Clay blair hitlers u boat war the hunte 942 (v5 0)

BOOKS BY CLAY BLAIR NONFICTION The Atomic Submarine and Admiral Rickover The Hydrogen Bomb, with James R Shepley Beyond Courage Valley of the Shadow, for Ward M Millar Nautilus 90 North, with William R Anderson Diving for Pleasure and Treasure Always Another Dawn, with A Scott Crossfield The Voyage of Nina II, for Robert Marx The Strange Case of James Earl Ray Survive! Silent Victory: The U.S Submarine War Against Japan The Search for JFK, with Joan Blair MacArthur Combat Patrol Return From the River Kwai, with Joan Blair A General’s Life, with Omar N Bradley Ridgway’s Paratroopers The Forgotten War: America in Korea 1950-1953 Hitler’s U-boat War: The Hunted, 1942-1945 FICTION The Board Room The Archbishop Pentagon Country Scuba!, with Joan Blair Mission Tokyo Bay, with Joan Blair Swordray’s First Three Patrols, with Joan Blair This book is dedicated to the late Time-Life Washington bureau chief James R (Jim) Shepley, founding father of the “Shepley School of Journalism,” which in 1950-1951 had one student (me); to the peerless book editor, Marc Ja e, who rst suggested and sponsored my pursuit of serious history; to my agents, Jack Scovil and Russ Galen, who found the wherewithal; and to my wife, Joan, my collaborator in the fullest sense of the word on this book, as on many others FOREWORD O n a chilly day in the late fall of 1945, our submarine, the U.S.S Guard sh, proudly ying battle pennants, nosed into the Submarine Base, New London, Connecticut, joining scores of mass-produced sister ships, all “home from the sea.” Collectively we submariners were known as the “Silent Service,” and proud we were of that distinction Unknown to the public, we had played a decisive role in the defeat of Japan In forty-two months of secret warfare in the Paci c Ocean area, 250 of our submarines, mounting 1,682 war patrols, had savaged Japanese maritime assets, sinking 1,314 ships of 5.3 million gross tons, including twenty major warships: eight aircraft carriers, a battleship, and eleven cruisers For almost three years Guardfish, a ne boat, had played a prominent role in that war, sending nineteen rmed ships to the bottom (including two eet destroyers and a patrol boat) during twelve long and arduous war patrols in Japanese-controlled waters After we had moored at a pier where we were to “mothball” Guardfish, we were startled to see a strangely di erent submarine close by Painted jet black, she looked exceptionally sleek and sinister We soon learned that she was a German U-boat that had surrendered shortly after VE-Day She was manned by an American crew that was evaluating her on behalf of naval authorities in Washington This U-boat was very hush-hush and o -limits to ordinary souls However, when she shifted her berth to “our” pier (and nicked us in the process), we became friendly with the American crew and gradually talked our way on board for a look-see We learned that she was U-2513, a brand new Type XXI “electro boat,” one of two such craft allotted to the U.S Navy as war prizes Commissioned and commanded by one of Germany’s most famous U-boat “aces,” Erich Topp, she and her mass-produced sister ships had been completed too late to participate in the war In our super cial examination of U-2513, we were quite impressed with some of her features, especially her top speed submerged She had six sets of storage batteries, comprising a total of 372 cells (hence “electro boat”), which enabled her to quietly sprint submerged at about 16 knots for about one hour This was twice the sprint speed of our submarines and su cient to escape from almost any existing antisubmarine warship Alternately, the large battery capacity enabled her to cruise submerged at slower speeds for a great many hours, whether stalking prey or escaping The next most impressive feature to us was her Schnorchel, or as we anglicized the German, snorkel This was a sophisticated “breathing tube” or mast with air intake and exhaust ducts, which enabled U-2513 to run her two diesel engines while submerged By rigging one diesel (or both) to charge the batteries while submerged, she could in theory remain underwater for prolonged periods, thereby greatly diminishing the chances of detection by enemy eyes or radar Nor was that all Her periscope optics and passive sonar for underwater looking and listening were much superior to ours Her ingenious hydraulically operated torpedo- handling gear could automatically reload her six bow torpedo tubes in merely ve minutes A third reload could be accomplished in another twenty minutes The thickness and strength of her pressure hull was said to give her a safe diving depth limit of about 1,200 feet, twice our safe depth limit and su cient to get well beneath most existing Allied depth charges She even had an “automatic pilot” for precise depth-keeping at high speeds Much later, when some of these details and others about the Type XXI “electro boat” leaked out, they caused an utter sensation in naval circles Prominent experts gushed that the Type XXI represented a giant leap in submarine technology, bringing mankind very close to a “true submersible.” Some naval historians asserted that if the Germans had produced the Type XXI submarine one year earlier they almost certainly could have won the “Battle of the Atlantic” and thereby inde nitely delayed Overlord, the Allied invasion of Occupied France The American evaluators on U-2513 were not so sure about these claims In the classi ed report they sent to the Chief of Naval Operations, dated July 1946, they wrote that while the Type XXI had many, desirable features that should be exploited (big battery, snorkel, streamlining, etc.), it also had many grave design and manufacturing faults The clear implication was that owing to these faults, the XXI could not have made a big di erence in the Battle of the Atlantic Among the major faults the Americans enumerated: • POOR STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY Hurriedly prefabricated in thirty-two di erent factories that had little or no experience in submarine building, the eight major hull sections of the Type XXI were crudely made and did not t together properly Therefore the pressure hull was weak and not capable of withstanding sea pressure at great depths or the explosions of close depth charges The Germans reported that in their structural tests the hull failed at a simulated depth of 900 feet The British reported failure at 800 feet, less than the failure depth of the conventional German U-boats • U NDERPOWERED DIESEL ENGINES The new model, six-cylinder diesels were tted with superchargers to generate the required horsepower The system was so poorly designed and manufactured that the superchargers could not be used This failure reduced the generated horsepower by almost half: from 2,000 to 1,200, leaving the Type XXI ruinously underpowered Consequently, the maximum surface speed was only 15.6 knots, less than any oceangoing U-boat built during the war and slightly slower than the corvette convoy-escort vessel The reduction in horsepower also substantially increased the time required to carry out a full battery charge • IMPRACTICAL HYDRAULIC SYSTEM The main lines, accumulators, cylinders, and pistons of the hydraulic gear for operating the diving planes, rudders, torpedo tube outer doors, and antiaircraft gun turrets on the bridge were too complex and delicate and located outside the pressure hull This gear was therefore subject to saltwater leakage, corrosion, and enemy weaponry It could not be repaired from inside the pressure hull • IMPERFECT AND HAZARDOUS SNORKEL Even in moderate seas the mast dunked often, automatically closing the air intake and exhaust ports Even so, salt water poured into the ship’s bilges and had to be discharged overboard continuously with noisy pumps Moreover, during these shutdowns, the diesels dangerously sucked air from inside the boat and deadly exhaust gas (carbon monoxide) backed up, causing not only headaches and eye discomfort but also serious respiratory illnesses Snorkeling in the Type XXI was therefore a nightmarish experience, to be minimized to the greatest extent possible The U.S Navy did in fact adopt some of the features of the Type XXI “electro boat” for its new submarine designs in the immediate postwar years However, by that time the Navy was rmly committed to the development of a nuclear-powered submarine, a “true, submersible” that did not depend on batteries or snorkels for propulsion and concealment These marvels of science and engineering, which came along in the 1950s, 1960s, and later, were so technically sophisticated as to render the best ideas of German submarine technology hopelessly archaic and to assure the United States of a commanding lead in this field well into the next century This little story about the Type XXI “electro boat” is a perfect example of a curious naval mythology that has arisen in this century The myth goes something like this: The Germans invented the submarine (or U-boat) and have consistently built the best submarines in the world Endowed with a canny gift for exploiting this mar-velously complex and lethal weapon system, valorous (or, alternately, murderous) German submariners dominated the seas in both world wars and very nearly defeated the Allies in each case In a perceptive study,* Canadian naval historian Michael L Hadley writes: “During both wars and during the inter-war years as well, the U-boat was mythologized more than any other weapon of war.” The myth assumed an especially formidable aspect in World War II and after-wards During the war, the well-oiled propaganda machinery of the Third Reich glori ed and exaggerated the “successes” of German submariners to a fare-thee-well in the various Axis media At the same time, Allied propagandists found it advantageous to exaggerate the peril of the U-boats for various reasons The end result was a wildly distorted picture of the so-called Battle of the Atlantic After the war, Washington, London, and Ottawa clamped a tight embargo on the captured German U-boat records to conceal the secrets of codebreaking, which had played an important role in the Battle of the Atlantic As a result, the rst “histories” of the U-boat war were produced by Third Reich propagandists such as Wolfgang Frank, Hans Jochem Brennecke, and Harald Busch, and by Karl Dönitz, wartime commander of the U-boat force, later commander of the Kriegsmarine, and, nally, Hitler’s successor as Führer of the Third Reich These “histories,” of course, did nothing to diminish the mythology Hampered by the security embargo on the U-boat and codebreaking records and by an apparent unfamiliarity with the technology and the tactical limitations of submarines, the o cial and semio cial Allied naval historians, Stephen Wentworth Roskill and Samuel Eliot Morison, were unable or unwilling to write authoritatively about German U-boats in the Battle of the Atlantic Hence for decade after decade no complete and reliable history of the Battle of the Atlantic appeared, and the German mythology prevailed My wartime service on Guardfish kindled a deep and abiding interest in submarine warfare As a Washington-based journalist with Time, Life, and the Saturday Evening Post, I kept abreast of American submarine developments during the postwar years, riding the new boats at sea, compiling accounts of the noteworthy advancements—and politics —in articles and books.* In 1975 I published a work of love, Silent Victory: The U.S Submarine War Against Japan, the rst, full, un-censored history of the “Silent Service” in that very secret war The publication of Silent Victory triggered suggestions that I undertake a similar history of the German U-boat war However, owing to the embargo on the U-boat and codebreaking records, still in force after thirty years, this was not possible at that time, but the idea took root While I was engaged in other military histories over the next dozen years, Washington, London, and Ottawa gradually released the U-boat and codebreaking records During the same period German naval scholars, notably Jürgen Rohwer, mined the German U-boat records and produced quite valuable and objective technical studies and accounts of some combat actions and related matters By 1987 I was able to undertake a U-boat history Happily, Random House shared my enthusiasm for the project and provided the necessary nancial resources My wife, Joan, and I camped in Washington, London, and Germany for many months, culling and copying tens of thousands of pages of documents and micro lms at various military archives and collecting published works on the Battle of the Atlantic and codebreaking While in Germany we made contact with the U-boat Veterans association and interviewed former U-boat force commanders, skippers, and crewmen Subsequently we kept abreast of the spate of scholarly and popular U-boat books and articles about phases or aspects of the war that appeared in the late 1980s and 1990s, much of it rstrate.* The result of this research is this new and complete history, which, owing to its length, is published in two volumes I view the U-boat war quite di erently from other historians and popular writers As I see it, there were three separate and distinct phases: the U-boat war against the British Empire, the U-boat war against the Americas, and the U-boat war against both the British Empire and the Americas Together with an introductory section, “Background for War,” the rst two phases of the war are dealt with in this volume, The Hunters; the third phase in Volume II, The Hunted Each volume contains appropriate maps, photos, plates, appendices, and an index As the reader has doubtless concluded, my assessment of the U-boat peril—and war— is also quite di erent from that of most other historians and popular writers In a word, the U-boat peril in World War II was and has been vastly overblown: threat in ation on a classically grand scale The Germans were not supermen; the U-boats and torpedoes were not technical marvels but rather inferior craft and weapons unsuited for the Battle of the Atlantic In contrast to the strategic success of our submarine force versus Japan, the German force failed versus the Allies in the Atlantic The main contribution the Uboat force made in the war was to present a terror weapon, a sort of “threat in being,” which forced the Allies to convoy, delaying the arrival of goods and supplies, and to deploy extensive antisubmarine counterforces The myths notwithstanding, only a tiny percentage of Allied merchant ships actually fell victim to U-boats Ninety-nine percent of all Allied merchant ships in the transatlantic convoys reached assigned destinations This is not to say that the Battle of the Atlantic was a cakewalk for the Allies, or for that matter, an easy threat for the Germans to mount On the contrary, it was a bitter, painful struggle for both sides, the most prolonged and arduous naval campaign in all history It deserves a history by one familiar with submarines of that era, with access to all the official records, uninfluenced by propaganda and stripped of mythology CLAY BLAIR Washington, D.C., London, Hamburg, and Washington Island, Wisconsin 1987-1996 * Count Not the Dead: The Popular Image of the German Submarine (1995) * The Atomic Submarine and Admiral Rickover (1954), Nautilus 90 North (1958), etc * For a list of all sources, see Bibliography CONTENTS FOREWORD LIST OF MAPS LIST OF PLATES PROLOGUE BACKGROUND FOR WAR Early Developments • U-boats in World War I • Treaties, Disarmament, and Submarines • The Rebirth of the German Navy • A Dramatic Reconversion • To the Eve of War BOOK ONE THE U-BOAT WAR AGAINST THE BRITISH EMPIRE SEPTEMBER 1939—DECEMBER 1941 ONE “To Die Gallantly” • The Boat • Complicated Rules • “Winston Is Back” • Hits and Misses • Encounters with Ark Royal • “A Wonderful Success” • North Sea Patrols • Poised for a Naval Race TWO Plans and Problems • Prien in Scapa Flow • The First Wolf Pack • Atlantic U-boat Operations: October-December 1939 • Minelaying • U-boat Countermeasures • Atlantic Operations: January and February 1940 • The U-boat Failure in Norway THREE Return to the North Atlantic • Great Britain at Risk • “Happy Time”: The June Slaughter • First Patrols from Lorient • The August Slaughter • Strategies, Secrets, and Deals • More Happy Times • The October Slaughter • Serious British Lapses FOUR A Brutal Winter • Knitting Anglo-American Relations • Unhappy Times • Attacking Naval Enigma • “The Battle of the Atlantic” • The Loss of Prien • The Loss of Schepke and Kretschmer • More Bad News • Declining Prospects • A Slight British Lead FIVE Flower Petals of Rare Beauty • “Sink the Bismarck” • Rich Trophies in West African Waters • June Patrols to the North Atlantic • A Revealing Convoy Battle • Coastal Ludlow, Nicholson, Roe, Swanson, Wilkes, Woolsey Buck and Ingraham involved in separate collisions with merchant ships Buck aborted; 49 NA 15 50 TF Ingraham Halifax to sank UK Two troopships Sailed 8/22, joined AT 20 Escort: see AT 20 Wichita, Hambleton, and Macomb transferred from Scapa Flow and Iceland to New York, 8/16 to 8/22 Scapa Flow to Kola Inlet to deliver special cargo and return stranded 51 TF merchant marine crews Sailed from Iceland 8/19 Tuscaloosa; two American destroyers, Emmons and Rodman; and three British destroyers The American warships returned to the States in early September New York to UK Nine troopships Sailed 9/26, arrived 10/7 Escort 52 AT 23 (Task Force 38): Arkansas and nine American destroyers: Benson, Gleaves, C F Hughes, H P Jones, Lansdale, Madison, Mayo, Niblack, Plunkett 53 NA 16 Halifax to UK Four troopships Sailed 9/29, joined AT 23 Escort: see AT 23 Commencing in October 1942, American troops embarked for the British Isles sailed the North Atlantic run on big liners, such as the Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth, etc A total of forty American destroyers worked up and participated in Torch, the Allied invasion of North Africa, on 11/8/42 From Torch onward, American troops embarked for North Africa sailed in heavily escorted troopship convoys on the “Southern Route,” designated United States-Gibraltar (UG) and/or United States-Gibraltar Fast (UGF) and Slow (UGS) Does not include large ocean liners, such as the Queen Elizabeth, Queen Mary, etc., sailing unescorted, or British- escorted troopship convoys in the eastern Atlantic, usually designated “Winston Special,” or WS The escorts listed sailed either part or all of the voyage or returned with aborting ships Convoys returning to the Americas (TA, AN, etc.) are not shown either Convoy NA 13 did not employ American escorts Details: Halifax to UK Two troopships Sailed 7/21, arrived 7/29 Escort: one ex-American four-stack Canadian destroyer, Annapolis, and three British destroyers, Amazon, Boadicea, Vanoc Convoy AT 19 consisted of the Queen Mary from Cape Town to the Clyde, 7/7 to 8/8 Convoy AT 21 consisted of the Queen Elizabeth, New York to the Clyde, 8/30 to 9/5 Convoy AT 22 consisted of the Queen Mary, New York to the Clyde, 9/5 to 9/11 APPENDIX 17 ALLIED TANKER LOSSES TO AXIS SUBMARINES IN THE ATLANTIC OCEAN AREA SEPTEMBER 1939–DECEMBER 1942 Throughout the war, a prime target of German U-boats was the combined Allied tanker eet, which was engaged in the vital task of transporting crude oil and petroleum products to the United States East Coast, to Canada, and to the British Isles At the beginning of the war, September 1939, the individual tanker eets of the non-Axis nations were of substantial size: In the period from 9/1/39 to 12/31/42, British and American shipyards completed 176 new tankers for 1,754,000 gross registered tons In the rst twenty-eight months of the war—up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor—Axis submarines sank 117 tankers for 936,777 gross registered tons During this period (as shown) shipyards in the British Empire and the United States completed eighty-four new tankers for about 829,000 G.R.T Thus the loss of non-Axis tanker tonnage to Axis submarines in the Atlantic area in this period was nearly matched by Allied new tanker construction Although London feared—and often predicted—dire oil shortages in the British Isles during this period, none ever really occurred Hardships and inconveniences, such as civilian gasoline and fuel-oil rationing, resulted not solely from actual tanker losses, but rather from the drastic slowdown of oil imports due to convoying and, of course, to the diversion of oil imports to war-making purposes Losses in detail: Many historians and popular writers assert that in 1942, when the Germans launched Drumbeat, the U-boat attack on shipping in American waters, Allied tanker losses “on the United States East Coast” were simply horri c Furthermore, some British historians stress that most of these tankers were of British registry or of Norwegian and Dutch registry under British charter Neither statement is true In the rst six months of 1942, the Germans sank forty-three Allied tankers in United States East Coast waters Of these, thirty-two (about 75 percent) were of United States or Panamanian registry Only nine were of British, Norwegian, or Dutch registry No Allied tankers whatsoever were sunk by U-boats in East Coast waters in the second half of 1942 In detail: This was not by any means the whole story of Allied tanker losses in 1942 Axis submarines sank more than twice as many tankers in the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean Sea, and in the western Atlantic near Trinidad: 99 vessels for 742,571 tons In detail: From the foregoing two lists, it can be seen that the total loss of Allied tankers to Axis submarines in “American waters” in 1942 was 142 ships for 1,073,283 gross registered tons The total tanker losses in these areas by registry: From this tabulation it can be seen that British tanker losses in “American waters” in 1942 were not nearly so heavy as often depicted in British accounts Altogether Axis submarines sank twenty-seven British-registered tankers, fewer than the loss of British-registered tankers to Axis submarines in 1940 (36) and 1941 (33) Axis submarines also sank twenty-four Norwegian and Dutch tankers, presumed to be under British charter, bringing the total loss of “British-controlled” tankers in “American waters” in 1942 to fifty-one American and Panamanian losses totaled eighty vessels To complete this analysis it is necessary to take into account Allied tankers sunk in 1942 by Axis submarines in areas of the Atlantic other than “American waters.” These losses re ect the resumption of U-boat attacks on the North Atlantic convoys in the late summer and the fall of 1942, some of which are described in the text of Volume II In this third and last category, Axis submarines sank another 71 tankers for 594,222 gross registered tons When the foregoing three tabulations of Allied tanker losses to Axis submarines in 1942 are combined, the result is a total of 213 vessels of 1,667,505 gross registered tons The loss of United States-registered tankers actually exceeded those of the British in 1942 by eleven vessels Viz.: During this period, 1942, Allied shipyards (as shown) completed ninety-two tankers11 for 925,000 tons Thus in 1942, tanker losses to Axis submarines exceeded new tanker completions by 121 ships for 742,505 gross tons This de cit left the combined Allied tanker eet on January 1, 1943, at 1,291 ships for 9,311,718 tons, a net loss to Axis submarines of 154 tankers for 850,282 gross registered tons since the beginning of the war, or about 10 percent of the fleet This de cit was more than o set by the spectacular tanker gains over losses in 1943 That year, American and British shipyards completed 245 new tankers for 2,031,000 gross registered tons Meanwhile, in 1943, Axis submarines sank only forty-eight Allied tankers for 373,138 gross tons Hence, the net gain over all losses was forty-three tankers for 805,304 gross registered tons On January 1, 1944, the combined Allied tanker 10,969,580 gross tons, slightly more than in September 1939 eet numbered about 1,488 vessels for about From this analysis it can be seen that while the U-boat campaign against the combined Allied tanker eet caused great hardships and inconveniences, it failed to achieve a decisive strategic success The only really serious Allied setback occurred in 1942, but this was quickly overcome in 1943 To recapitulate, the numbers at a glance: APPENDIX 18 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND SOURCES This history is based on nine years of continuous research in archives and published works For the German side, it relies heavily on the daily war diaries of German naval headquarters in Berlin and U-boat headquarters at various locations, and on the war diaries (or patrol reports) of individual U-boats For the Allied side, it relies heavily on after-action reports from convoys and from warships and aircraft that tangled with U-boats, and on interrogation reports of captured German and Italian submariners The war diaries of the various U-boat commands, amounting to thousands of pages (most translated into English), are immensely detailed They include sailing and return dates and daily positions (known and assumed) of all U-boats on patrol; names, composition, and action of groups (“wolf packs”); sightings, chases, and sinking of Allied ships; battle damage or mechanical breakdowns incurred; information regarding o ensive and defensive weapons; and assessments of strategy and tactics by Karl Dönitz or others Using these diaries and rmed Allied ship losses to U-boats as compiled by others, intelligence derived from the German naval Enigma, and data from other sources, including individual U-boat war diaries, it has been possible to recreate almost all signi cant features of the patrols of virtually all the U-boats The published sources vary widely in authenticity, reliability, and literary quality Those of greatest merit include the o cial and semio cial Allied war histories, and all the writings of the esteemed German professor Jörgen Rowher, as well as Günther Hessler and Karl Dönitz Also of special note are the works of British authors Geo rey Patrick Jones and Norman L R Franks, who have diligently probed o cial British archives to record speci c U-boat kills by British air and naval forces For equally competent and reliable research of this type, the American authors Philip Lundeberg, William T Y’Blood, and Max Schoenfeld and the Canadians W.A.B Douglas, Michael L Hadley, and Marc Milner should not go unmentioned Herr Horst Bredow, director of the impressive Stiftung Traditionsarchive Un-terseeboote in Cuxhaven, Germany, provided much general help and background and speci c documents of great value One is an updated list (in booklet form) of all German U-boats built in World War II The data for each boat include type, place of construction, dates of launching, commissioning, and assignment to battlefront otilla (or schools, etc.), skippers and dates they commanded, and nal fate of boat and crew The other document is a compilation of Allied warships and merchant ships that were sunk by each U-boat, broken down by skippers of those individual Uboats Many other persons assisted us in our research, and we are deeply grateful We would especially like to thank Marcia Carr, Joan’s brother, Charles H (“Ham”) Rutledge, and Frederic Sherman Marcia, the chief librarian of the Washington Island Library, obtained for us literally hundreds of books and periodicals (some of them quite obscure) through the Wisconsin Interlibrary Loan system Ham Rutledge, a professional computer expert, created a special program to compile the index and nursed Joan through countless PC complications and challenges Purely as a favor, our dear friend Fred, a retired newspaper editor, copyedited the entire manuscript The massive research collected in the preparation of this work, including thousands of pages of documents and micro lm and micro che, has been deposited with our other papers at the American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming, in Laramie We invite serious researchers to make use of this collection BIBLIOGRAPHY The bibliography for Hitler’s U-boat War, containing over one thousand entries, will be published in Volume II in the fall of 1997 In the meantime, it may be viewed on or downloaded from the following Random House website: http://www.randomhouse.com/uboat/biblio.html ABOUT THE AUTHOR CLAY BLAIR served in combat on a submarine in the Paci c, attended Tulane and Columbia universities, and became the national security correspondent for Time, Life, and The Saturday Evening Post magazines in Washington, then editor in chief o f The Saturday Evening Post He published hundreds of magazine articles and twenty-four books These include biographies of Admiral H G Rickover; Generals Douglas MacArthur, Omar N Bradley, and Matthew B Ridgway; and John F Kennedy; and, most recently, a de nitive account of the ict in Korea, The Forgotten War Clay Blair died in December 1998, shortly after the publication of the second volume of Hitler’s U-boat War 2000 Modern Library Paperback Edition Copyright © 1996 by Clay Blair Maps copyright © 1996 by David Lindroth Illustrations copyright © 1996 by Anita Karl and James Kemp All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto MODERN LIBRARY and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc This work was originally published in hardcover by Random House, Inc., in 1996 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Blair, Clay Hitler’s U-boat war/Clay Blair p cm Contents: v The hunters, 1939–1942 eISBN: 978-0-307-87437-5 World War, 1939–1945—Naval operations—Submarine World War, 1939-1945—Naval operations, German Title D781.B53 1996 940.54′51—dc20 96-2275 Modern Library website address: www.modernlibrary.com v3.0 ... view the U-boat war quite di erently from other historians and popular writers As I see it, there were three separate and distinct phases: the U-boat war against the British Empire, the U-boat. .. embargo on the captured German U-boat records to conceal the secrets of codebreaking, which had played an important role in the Battle of the Atlantic As a result, the rst “histories” of the U-boat. .. the inter-war years as well, the U-boat was mythologized more than any other weapon of war.” The myth assumed an especially formidable aspect in World War II and after-wards During the war, the