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By the end of 1943 the German submarine war on Atlantic convoys was all but defeated, beaten by superior technology, code-breaking and air power. With losses mounting, Dönitz withdrew the wolfpacks, but in a surprise change of strategy, following the D-Day landings in June 1944, he sent his U-boats into coastal waters, closer to home, where they could harass the crucial Allied supply lines to the new European bridgehead. Caught unawares, the British and American navies struggled to cope with a novel predicament -in shallow waters submarines could lie undetectable on the bottom, and given operational freedom, they rarely needed to make signals, so neutralizing the Allied advantages of decryption and radio direction-finding. Behind this unpleasant shock lay an even greater threat, of radically new sub- marine types known to be nearing service. Dönitz saw these as war-winning weapons, and gambled that his inshore campaign would hold up the Allied advance long enough to allow these faster and quieter boats to be deployed in large numbers. This offensive was perhaps Germany's last chance to turn the tide, yet, surprisingly, such an important story has never been told in detail before. That it did not succeed masks its full significance: the threat of quiet submarines, operating singly in shallow water, was never really mastered, and in the Cold War that followed the massive Soviet submarine fleet, built on captured German technology and tactical experience, became a very real menace to Western sea power. In this way, Dönitz's last gamble set the course of post-war anti submarine development.
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.
Lawrence Paterson is an author and historian.
In this third volume on the progress of the Second World War after the D-Day landings, Patrick Delaforce examines the final weeks of World War Two, beyond the Yalta Conference, when the question to be asked was not who would win, but how to prevent the war dragging on and also how to prevent Hitler from implementing a scorched earth policy across the Reichland. Then there was the race to win territory as the Russians, too, clawed their way across Europe. Operation Eclipse, begun in March1945, both prevented the Russians from occupying Denmark in violation of the agreement at Yalta but also occupied the Kiel naval base. The book also examines events immediately after the surrender and Hitler's suicide, and the creation of the short-lived fourth reich under the leadership of Admiral Donitz. As well as Denmark, the book also covers the liberations of both Holland and Norway. Most poignant of all, the liberation of the prisoners of war is covered as well as the freeing those that had toiled for Hitler against their will, as slaves. The book ends with the famous war crimes trials and the beginnings of the Cold War.
In 1943 a submarine returning from a secret mission is attacked, its vital cargo believed lost . . . Three quarters of a century later, NUMA director Dirk Pitt is asked to help locate a missing person: the scientist responsible for the design of the revolutionary Poseidon's Arrow submarine. This craft is so advanced and dangerous that any government would kill to posses it - and not only has its designer disappeared, but so too have the plans. But this is no simple search. It leads Pitt from Washington to the Panama jungle, draws in the full resources of NUMA, and slowly unravels a deadly conspiracy that seeks to bring the world to its knees- and only Pitt can prevent it. Poseidon's Arrow follows Arctic Drift, Crescent Dawn and Atlantis Found as the next in the enthralling Dirk Pitt adventures. Praise for Clive Cussler 'The Adventure King' Sunday Express 'Cussler is hard to beat' Daily Mail 'The guy I read' Tom Clancy
“Comprehensive and readable.”—The Naval Review Between September 1941 and May 1944, the Germans sent sixty-two U-boats into the Mediterranean. To get there, the boats had to pass through the Strait of Gibraltar, the British-held entry point, where nearly a third of them were sunk or forced to turn back. Of the submarines that made it into the clear, calm waters of the Mediterranean, not one of them ever made it back into the Atlantic: They were all either sunk in battle or scuttled by their own crews. In U-Boats in the Mediterranean, Lawrence Paterson puts the campaign into its strategic context, showing how it coordinated with Rommel's Afrika Korps in the Western Desert and the U-boat battle in the Atlantic. He describes the weapons and tactics the commanders used to try to overcome the difficulties of operating in the shallow waters and how increasing Allied dominance of the air took its heavy toll. Paterson details the U-boat triumphs such as the sinking of HMS Ark Royal, and the torpedoing of the battleship HMS Barham, which provided one of the best-known images of the Second World War at sea. Making full use of firsthand accounts by veterans, official German records, and Allied archives, the book puts a spotlight on a neglected aspect of the U-boat war and shows the courage and fortitude of the men on both sides of this savage conflict.
During the last year of World War II the once surface-bound diesel-electric U-boat ushered in the age of ‘total undersea war’ with the introduction of an air mast, or 'snorkel' as it became known among the men who served in Dönitz's submarine fleet. U-boats no longer needed to surface to charge batteries or refresh air; they rarely communicated with their command, operating silently and alone among the shallow coastal waters of the United Kingdom and across to North America. At first, U-boats could remain submerged continuously for a few days, then a few weeks, and finally for months at a time, and they set underwater endurance records not broken for nearly a quarter of a century. The introduction of the snorkel was of paramount concern to the Allies, who strived to frustrate the impact of the device before war's end. Every subsequent wartime U-boat innovation was subordinated to the snorkel, including the new Type XXI Electro-boat ‘wonder weapon’. The snorkel's introduction foreshadowed the nearly un-trackable weapon and instrument of intelligence that the submarine became in the postwar world. This exhaustive study, the first of its kind, draws upon wartime documents from archives around the world to re-evaluate the last year of the U-boat's deployment, all its key technological innovations, the evolving operations and tactics, and Allied countermeasures. It provides answers to many long-standing questions about the last year of the war: How and why did U-boats patrol so close inshore? How effective was acoustic and anti-radar camouflage? Why was U-boat wireless communication so problematic? How did U-boats navigate so effectively submerged? What were the health implications of staying submerged for a month or more? What does an accurate snorkel-configuration look like? This new study is destined to become the authoritative reference for all these issues and many more.
‘A fitting tribute to Germany's clandestine warriors, and a guarantee that their extraordinary efforts have not been relegated to comparative obscurity or entirely forgotten’ - David R Higgins. Hitler's daring and pioneering Brandenburgers special forces served in every German theatre of action. This is the most comprehensive account of an unusual and profoundly successful band of men. Lawrence Paterson traces the origins of the small unit, before the outbreak of war in 1939, as the brainchild of Admiral Canaris and part of his Abwehr intelligence unit through through to its breaking up in 1944 when it was largely converted to a, conventional Panzergrenadier division. At that point, many Brandenburgers transferred to Otto Skorzeny’s SS Jägdverbände. It is well-known that German troops disguised themselves as Allied troops for the Battle of the Bulge - but less well known the Brandenburger operations used such disguises - more effectively -in in advance of the Blitzkrieg in 1939-41. Despite their profound success as commando raiding troops their history has been overshadowed by equivalent Allied units and largely ignored. However, within North Africa the Brandenburgers employed similar techniques to the SAS and LRDG, at first earning Erwin Rommel’s disapproval for their unorthodox methods until he began to feel the effect of similar Allied raids. Paterson details the roles of key individuals, such as Theodor von Hippel, along with forensic details of key operations. He explodes many of the myths about the unit and provides a clear and comprehensive history of this key part of the Wehrmacht.
The full story of the role that oil played in the origins and outcome of World War II.