Kriegsmarine U-boats 1939–45 (1) PDF Download

Author: Gordon Williamson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1780966148
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 77

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Book Description
This, the first of two volumes on Germany's World War II U-boats, traces their development from the early U-boats of the Kaiser's Navy, the prohibition on Germany having U-boats following the Armistice in 1918 and the subsequent Treaty of Versailles, the secret development of U-boats using a 'cover-firm' in Holland, culminating in the formation of the 1st U-boat Flotilla in 1935 with the modern Type II. The operational history section includes examples from the Classes Type VIIA, Type VIIB, VIID, VIIE and VIIF before concentrating on the mainstay of the U-boat arm, the Type VIIC. Comparisons are also made with the standard allied submarines, their strengths, weaknesses and U-boat tactics.

Author: Philip Kaplan
Publisher: US Naval Institute Press
ISBN: 9781557509543
Category : Submarines (Ships)
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Reaction to the publication of the hardcover edition to this book in 1997 was immediate and overwhelming with demand quickly overtaking the limited stock available. Now a paperback edition has been printed that easily matches the high quality of the original but costs much less. Designed for visual impact, the volume provides a brutally realistic portrait of U-boat life during a critical phase of World War II in the Atlantic. It includes some two hundred and fifty illustrations, half in color and many with full-page spreads, of a fascinating combination of photographs, paintings, and drawings that brilliantly convey the U-boat experience -- and help explain the mystique of the German submariner that persists to this day.

Author: Daniel Morgan
Publisher: Seaforth Publishing
ISBN: 184832118X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 492

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Book Description
During the Second World War over 250 Allied warships from a dozen navies were sent to the bottom by German U-boats. This ground-breaking study provides a detailed analysis of every sinking for which source material survives from both the Allied and the German sides, resulting in detailed treatment of the fate of 110 vessels, with the remainder summarised in an extensive appendix. Uniquely, each entry is built around a specialist translation of the relevant segment of the war diary (log) of the U-boat in question, taken directly from the surviving originals – remarkably, this represents the first large-scale publication of the U-boat war diaries in any language. The book offers a wealth of new information, not only with respect to the circumstances of the sinkings from both the Allied and German perspectives, but also to the technical environment in which they lived as well as the fate of the crews. The entries include background details on the vessels concerned and the men involved, with a selection of rare and carefully chosen photos from archives and collections around the world. Each entry is itself a compelling narrative, but is backed with a list of sources consulted, including documents, published works and websites. A decade in the making, this is probably the most important book on the U-boat war to be published for many a year

Author: Gordon Williamson
Publisher: Frontline Books
ISBN: 1526759055
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
‘The only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril,’ wrote Winston Churchill in his history of the Second World War. ‘I was even more anxious about this battle than I had been about the glorious air fight called the Battle of Britain.” In reality, the Kriegsmarine had been woefully unprepared for the war into which it was thrown. The Command-in-Chief of submarines, Karl Dönitz, himself a verteran U-boat captain from the First World War, felt that he could bring Britain to its knees with a fleet of 300 U-Boats. But when war broke out, he had just twenty-four available for operational use. Despite this, the U-Boat arm scored some incredible successes in the early part of the war, raising the status of the submarine commanders and crews to that of national heroes in the eyes of the German people. The ‘Grey Wolves’ had become super-stars. Small wonder then that the U-Boat war has fascinated students of military history ever since. This book, using a carefully selected range of both wartime images and colour images of surviving U-boat memorabilia from private collections, describes 100 iconic elements of the U-Boat service and its campaigns. The array of objects include important individuals and the major U-Boat types, through to the uniforms and insignias the men wore. The weapons, equipment and technology used are explored, as are the conditions in which the U-boat crews served, from cooking facilities and general hygiene down to the crude toilet facilities. Importantly, the enemy that they faced is also covered, examining the ship-borne and airborne anti-submarine weaponry utilised against the U-boats. The U-Boats began the war, though small in number, more than a match for the Allies and created carnage amongst merchant shipping as well as sinking several major warships. The pace of technological development, however, failed to match that of Allied anti-submarine warfare weaponry and the U-Bootwaffe was ultimately doomed to defeat but not before, at one point, coming close to bringing Britain to its knees.

Author: Ian Baxter
Publisher: Casemate Publishers
ISBN: 184468878X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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2.20PM Directly in front of us I sighted four funnels and the masts of a passenger steamer at right angles to our course coming from the SW and going towards Galley Head. 3:10 PM Torpedo shot at a distance of 700 meters below the surface - from the log of the German submarine U–20. The explosion that followed changed history as the date of the ship's log was may 7, 1915, the steamer was the Lusitania, and the torpedo sent 1195 innocent men, women, and children to a watery grave. In 1914, U-Boats were a new and untried weapon, and when such a weapon can bring a mighty empire to the briink of defeat there is a story worth telling. Edwyn Gray's The U-Boat War is the history of the Kaiser's attempt to destroy the British Empire by a ruthless campaign of unrestricted submarine warfare. It opens with Germany's first tentative experiments with the submarines and climaxes with the naval mutiny that helped bring down the Kaiser. In between is is a detailed account of a campaign of terror which, by April 1917,had the British Empire on the verge of surrender. The cost in lives and equipment was staggering. On the German side, 4894 sailors and 515 officers lost their lives in action; 178 German Submarines were destroyed by the allies; 14 were scuttled and 122 surrendered. According to the most reliable sources, 5,708 ships were destroyed by the U-Boats and 13,333 non-combatants perished in British Ships. World figures for civilian casualties were never released The U-Boat War is a savage but thrilling account of men fighting for their lives beneath the sea, and of the boats that changed the face of naval warfare.

Author: Jak P. Mallmann Showell
Publisher: Sutton Publishing
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
This volume charts the life of a German U-boat from construction through to active service, and looks at commissioning, sea trials and the first patrol of a typical boat during World War II. This illustrated book also offers a glimpse at domestic life on board a German U-boat, focusing on what the ordinary seaman would have seen and experienced during his first weeks aboard a brand new boat. The author draws on the extensive archives of the German U-boat Archive and many of the photos that appear in the book are previously unpublished. Comprehensive captions describe in detail the many aspects of a U-boat at war, from the boat itself, to the crew and its personalities, life above and below the waves, and the weapons and radar with which it fought Allied shipping. This book affords an insight into this much-feared weapon of World War II, and should appeal to all with an interest in the armed forces of the Third Reich.

Author: Carolyn C Y'Blood
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
ISBN: 161251247X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
The substantial accomplishments of the U.S. Navy's mini-carriers in such battles as Leyte Gulf, Guadalcanal, the Marianas, and Okinawa never gained the attention given the fast carriers, but there is little question that their vital operations played an important role in the Pacific campaign. These remarkably versatile vessels--called CVEs, baby flattops, and even jeeps--hunted submarines, escorted convoys, provided air support, and performed dozens of other tasks that are vividly described in this book. Based on interviews with the CVE crewmen and on war diaries, ship histories, and other documents, it tells a moving story of escort carrier operations, from the work of the first CVEs to their final assignment transporting GIs home after the war. Seldom-seen photographs add to this fascinating portrait of the little giants.

Author: Clay Blair
Publisher: Modern Library
ISBN: 0307874370
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 848

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Book Description
Clay Blair's best-selling naval classic Silent Victory: The U.S. Submarine War Against Japan, is regarded as the definitive account of that decisive phase of the war in the Pacific. Nine years in the making, Hitler's U-boat War is destined to become the definitive account of the German submarine war against the Allies, or "The Battle of the Atlantic." It is an epic sea story, the most arduous and prolonged naval battle in all history. For a period of nearly six years, the German U-boat force attempted to blockade and isolate the British Isles, in hopes of forcing the British out of the war, thereby thwarting the Allied strategic air assault on German cities as well as Overlord, the Allied invasion of Occupied France. Fortunately for the Allies, the U-boat force failed to achieve either of these objectives, but in the attempt they sank 2,800 Allied merchant ships, while the Allies sank nearly 800 U-boats. On both sides, tens of thousands of sailors perished. The top secret Allied penetration of German naval codes, and, conversely, the top secret German penetration of Allied naval codes played important roles in the Atlantic naval battle. In order to safeguard the secrets of codebreaking in the postwar years, London and Washington agreed to withhold all official codebreaking and U-boat records. Thus for decade upon decade an authoritative and definitive history of the Battle of the Atlantic could not be attempted. The accounts that did appear were incomplete and full of errors of fact and false interpretations and conclusions, often leaving the entirely wrong impression that the German U-boats came within a whisker of defeating the Allies, a myth that persists. When London and Washington finally began to release the official records in the 1980s, Clay Blair and his wife, Joan, commenced work on this history in Washington, London, and Germany. They relied on the official records as well as the work of German, British, American, and Canadian naval scholars who published studies of bits and pieces of the story. The end result is this magnificent and monumental work, crammed with vivid and dramatic scenes of naval actions and dispassionate but startling new revelations and interpretations and conclusions about all aspects of the Battle of the Atlantic. The Blair history will be published in two volumes. This first volume, The Hunters, covers the first three years of the war, August 1939 to August 1942. Told chronologically, it is subdivided into two major sections, the War Against the British Empire, and the War Against the Americas. Volume II, The Hunted, to follow a year later, will cover the last years of the naval war in Europe, August 1942 to May 1945, when the Allies finally overcame the U-boat threat. Never before has Hitler's U-boat war been chronicled with such authority, fidelity, objectivity, and detail. Nothing is omitted. Even those who fought the Battle of the Atlantic will find no end of surprises. Later generations will benefit by having at hand an account of this important phase of World War II, free of bias and mythology.

Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Presents information on the U-boats of World War II. Notes that U-boats were the submarines of the German navy. Contains a collection of photographs of U-boats. Discusses operations, including wolfpacks, convoy battles, and Operation Paukenschlag. Offers information on captured U-boats, U-boats after World War II, U-boats sunk by Allied subs, and U-boat losses in May 1943. Provides information on the weapons, such as torpedoes and deck guns, as well as other technical items.

Author: Philip Kaplan
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.
ISBN: 1629140767
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
In the early years of the Second World War, the elite force of German submariners known as the Ubootwaffe came perilously close to perfecting the underwater battle tactics and successfully cutting Britain's transatlantic lifeline. To the Allies, these enemy sailors were embarking on a mission of unequivocal evil. Each member of the Ubootwaffe understood that he must take pride in being part of a unique brotherhood. He had to do so because he was setting out—in claustrophobic, unsanitary, stench-filled, and ultimately hellish conditions—on a journey that would test his mental and physical endurance to the very limits, and which he had little chance of surviving. Those that did return soon ceased to take comfort in friends or family, dwelling only on the knowledge that another patrol awaited them. By the end of the war, of the 39,000 men who went to sea in the U-boats, 27,491 died in action and a further 5,000 were made prisoners of war. Of the 863 U-boats that sailed on operational patrols, 754 were lost. Grey Wolves captures life on board a U-boat, in text, letters, diaries, journals, memoirs, prose, and poetry, relaying tales of the mundane and the routine, dramatic and heroic; the fear and resilience of every crew member, from Kapitainleutnant to Mechaniker. It is a vivid, brutally realistic portrait of the men who fought and died beneath the surface of the Atlantic in what was, perhaps, the most critical battle of the war. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.