From 1939 until 1942, Hitler's U-boats threatened to do what his air force couldn't - starve Britain into submission. The Allies lost a total of 15 millions tons of shipping, and 50,000 sailors lost their lives during the five-year Battle of the Atlantic. These were humiliating blows for a nation boasting the largest navy in the world. Even after the discovery of a German enigma coding machine on board a sunk U-Boat, the Allies were still losing the strategically important battle.
Gradually, the Allied losses began to decline largely due to the use of Radar - a system that could detect U-Boats on the surface of the oceans - and to the inaccuracy of the U-Boats' torpedoes. Meanwhile, the British navy had opened its doors to the academics and scientists and had won the technical race. On 24 May 1943 they withdrew the U-Boats from the North Atlantic. The Battle of the Atlantic was over.
Pulling on exclusive interviews with U-Boat crews, Andrew Williams draws a compelling picture of the uncomfortable, claustrophobic and dangerous life on board the U-Boats (the "Iron Coffins") and looks at the making of this elite "brotherhood" - 85% of whom were killed. He also gathers interviews from the British and American navy to illustrate the story with numerous untold tales of enormous personal courage and horrific losses.
