Occupied St John's A Social History of a City at War 1939-1945

Edited by Steven High

978-0-7735-3750-7 2010-10-12 8.5 x 10 336pp 152 b&w photos $49.95

This book, edited by Steven High, Research Chair in Public History at Concordia University, is a compendium of essays written on St. John’s, Newfoundland during the Second World War, which at the time was a British Crown Colony. The sparsely populated city soon had grow in a hurry early in the war with a massive influx of US and Canadian military personnel. Service in Newfoundland for Canadians constituted foreign service for veteran’s benefits purposes.

An excellent “social” history of St John’s but was disappointed by the little coverage of the Royal Canadian Navy facility HMCS Avalon, whose history sadly remains untold.

United States Naval Aviation 1919-1941

E.R. Johnson

Print 978-0-7864-4550-9 Ebook 978-0-7864-8585-7 605 photos (40 color illustrations), appendices, glossary, bibliography, index 352pp. softcover (8.5 x 11) 2011 $45

The period 1919-1941 witness revolutionary changes in aviation, probably none more so than in naval affairs.

Mr Johnson, a practicing attorney, has a wonderful hobby for naval aviation enthusiasts. His work on naval aviation history is akin to Canada’s P.D. Martin for depth and scope of coverage. This hobby is to really delve into aircraft history, not just the planes that went into production, but also the ones that never went past prototype stage.

Also examined are airships and blimps as well as ships that service/embarked aircraft. The ships involved included not just aircraft carriers, but seaplane tenders, cruisers, battleships and other vessels. A final section covers foreign aircraft and airships which were either used or tested by the US Navy.

This book is profusely illustrated with photos and drawings as well as eight pages of color artwork. We eagerly await the next work from Mr. Johnson.

Tirpitz The Life and Death of Germany's Last Super Battleship

Tirpitz The Life and Death of Germany's Last Super Battleship

Niklas Zetterling and Michael Tamelander

6 x 9, 256 pages, illustrated, 9781935149187, $32.95, hardback, Casemate December 19, 2009

When I first began reading this book, I was expecting another run of the mill ship history. However I was very pleasantly surprised when I quickly realized it was not. This book was superbly written in that you actually can feel and empathize with the characters regardless of which side of the battle they were on. Two things new that I learned were the fact that British First Sea Lord Dudley Pound was likely suffering from the brain tumor which eventually took his life in 1943 during the fiasco that was Convoy PQ17. In addition, the effects on German decisions due to oil shortages, was not fully appreciated before. The original text of this book is believed to have been in Swedish so a few clunky translations are noted such as the word “crafts” concerning vessels and the use of kilometers in ocean distances when nautical miles should have been used (the whole basis of our system of latitude.)  These should have been caught in editing. Apart from this, I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

Attack on Pearl Harbor Strategy, Combat, Myths, Deceptions

Attack on Pearl Harbor Strategy, Combat, Myths, Deceptions

Alan D. Zimm

6 x 9, 480 pages, illustrations, 9781612000107, $32.95, hardback, Casemate May 6, 2011

Kudos to the author of this book; shows that historians are finally getting past politically correct "revisionist history." Good riddance! Instead this book is a highly analyzed treatise on the attack on Pearl Harbor of 1941 from the perspective of the US and Japanese. With the use modern spreadsheet technologies, results of various actions are examined as to their effectiveness. This serves to place many historical inaccuracies in a better light. Perhaps a little dry for the average reader, but a useful tool for future researchers.

Black Flag The Surrender of Germany's U-Boat Forces on Land and at Sea

Black Flag The Surrender of Germany's U-Boat Forces on Land and at Sea

Seaforth Publishing
By Lawrence Paterson
Hardback ISBN: 9781848320376 Published: 21 August 2009 £15.00

On the eve of Germany's surrender in May 1945, Grossadmiral Karl Dönitz commanded thousands of loyal and active men of the U-boat service. Still fully armed and unbroken in morale, enclaves of these men occupied bases stretching from Norway to France, where cadres of U-boat men fought on in ports that defied besieging Allied troops to the last. At sea U-boats still operated on a war footing around Britain, the coasts of the United States and as far as Malaya.
Following the agreement to surrender, these large formations needed to be disarmed - often by markedly inferior forces - and the boats at sea located and escorted into the harbours of their erstwhile enemies. Neither side knew entirely what to expect, and many of the encounters were tense; in some cases there were unsavoury incidents, and stories of worse. For many Allied personnel it was their first glimpse of the dreaded U-boat menace and both sides were forced to exercise considerable restraint to avoid compromising the terms of Germany's surrender.
One of the last but most dramatic acts of the naval war, the story of how the surrender was handled has never been treated at length before. This book uncovers much new material about the process itself and the ruthless aftermath for both the crews and their boats.

British Warships and Auxiliaries 2012/13

British Warships & Auxiliaries 2012/13

Maritime Books

By Steve Bush

2012 £6.99 | $10.90

Published every year since 1979, first edited by Mike Critchley and latterly by Steve Bush, this book is indispensible for follower of the Royal Navy. Of particular interest are the supplementary craft operated by private contractors; many of which are of new construction or charter and some of the previous craft operated by the Royal Marine Auxiliary Service (RMAS) before  privatization.
This reasonably priced reference comes in full color format and is highly recommended (as usual!)

Donitz's Last Gamble

Donitz's Last Gamble 

The Inshore U-Boat Campaign 1944-45

Lawrence Paterson
Found in: Naval: Iron & Steel
All Seaforth Books
Hardback 192 pages
ISBN: 9781844157143

Published: 20 March 2008

After the June 1944 D-Day landings D'nitz withdrew his U-boat wolf-packs from the Atlantic convoy war and sent them into coastal waters, where they could harass the massive shipping movements necessary to supply the Allied armies advancing across Europe. Caught unawares by this change of strategy, the Allied anti-submarine forces were ill-prepared for the novel challenges of inshore warfare. It proved surprisingly difficult to locate U-boats that could lie silently on the seabed, and the shallow waters meant less than ideal conditions for sonar propagation. Furthermore, because the battle was nearer home, the U-boats wasted less time on transit, so at any one time there were more of them in combat. In the final months of the war there was also the threat of far more advanced and potent submarine types entering German service, but thanks largely to overwhelming numbers of escorts this last gamble by D'nitz was defeated. In fact, the Allied navies had never really established superiority, and this was to have enormous significance later during the Cold War, when the same tactics were planned by the Soviets. Since it had such a major impact on post-war naval thinking, it is a story of the utmost importance told by an accomplished U-boat author.

Most histories of the Battle of the Atlantic pretty much end after Operation Overlord in June of 1944 when the U-Boats were assigned missions to UK and Canadian inshore waters.. Author Lawrence Paterson brings to life in this story of the campaign in UK waters.

This thoroughly researched book is largely written from the German perspective with tremendous insights on bases, personnel and equipment. The German hope was the UK campaign would buy them time until the revolutionary Type XXI and XXIII boats could come into service. Fortunately for the Allies, the RAF/USAAF bombing campaign interrupted the program sufficiently so that the new boats couldn't take part in the battle in a meaningful manner. Postwar trials on captured boats indicated just how advanced they were and the devastation they could have had on the war effort.

Two small quibbles about the book - the photo of page 42 is taken on a Canadian Tribal Class destroyer sometime after 1950 or so and the meager mention in the text about the rapid introduction of wreck charts for UK waters rapidly drafted as part of the UK inshore campaign.

The book is an excellent addition to the historical narrative of this often ignored period of history. We look forward to reviewing Mr Paterson's other book "Black Flag."