Customer Reviews

Excellent - By: Grev, 16 Apr 2007
This is an excellent book focusing on two convoys, one fast & one slow, that were at sea at the same time & therefore became involvedin the same mid Atlantic battle. By focusing on one battle from start to finish Martin Middlebrook succeedsin rendering the often tragic Battle of the Atlantic far more real & human. In most other books on the subject the battle becomes reduced to a mere list of ships & statistics. Here, we meet the usually faceless & nameless crews, many of whom emanated from countries not otherwise involvedin WWII & were basically carrying out the only job they ever knewin the middle of an often brutal, nightmarish warzone... & ceased to be paid the moment their ship was sunk, always assuming they survived. We also meet the crews & the inexperienced commander of the overstretched multinational escort group charged with protecting the convoys, who too late to alter the slower convoy's course discover that they are sailing straight into the jaws of the largest wolf pack the German navy ever assembled to attack a convoy, involving over 40 U boats. Some of the decisions the young commander was forced to make were appalling - the escort group was far to small to cope with the massive & unceasing U-boat assault & if a ship was sunk he could often not spare a ship to go back & search for survivors;in one instance this led to a tragic result that haunted him for the rest of his short life as he discovered too late that a merchant vessel he designated to rescue over 80 survivors from one stricken vessel had ignored the order & left the passengers to die. Despite all this - the battle was utterly one sided as the U-boats swamped the escort group - the book ends on a note of hope: this battle was the last major success the U-boats enjoyed. Within a matter of months the allies utilised new technology to defeat the U-boat menace once & for all. Tragically, however it came to late for the men involvedin this hard & unglamorous battle for survival. Highly recommended.