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."

Broken Arrow: America's First Lost Nuclear Weapon

Broken Arrow: America's First Lost Nuclear Weapon

By Norman Leach

  


History / Military / Aviation History / Nuclear Warfare History / United States / 20th Century
224 pages, 9 x 6"
50+ b&w Photos
ISBN 0–88995–348–1 paper • 19.95

On the eve of Valentine's Day, 1950, an American Strategic Air Command B-36 bomber-loaded with an atomic bomb-flew into the frozen night on a simulated bombing run from Alaska to San Francisco. The engines suddenly failed on this notoriously unreliable aircraft and the crew, before parachuting into the rugged terrain of northern British Columbia, set the autopilot to take the aircraft far out to sea.
Years later the wreckage of the bomber was accidentally discovered on a remote northern British Columbia mountaintop hundreds of miles from its presumed location deep beneath the Pacific Ocean.
Before reading this book I was unfamiliar with author Norman Leach. From this first impression it seems Canada has a stellar addition to the historical community.
Broken Arrow examines the tragic loss of a US Air Force bomber in the early days of the Cold War over British Columbia, with most of the crew baling out over Princess Royal Island. This definitive historical record of the event effectively debunks urban legends and conspiracy theories, all done in a thorough and highly readable fashion, I look forward to reading the next work of Mr Leach.

Guardian of the Gulf: Sydney, Cape Breton, and the Atlantic Wars

Guardian of the Gulf: Sydney, Cape Breton, and the Atlantic Wars

By Brian Tennyson, Roger Sarty University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division © 2002 World Rights 534 Pages Paper ISBN 9780802085450 Published May 2002 $36.95

This book covers the military history of Cape Breton from the 17th Century until today. Traditionally the island was home of two strategic assets: the Canso waterway and the coal mines of the northeast.

Through times of international tensions through the years, the island's military facilities varied from a personnel and defensive equipment perspective. Often both of these duties fell on the coal miners and later the adjancent steel millworkers.

From Conferation, Canada has been averse to spending on money on defense justifying it as the nation was either protected by the US Monroe Doctrine, Imperial allegiance to Britain or the 1990s "Peacekeeping Nation." These were all methods employed by national government to mask the distaste for military spending.

The growth of the RCN, RCAF and Coast Artillery on the island in the Second World War is documented to an extensive degree. Some excellent photos were used (but left me wanting more of them) with one of my favorites being the marine railway in Sydney, one of the outcomes from the disgraceful corvette refit crisis brought on by the ineptitude of the Chief of Naval Staff in Ottawa, Percy Nelles.

The authors have done a good job the most part; however my biggest disappointment was the scant amount of information of the Point Edward Naval Base, a facility which has been all but ignored by historians to date.

  

A Bridge of Ships

A Bridge of Ships

Canadian Shipbuilding during the Second World War

James Pritchard

A ground-breaking work about the challenges and achievements of creating Canada's largest shipbuilding industry ever.

Cloth (0773538240) 9780773538245 Release date: 2011-05-20 CA $59.95  |  US $59.95 

8.5x10 464pp 45 tables

Before 1939, Canada's shipbuilding industry had been moribund for nearly two decades - no steel-hulled, ocean-going vessel had been built since 1921. During the Second World War, however, Canada's shipbuilding program became a major part of the nation's industrial effort. Shipyards were expanded and more than a thousand warships and cargo ships were constructed as well as many more thousands of auxiliary vessels, small boats, and other craft. A large ship-repair program also began.
In A Bridge of Ships James Pritchard tells the story of the rapidly changing circumstances and forceful personalities that shaped government shipbuilding policy. He examines the ownership and expansion of the shipyards and the role of ship repairing, as well as recruitment and training of the labour force. He also tells the story of the struggle for steel and the expansion of ancillary industries. Pritchard provides a definitive picture of Canada's wartime ship production, assesses the cost (more than $1.2 billion), and explains why such an enormous effort left such a short-lived legacy.
The story of Canada's shipbuilding industry is as astonishing as that of the nation's wartime navy. The personnel of both expanded more than fifty times, yet the history of wartime shipbuilding remains virtually unknown. With the disappearance of the Canadian shipbuilding industry from both the land and memory, it is time to recall and assess its contribution to Allied victory.

This book is a fairly exhaustive history and the author is commended for taking on this daunting task. Shipbuilding and repair is covered from a political, labor and economic perspective.

The only real complaint I have with the book is the author's unfamiliarity with naval weapons which are often confused in the text. Apart from that, the book is highly recommended.

Warships of the Bay of Quinte

'

978-1-55488-929-7

April 2011

197pp, Paperback

$28.00 CAD

This is the story of six of Canada’s Warships HMCS Napanee, Belleville, Hallowell, Trentonian, Quinte (I), and Quinte (II). These histories give a unique account of the small ships that were the backbone of the Canadian Navy during the Second World War and the Cold War. The stories record the accomplishments of these hardworking ships as well as the mistakes. This rich and vivid account of an important part of Canada’s Naval Service draws from the records of the ships, interviews with their crews, letters, diaries, newspaper articles, community libraries and photographs. You will learn about HMCS Napanee as she fights a five day battle against twenty-four German submarines in on one of Canada’s most tragic convoy battles. Be with HMCS Belleville as she fights to rescue a torpedoed merchant ship and find out about how a German submarine sinks the HMCS Trentonian late in the war killing six of her crew.

This book is the first work of history by the author and unfortunately it shows.

A short list of errata is as follows:

·         Winston Churchill was First Lord of the Admiralty when term “corvette” coined; not Prime Minister

·         Incorrect usage of HMCS as “the HMCS” on numerous occasions

·         Rank of Captain (N) was not used in the Second World War

·         On page 66 a location “west” of Boston was used for an incident at sea

·         Bermuda is in the Atlantic Ocean NOT the Caribbean Sea

·         CANCOMINRONONE should have been capitalized

The most glaring error was the author missing the historical significance of the ground of HMS Indomitable in 1941. This event started a chain of events which had catastrophic consequences for the Royal Navy in that Indomitable was to be the air cover for HMS Prince of Wales and Repulse in the Far East.

There are a few good illustrations in the book however not enough to recommend it.