed to match that of Allied anti-submarine warfare weaponry and the U-Bootwaffe was ultimately doomed to defeat but not before, at one point, coming close to bringing Britain to its knees.

Download or read book Hitler s Attack U Boats written by Jak P. Mallmann Showell and published by Frontline Books. This book was released on 2020-09-30 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A definitive introduction by a highly recognized authority who writes beautifully and clearly.” —Naval Historical Foundation The fact that German submarines almost managed to cut off Britain’s vital imports during the First World War hadn’t been forgotten by Hitler—and when, in 1935, he repudiated the Treaty of Versailles, Britain, magnanimously, signed an Anglo-German Naval Agreement. This allowed the Germans to build their submarine strength up to one third of the Royal Navy’s tonnage. When war broke out in 1939, German U-boats went quickly into action, but with only four years of production and development, the main armament of these submarines was considerably weaker than equivalent boats in other navies and many other features, such as living conditions, were also significantly inferior. Yet, the German U-boat onslaught against British merchant ships in autumn 1940 was highly successful because the attacks were made on the surface at night and from such close range that a single torpedo would sink a ship. Soon, though, Allied technology was able to detect U-boats at night, and new convoy techniques, combined with powerfully armed, fast modern aircraft searching the seas, meant that by 1941 it was clear that Germany was losing the war at sea. Something had to be done. The new generation of attack U-boats that had been introduced since Hitler came to power needed urgent improvement. This is the story of the Types II, VII, and IX that had already become the ‘workhorse’ of the Kriegsmarine’s submarine fleet and continued to put out to sea to attack Allied shipping right up to the end of the war. The Type II was a small coastal boat that struggled to reach the Atlantic; the Type VII was perfectly at home there, but lacked the technology to tackle well protected convoys; while the Type IX was a long-range variety modified so it could operate in the Indian Ocean. This book by the renowned Kriegsmarine historian explores these attack U-boats at length, including details of their armament, capabilities, and crew facilities; the story of their development and operational history; and just what it was like to operate such a vessel.

Download or read book Hitler s Fatal Miscalculation written by Klaus H. Schmider and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-01-28 with total page 615 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hitler's decision to declare war on the United States has baffled generations of historians. In this revisionist new history of those fateful months, Klaus H. Schmider seeks to uncover the chain of events which would incite the German leader to declare war on the United States in December 1941. He provides new insights not just on the problems afflicting German strategy, foreign policy and war production but, crucially, how they were perceived at the time at the top levels of the Third Reich. Schmider sees the declaration of war on the United States not as an admission of defeat or a gesture of solidarity with Japan, but as an opportunistic gamble by the German leader. This move may have appeared an excellent bet at the time, but would ultimately doom the Third Reich.