U-Boats at War - Landings on Hostile Shores

History

Mallmann-Showell, Jak P.

Europe

Naval Institute

Readers can view the Battle of the Atlantic through U-boat periscopes thanks to incredible eyewitness accounts bringing to life the horror of this war below and above sea Readers will taste the salt, smell the nauseating stench of the U-boats, and hear orders being whispered quietly while diving back in time to the horrendous inhumanity of the Battle of the Atlantic. The longest continuous military campaign of the Second World War, raging from 1939 to 1945, the Battle of the Atlantic saw the might of the Royal Navy pitted against the Kriegsmarine. The Germans' secret weapon was their fleet of U-boats—they had the largest fleet of submarines in the world, enabling them to play cat and mouse with the Allied forces to devastating effect. They would hunt in "wolf-packs" and would prey on merchant shipping and naval vessels. This startling book tells the story of this battle as viewed through the conning towers of these U-boats. It is written as the action unfolded, using surviving logs. 

U-Boats Attack

The History Press

The memoirs of Admiral Karl Dnitz, 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, for the first time noted naval historian Jak P. Mallmann Showell has combined Dnitzs memoirs in a parallel text with the British Admiraltys 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, and 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 Navys Submarine Museum in Gosport, allowing the reader a hitherto unavailable insight into the British view of the Battle of the Atlantic as it was being fought.Together with the authors commentary adding information that was either unknown or too secret to reveal at the time, this book gives possibly the most complete contemporary account of the desperate struggle in the North Atlantic in the Second World War.

Donitz, U-Boats, Convoys: The British Version of His Memoirs from the Admiralty's Secret Anti-Submarine Reports

Biographies & Memoirs

Leaders & Notable People

Frontline Books

The full story of the design and development of the German attack U-boats written by a renowned expert in the field. The success of German submarines during the First World War in almost cutting off Britain's vital imports had not been forgotten by Adolf Hitler and when, in March 1935, he repudiated the Treaty of Versailles, Britain, magnanimously, signed up to an Anglo-German Naval Agreement. This allowed the Germans to build their submarine strength up to one third of the British 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 of the other main features, such as living and the fighting conditions, were also significantly inferior. Nevertheless, the German U-boat onslaught against British merchant ships during the autumn of 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; whilst the Type IX was a long-range variety that was modified so that it could operate in the Indian Ocean.In this latest book by the renowned Kriegsmarine historian Jak Mallmann Showell, these attack U-boats are explored at length. This includes details of their armament, capabilities, crew facilities, and just what is was like to operate such a vessel, and of course the story of their development and operational history.

Hitler's Attack U-Boats: The Kriegsmarine's WWII Submarine Strike Force

The success of German submarines during the First World War in almost cutting off Britain's vital imports had not been forgotten by Adolf Hitler and when, in March 1935, he repudiated the Treaty of Versailles, Britain, magnanimously, signed up to an Anglo-German Naval Agreement. This allowed the Germans to build their submarine strength up to one third of the British 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 of the other main features, such as living and the fighting conditions, were also significantly inferior. Nevertheless, the German U-boat onslaught against British merchant ships during the autumn of 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; whilst the Type IX was a long-range variety that was modified so that it could operate in the Indian Ocean.In this latest book by the renowned Kriegsmarine historian Jak Mallmann Showell, these attack U-boats are explored at length. This includes details of their armament, capabilities, crew facilities, and just what it was like to operate such a vessel, and of course the story of their development and operational history.

Hitler's Attack U-Boats: The Kriegsmarine's Submarine Strike Force

After World War I, the German admirals were shocked to discover that the Royal Navy had had an immense advantage--they had penetrated the secret German radio codes. Confronted with this fact, the Germans determined that any future codes would need to be so complex that breaking them would, theoretically, be impossible. The result was the famous Enigma machine, whose settings were altered so frequently and variables so great that the Germans believed capture of a machine by the enemy would not compromise Enigma for long. But the British proved them wrong. They managed to obtain the machine and determine the method of setting the code, giving the Allies a critical tactical advantage. As the author points out, this intelligence triumph was particularly important during the Battle of the Atlantic, when Hitler's U-boat wolf-packs were wreaking havoc on the convoy lifelines to the British Isles. Without the decoded Enigma messages, the Allies' narrow victory would likely have turned to defeat. This skillful analysis of Enigma's development and its role during U-boat operations includes details of Allied boardings of U-boats from which Enigma machines could have been captured. It is one of the greatest espionage stories in the history of naval warfare.

Enigma U-Boats: Breaking the Code

Military

Naval_Institute_Press

For much of World War II, Germany's most threatening maritime force was the U-boat arm. Their deadly attacks on Allied supply lines are well documented, but they also carried out numerous clandestine operations, landing in neutral countries such as Ireland and Spain, and along the U.S. and Canadian shorelines to conduct espionage and sabotage. North African landings aided Rommel's Afrika Korps. In this fascinating book, U-boat historian Jak Mallmann-Showell has gathered together a collection of firsthand accounts and remarkable photographs--many of them previously unpublished--showing how these landings were executed. This fresh perspective on the Kriegsmarine and their world-wide exploits between 1939 and 1945 will be a welcome acquisition for anyone interested in the naval campaigns of World War II.

U-Boats at War: Landings on Hostile Shores

Ocean-going U-boats, each one not much longer than four European articulated lorries with up to sixty men inside them, sailed the far-off seas to wreak havoc in hot inhospitable waters. The air forces and navies from Britain, the United States and other colonial countries followed to make this a daring and death-threatening venture. The facts of what the U-boats achieved against massive odds have been told before, but U-Boats of the Second World War: Their Longest Voyages is different. It concentrates more on how it was done. How the men survived, how they lived and died and how they still found time to carry out their orders. The book is based on masses of previously unpublished documents from the German U-boat Museum, many of them written during or shortly after the war by men who survived this bitter conflict. This is the story of how specially built long-range ocean-going U-boats started out one step ahead of the Allied navies and air power, how they fell one step behind and how they finally vanished into the depths of the biggest and deepest oceans. This is a remarkable story of endurance, courage and comradeship that terrified the world for the most critical period of the Second World War. The author, Jak P. Mallmann Showell, is the son of a U-boat diesel mechanic who disappeared in those warm waters two months before the author was born.

U-Boats of the Second World War: Their Longest Voyages

Fonthill Media

Throughout the Second World War, Hitler's U-boats and surface battleships - particularly the dreaded Bismarck and Tirpitz - were a constant threat to Allied shipping. They exacted a massive toll, despite being outnumbered by the Royal Navy. But the vital contribution of Hitler's naval bases, which constructed, supplied, maintained and protected the German fleet all over the world, is often neglected. Jak P. Mallmann Showell has spent over forty years researching the role played by these bases; he has interviewed hundreds of veterans, visited dozens of locations and has amassed a vast collection of photographs to form the most comprehensive and illuminating work on the subject to date. The planning and labor that went into the construction of Germany's network of naval bases and coastal batteries is remarkable, as is the degree of organization and discipline that induced their efficient operation. From utterly remote, unmanned positions consisting of little more than a hidden stock of supplies, to the immense naval complexes of Lorient, Kiel and Wilhemshaven, Mallmann Showell describes with fascinating detail the various functions and departments, how they were run and organized, and what it was like to live and work on a German base in wartime. He also details the anatomies of the many coastal artillery batteries and the manifold duties of the men of the naval artillery and infantry. Beautifully illustrated with over 200 previously unpublished photographs,Hitler's Naval Bases is, without question, the definitive book on this principal branch of the Kriegsmarine.

Hitler's Naval Bases: Kriegsmarine Bases During the Second World War

During the Second World War, the Arctic saw an unusually high intensity of action, adventure, excitement and tragedy, and Swastikas in the Arctic: U-boat Alley Through the Frozen Hell describes the German military activities in that harsh frozen hell. Based mainly on original logs, the bare facts have been fleshed out with help from veterans and researchers from the United States, Iceland, Britain, Norway, Germany and Russia. This has made it possible to describe some of the now forgotten battles, the secret U-boat activities, the German struggle to broadcast essential weather data to Berlin and the incredible surface ship activity that forced Britain to launch major offensives against heavy odds. The Arctic also saw intense British efforts to help with the cracking of the highly complicated Enigma radio code. Many studies of the Second World War give scant attention to activity in this ice-studded ocean. However, as becomes apparent reading this book, those who fought, suffered and died there were shot at and bombed more heavily than in any other theater of war and the contribution they made influenced military actions far away in warmer regions. Gloriously illustrated with many unpublished photographs, Swastikas in the Arctic: U-boat Alley Through the Frozen Hell is a thrilling account of a war fought in very difficult circumstances.

Swastikas in the Arctic: U-boat Alley through the Frozen Hell

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