New Book: U-Boat Attack Logs - Warship Sinkings

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hucks216
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New Book: U-Boat Attack Logs - Warship Sinkings

Post by hucks216 »

A new release and one that looks to be a must have for those interested in the U-Boat arm is U-Boat Attack Logs. My copy has only just arrived so can't give a proper review of the book but it gives details of the sinking of 110 warships where the attacking U-Boat's attack log has survived. To quote a part of the paragraphs explaining the scope of the book...
'The criteria for according a vessel a full entry is the survival of the U-Boat log recording the sinking of either (a) a surface unit in excess of approximately 600 tons displacement (excluding trawlers, navy tankers, landing ships, troop transports and miscellaneous vessels) or (b) a submarine of whatever size.
Those sinkings not meeting these criteria are listed in the Gazetteer, which together with the main entries means a total of 246 vessels are treated in this volume.
'

The book is very large in size and with 450 pages. The introductory chapter of the book gives details of the U-boat in general, its weapons & tactics and operations and also the layout of the Kriegstagebücher.
For the main entries, each is afforded its own chapter, with the chapters being in chronological order, with a photo of the 'target' (the first such vessel covered is HMS Courageous and the last is HMS Bullen), the target's basic details, the attack co-ordinates along with the KM Code (i.e. Quadrat) for the attack, a career of the target and a background to the attack. Then it shows a direct translation of the attack log for the attack including weather, visibilty and sea conditions and then the attack as entered in time format, i.e.

1605 - Steamer approaches from the west. The sun is right behind it, making it difficult to discern properly until quite late. Our boat appears to be more or less on her general course line - course 80 dgrs, speed 13-14 knots.

1617 - Dived. Vessel is zigzagging so must be English. A freighter capaable of carrying passengers. But what is it?


..and so on. The above entry is the attack log for U-29 for the attack on HMS Courageous. The chapter then covers the fate of the target crew and then brief coverage of the U-Boat and its Commanding Officer for the remainder of their respective war time careers.

All in all, even just by having a brief look through it I would highly recommend this book.

U-Boat Attack Logs - A Complete Record Of Warship Sinkings From Original Sources 1939-1945 by Daniel Morgan & Bruce Taylor (ISBN: 978-1-84832-118-2)