"Remarkable...a feat of historical reconstruction."—Paul Kennedy, New York Times bestselling author of The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers The Battle of the Atlantic, the longest continuous campaign of World War II, climaxed in 1943, when Germany came closest to interrupting Allied supply lines and perhaps winning the war. In March of that year, German U-boats scored their last great triumph, destroying nearly 150,000 tons of supplies and fuel. • Blow-by-blow account of the largest convoy battle of the war • Analyzes the tactics, technology, and intelligence of both sides

This book tells the saga of a German front-line U-Boat, U-I 7S, which, with her compatriots, very nearly severed Britain's lifeline across the Atlantic, and which culminated in a critical battle around Convoy HX-233 in the Spring of 1943. The author was a witness to the battle and this, combined with the meticulous research of original documents and his use of eye witness accounts from both the Allied and German sides, has resulted in a quite remarkable piece of work in which no stone has been left unturned in his desire to reconstruct exactly what happened both to the U-boats and their quarry in the crucial months of 1943. But the book is much more than a description of a single battle for the author takes this particular event as a microcosm to explain the strategic and tactical background, the technical developments on both sides, and the operational experiences that occurred throughout the whole of the War. He is particularly astute at evaluating both the US and British contributions to the Atlantic convoy battles and explaining the logistical problems faced by the Kriegsmarine.

German submarine operations against allied convoys, during March 1943 is critically analyzed from an operational perspective. The theater commander’s operational scheme is dissected for the purpose of identifying lessons which can be applied to the planning and execution of today’s theater operations. A brief historical account of the early phases of the war and the events and decisions which preceded the critical convoy battles will be followed by an analysis of the operational scheme employed by Admiral Dönitz. German victory during the spring offensive clearly demonstrated numerous operational successes, a reasonably well conceived operational plan, and proof positive of the potential for a larger scale victory. Yet history recorded Germany’s ultimate defeat in the Battle of the Atlantic. This analysis identified three significant flaws which led to the German demise; first, strategic guidance and operational means were inadequately reconciled which prevented the proper execution of the operational plan; second, operational intelligence and reconnaissance were inadequately exploited; third, Germany failed to coordinate and execute joint operations between service arms, specifically the lack of air assets in support of vital U-boat operations. Clearly one must conclude a reasonable operational plan has marginal chance for success when strategic guidance and joint coordination are incompatible with theater objective accomplishment.

The author of The First Day on the Somme details a naval skirmish that became a turning point for the Battle of the Atlantic during World War II. Winston Churchill wrote, “The only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril.” Had the convoy link between North America and Britain been broken, the course of World War II would have been different. There was a period during the winter of 1942-43 when the Germans almost cut the North Atlantic lifeline. In the first twenty days of March, 1943, the Germans sank ninety-seven Allied merchant ships—twice the rate of replacement. During the same period, seven U-boats were lost and fourteen put in service. No wonder Churchill was worried. Early in March, 1943, Convoys SC122 and HX229 sailed from New York harbor for England, and Admiral Doenitz deployed forty-two U-boats to entrap them. Twenty-one merchant ships were sunk in the ensuing battle. The Germans called it “the greatest convoy battle of all time.” This book documents the convoys, every maneuver of the merchant ships, their escort vessels, the long-range aircraft cover, and the attacking U-boats in a powerful narrative reminiscent of Nicholas Monsarrat’s bestselling novel The Cruel Sea. In many ways, this book could be the story of any of the hundreds of convoys that sailed the ocean during the war. Middlebrook also elucidates three controversial aspects of the Battle of the Atlantic: why there was an “Air Gap” long after full air cover could have been provided, why the convoys had to sail with dangerously weak naval escorts, and how the Allied outwitted the Germans in the radio decoding war.

By mid-1942 the Allies were losing the Mediterranean war: Malta was isolated and its civilian population faced starvation. In June 1942 the British Royal Navy made a stupendous effort to break the Axis stranglehold. The British dispatched armed convoys from Gibraltar and Egypt toward Malta. In a complex battle lasting more than a week, Italian and German forces defeated Operation Vigorous, the larger eastern effort, and ravaged the western convoy, Operation Harpoon, in a series of air, submarine, and surface attacks culminating in the Battle of Pantelleria. Just two of seventeen merchant ships that set out for Malta reached their destination. In Passage Perilous presents a detailed description of the operations and assesses the actual impact Malta had on the fight to deny supplies to Rommel's army in North Africa. The book's discussion of the battle's operational aspects highlights the complex relationships between air and naval power and the influence of geography on littoral operations.

Award-winning historian Mike Walling captures the essence of the Arctic Convoys of World War II. In 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union in the largest offensive operation ever undertaken. Operation Barbarossa saw defeat after defeat heaped on the Soviet army. With Russia's forces left staggering under the strain and in desperate need of supplies, Britain and the United States launched an ambitious operation to resupply the Soviet Union using convoys sent through the Arctic. Their journey was punctuated by torpedo attacks in freezing conditions, Stuka dive bombers, naval gun fire, and weeks of total darkness in the Arctic winter, with ships disappearing below the waves weighed down by the ice and snow on their decks. Drawing on hundreds of oral histories from eyewitnesses and veterans of the convoys, plus original research into the Russian Navy archives at Murmansk, historian Michael G. Walling offers a fresh retelling of one of World War II's pivotal yet largely overlooked campaigns.

Winston Churchill famously claimed that the submarine war in the Atlantic was the only campaign of the Second World War that really frightened him. If the lifeline to north America had been cut, Britain would never have survived; there could have been no build-up of US and Commonwealth forces, no D-Day landings, and no victory in western Europe. Furthermore, the battle raged from the first day of the war until the final German surrender, making it the longest and arguably hardest-fought campaign of the whole war. The ships, technology and tactics employed by the Allies form the subject of this book. Beginning with the lessons apparently learned from the First World War, the author outlines inter-war developments in technology and training, and describes the later preparations for the second global conflict. When the war came the balance of advantage was to see-saw between U-boats and escorts, with new weapons and sensors introduced at a rapid rate. For the defending navies, the prime requirement was numbers, and the most pressing problem was to improve capability without sacrificing simplicity and speed of construction. The author analyses the resulting designs of sloops, frigates, corvettes and destroyer escorts and attempts to determine their relative effectiveness.