Full Product Details
Author: Herbert Werner
Publisher: Orion Publishing Co
Imprint: Cassell Military
Dimensions:
Width: 12.80cm
, Height: 2.40cm
, Length: 19.80cm
Weight: 0.284kg
ISBN: 9780304353309
ISBN 10: 0304353302
Pages: 352
Publication Date: 09 March 2006
Audience:
General/trade
,
General
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: To order
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.
Reviews
During the bleak months of 1941 when German U-boats had sunk more than 700 ships bringing vital goods to besieged Britain, Churchill spoke grimly of the wolf-packs that cut down ships faster than they could be built. This is an account of that warfare as experienced by a former U-boat commander who at the end of the war was captain of one of the three U-boats still afloat. Until March, 1943, it was a story of unbroken triumph but a gigantic Allied counteroffensive turned the hunters into the hunted. As Ensign, then Executive Officer and Captain, Werner served during the enforced, long submersions in which the boats became mold-ridden, diesel hammering, oxygen-lacking, urine-reeking, excrement-laden cockleshells. At fast he did not question the war - but as the Reich crumbled, his disillusionment was complete.... Well written, without bravado or mock modesty, and on occasion stirring. (Kirkus Reviews)
Once unacceptable, a sympathetic attitude to German combatants in the last war is now a well-established factor in war literature. This story of triumph and disaster is a classic example: Werner was one of the very few U-boat commanders whose courage and professionalism carried him safely through to the end of the war. U-boats were known as iron coffins, and few survived the appaling dangers of naval combat. But Werner's mesmerizing first-person account of the havoc created by one small sub on the Atlantic convoys is rendered in astringent and measured prose. This story has an accelerating tension, as Allied detection and attack techniques improved, and Werner's U-boat swiftly went from being the hunter to the hunted. Of 842 U-boats launched, 779 were sunk, iron coffins for 28,000 men. The author's graphic account is dedicated to seamen of all nations who died in the battle of the Atlantic, and few will dispute the heroism shown on both sides. A selection of powerfully evocative photographs complements Werner's text. (Kirkus UK)
Author Information
Herbert A Werner was born in 1920. He joined the German Navy in 1939, and the U-boats in 1941, taking up his first command in 1943. He survived the war, was interned by the Americans, British and French, eventually to become an American citizen in 1957.
