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Turning the Tide: How a Small Band of Allied Sailors Defeated the U-boats and Won the Battle of the Atlantic
The United States experienced its most harrowing military disaster of World War II not in 1941 at Pearl Harbor but in the period from 1942 to 1943, in Atlantic coastal waters from Newfoundland to the Caribbean. Sinking merchant ships with impunity, German U-boats threatened the lifeline between the United States and Britain, very nearly denying the Allies their springboard onto the European Continent--a loss that would have effectively cost the Allies the war. In Turning the Tide , author Ed Offley tells the gripping story of how, during a twelve-week period in the spring of 1943, a handful of battle-hardened American, British, and Canadian sailors turned the tide in the Atlantic. Using extensive archival research and interviews with key survivors, Offley places the reader at the heart of the most decisive maritime battle of World War II.
512 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2011
22 people are currently reading
132 people want to read
About the author
Ed Offley
7 books8 followersEd Offley has been a military reporter for over 30 years in a wide variety of journalism assignments throughout the United States, including newspaper reporting and editorial writing, and online editing and commentary. Since 2006, he has worked full-time as an author focusing on military history topics.
His military reporting career spanned the final decade of the Cold War, including the Reagan administration’s defense buildup of the 1980s and American interventions in Lebanon, Grenada and Panama; the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union; the outbreak of mass violence in the Balkans; and major U.S. military interventions in the Middle East including Operation Desert Storm in 1991, and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
During that time, he covered military operations and exercises in eighteen countries. These included the 1989 American intervention in Panama; the U.S. Pacific Fleet’s historic 1990 visit to the Soviet Union at Vladivostok; the 1991 Operation Desert Storm offensive to liberate Kuwait, and the 1992 U.S. intervention in Somalia. Other assignments have included a major U.S. Navy fleet exercise in the Bering Sea in 1987; the U.S. Air Force’s 1989 mid-winter airdrop of supplies to the South Pole Base Camp, and a reporting trip to the border village of Panmunjom in 1994 during a period of heightened tensions on the Korean peninsula.
Throughout his career, Offley practiced hands-on coverage of the military. This included coverage of naval fleet exercises at sea from the central Pacific to the Atlantic and Caribbean. He participated in training maneuvers with the U.S. Army in Alaska, Washington state, southern California and Puerto Rico. He qualified for flight in Navy and Air Force tactical jet aircraft, flying as an observer in a number of warplanes, including the B-52H, A-6E, CF-18, F-5E and EA-6B. He flew with both the Navy’s Blue Angels and Air Force’s Thunderbirds, logged over 300,000 miles of flight with the Air Mobility Command worldwide, and made over a dozen aircraft carrier landings and takeoffs. He spent four days submerged in the Trident submarine USS Nevada and three days inside an even more cramped M1A1 Abrams tank
His investigative reporting regularly produced headline-generating disclosures. He was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in beat reporting in 1996 for articles on a brain-injured former Army soldier who was released from a civilian jail and had his veterans benefits restored as a result of the coverage revealing a faulty Army medical diagnosis of the soldier’s condition. His disclosure of a Top Secret plan to use trained dolphins as security guards at the Bangor Submarine Base triggered a federal lawsuit by animal-rights groups that stopped the program in its tracks. His revelation that retired Navy Warrant Officer John Walker’s espionage for the KGB had allowed Soviet submarines to penetrate American and Canadian coastal waters sparked a parliamentary hearing in Canada.
In addition to his published works, Ed Offley has long worked to improve the quality of military reporting in American journalism. In 2001, his military reporting manual, Pen & Sword: A Journalist’s Guide to Covering the Military (Marion Street Press, Oak Park, IL), received widespread praise by reviewers. The American Journalism Review called the manual “especially valuable” to reporters who found themselves covering military subjects on short notice. He also was a founding director of Military Reporters & Editors Association, a professional group committed to improving the quality of military reporting in the American news media.
A 1969 graduate of the University of Virginia, Ed served in the U.S. Navy aboard the USS Midway. He and his wife, Karen Conrad, live in Panama City Beach, Fla. They have two adult daughters, Elaine and Andrea.
His military reporting career spanned the final decade of the Cold War, including the Reagan administration’s defense buildup of the 1980s and American interventions in Lebanon, Grenada and Panama; the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union; the outbreak of mass violence in the Balkans; and major U.S. military interventions in the Middle East including Operation Desert Storm in 1991, and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
During that time, he covered military operations and exercises in eighteen countries. These included the 1989 American intervention in Panama; the U.S. Pacific Fleet’s historic 1990 visit to the Soviet Union at Vladivostok; the 1991 Operation Desert Storm offensive to liberate Kuwait, and the 1992 U.S. intervention in Somalia. Other assignments have included a major U.S. Navy fleet exercise in the Bering Sea in 1987; the U.S. Air Force’s 1989 mid-winter airdrop of supplies to the South Pole Base Camp, and a reporting trip to the border village of Panmunjom in 1994 during a period of heightened tensions on the Korean peninsula.
Throughout his career, Offley practiced hands-on coverage of the military. This included coverage of naval fleet exercises at sea from the central Pacific to the Atlantic and Caribbean. He participated in training maneuvers with the U.S. Army in Alaska, Washington state, southern California and Puerto Rico. He qualified for flight in Navy and Air Force tactical jet aircraft, flying as an observer in a number of warplanes, including the B-52H, A-6E, CF-18, F-5E and EA-6B. He flew with both the Navy’s Blue Angels and Air Force’s Thunderbirds, logged over 300,000 miles of flight with the Air Mobility Command worldwide, and made over a dozen aircraft carrier landings and takeoffs. He spent four days submerged in the Trident submarine USS Nevada and three days inside an even more cramped M1A1 Abrams tank
His investigative reporting regularly produced headline-generating disclosures. He was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in beat reporting in 1996 for articles on a brain-injured former Army soldier who was released from a civilian jail and had his veterans benefits restored as a result of the coverage revealing a faulty Army medical diagnosis of the soldier’s condition. His disclosure of a Top Secret plan to use trained dolphins as security guards at the Bangor Submarine Base triggered a federal lawsuit by animal-rights groups that stopped the program in its tracks. His revelation that retired Navy Warrant Officer John Walker’s espionage for the KGB had allowed Soviet submarines to penetrate American and Canadian coastal waters sparked a parliamentary hearing in Canada.
In addition to his published works, Ed Offley has long worked to improve the quality of military reporting in American journalism. In 2001, his military reporting manual, Pen & Sword: A Journalist’s Guide to Covering the Military (Marion Street Press, Oak Park, IL), received widespread praise by reviewers. The American Journalism Review called the manual “especially valuable” to reporters who found themselves covering military subjects on short notice. He also was a founding director of Military Reporters & Editors Association, a professional group committed to improving the quality of military reporting in the American news media.
A 1969 graduate of the University of Virginia, Ed served in the U.S. Navy aboard the USS Midway. He and his wife, Karen Conrad, live in Panama City Beach, Fla. They have two adult daughters, Elaine and Andrea.
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September 7, 2014
The Allies -- Canadian, American and British -- had been losing the Battle of the Atlantic for years. Partly, this can be explained by differences in man and material, but by far the biggest driver was technology. Once the Germans abandoned the rule (as they had in WWI) that submarines had to carry off survivors of the ships they sunk, U-Boats became the Nazi's essential tool of asymmetrical warfare. A U-boat crew of 49 could torpedo and sink an entire escort or convey vessel, killing most if not all aboard, suffering comparatively few German losses. This ripped a huge hole in the Allies pool of trained Navy, Wavy Navy and merchant marine sailors--just as important as the ship losses themselves. (Btw, a submarine always is called a "boat" even though its target is a vessel.)
More importantly, U-Boats sent millions of tons of vital food, oil and petrol supplies destined for Britain to the bottom of the Atlantic. (U-Boats rarely challenged warships: prime targets were tankers, troopships and ammunition cargo, probably in that order.) After a pause some months before, by early Spring, 1943, Donitz's U-Boats were threatening both the starvation of the British nation AND survival of the troopships, material, food, necessary for the buildup (on British shores) of Canadian and American troops for Roundup (the canceled 1943 invasion of France) and, eventually, Overlord (the June 6th 1944 Normandy invasion). Something had to be done.
"The Battle of the Atlantic was the longest and deadliest naval conflict in world history, and the crucial naval battle of the Second World War. For the British, starved by a protracted War with Germany and almost entirely dependent on supplies being rushed by Allied ships, the Battle of the Atlantic was a last-ditch struggle for survival. For the Germans and their enemies across the Atlantic, the battle had more far-ranging consequences. If the Allies could sustain the British war effort long enough to assemble an invading force in the British Isles, they could carry on the fight to the European continent and, eventually, to Germany itself. But if the U-Boats won, Germany would thwart Allied invasion, strangle the British economy, and force the United Kingdom out of the War."
Donitz's Wolf-Pack's were ready, aided by breaks in the British Naval Cypher #1 and the British and American Merchant Marine codes. The British had broken the German Naval Enigma (except for a few crucial black-outs, such as when the German Navy switched to a four-rotor system). Max Horton had assumed British Western Approaches Command in November 1942; Horton was a near genius, and determined to review every doctrine and alter it were something better available.
The book opens with four late-winter 1943 Eastbound convoys: (SC121 &122-slow; HX228 & 229-fast). Each were forced into the teeth of a winter gale. And with multiple U-Boat hunter-groups tipped off and perfectly positioned, it was a slaughter. "'All hell broke loose,' Signalman Third Class John Orris Jackson later said of the night of March 16-17." Twenty one surface ships were sunk; over 82,000 tons of cargo were lost; and, of the 19 vessels stricken in SC121 and HX228 alone, 740 of the 1114 crewman perished. One U-Boat was sunk during the battle (by a Scotland-based B17). For SC122 and HX229 less life was lost (373 sailors), but almost 147,000 tons went to the bottom. This was one of the low points in the Battle of the Atlantic.
New Allied technology and tactics trickled, then flooded, in: (1) longer-range Liberator" bombers began closing the dangerous "Greenland Air Gap" where convoys had no air cover; (2) Escort, or "Jeep" carriers slid down slips in American shipyards to be deployed in the mid-North Atlantic, shepherding the convoys--bringing near-continuous air power to their flocks; (3) radio direction finding (HF/DF) combined with new centimeter radar moved from the lab to escort vessels, allowing precise triangulation of nearby U-boats; (4) a Churchillian-inspired spread depth-charge device -- the Hedgehog -- as well as a mathematical analysis of U-Boat turn and dive capabilities, increased the probabilities of kills from escort destroyers and corvettes; and (5) an acoustic homing torpedo -- codenamed FIDO -- dropped from aircraft in the wakes of submerging U-Boats, lessening the likelihood of crash dive escapes.
There was a bit of a pause in late March/early April when many of Donitz's U-Boats refueled and re-armed at French ports. Coincidently, during that same time, the allies both closed the "Greenland air gap" (by allotting sufficient Very Long Range Lancaster bombers to Iceland and elsewhere) and, on March 20, the British again cracked the German Naval cipher (ending the Enigma blackout). The next 23 convoys, therefore, were far more successful: 11 didn't lose a single ship; 7 others lost only one or two.
The real test began in mid-April; the Wolf-Packs were back on station. But the wolf went from hunter to hunted. Making full use of continuous air coverage (from both land based and (under-rated in the Battle of the Atlantic) carrier-borne aircraft, the allies sunk 16 German submarines in the North Atlantic in April 1943. Especially for a largely hand-tooled economy being bombed in the homelands daily, this was an unsustainable loss rate.
"Donitz finally reached his boiling point in the last week of April when the combination of British intelligence, escort reinforcements, and air support spoiled a well-planned U-boat assault." There were 43 merchantman in convoy Hx-234 (fast). (No U-Boat ever fired upon an Allied Navy vessel except in, shall we say, extreme unction.). A dozen U-Boats shadowed them for two thousand miles, gaining only two merchant losses. In frustration, Donitz re-formed to await ONS5 and ONS4, two westbound convoys, in ballast, with 44 merchant ships each. Thanks to Enigma, not only did the convoys re-route to avoid the Wolf-Packs (one detoured North, the other South), the new tactics led Donitz to believe that the Allies introduced some new kind of radar that made attacks in ice and storm impossible. Actually, Donitz never understood that the turn-around was made possible by the combination of new tactics introduced and finally practiced together. Still, Donitz completely missed that fact Allied ships used HF/DF to triangulate U-boat locations from the very radio messages that U-Boats used to gather Wolf-Packs for the kill. What the Admiral thought buoyed his odds turned out, literally, to sink them.
Heartened by the fact that the U-Boats had at least managed to sink 13 ships, 61,958 tons, Donitz decided on one final try in the North Atlantic--as it turns out, the last time Wolf-Packs were deployed there. Unquestionably it was an opportunity--flush with success, the Allies made convoys larger and more frequent. So, on May 6, seven convoys were at sea, with five other convoys departing within a week. The Germans thought they would have 505 merchant targets, so Donitz ordered multiple low-seas night attacks to show the Fuhrer all was not lost.
The Germans managed to send 7 more merchant ships to the bottom of the ocean. But four U-boats were so damaged they had to return to France, and another six submarines were sunk--including the U-Boat on which Admiral Donitz's son served. Amidst the funereal atmosphere at German Naval headquarters, official records blamed the losses on the unusually calm weather--forgetting that the previous losses were blamed on fog. If U-Boats couldn't attack in storms and couldn't attack in the clear, then when could they attack? After a few days, Donitz reached the same conclusion, manned-up, and got Hitler's permission to move his submarines to harass shipping off the African coast "until new weapons could be developed" again to cut the all-important North Atlantic lifeline. Of course, no significant weapons ever arrived; indeed, money was shunted from the Navy to von Braun's rocket programs.
In the early stages of the war, Germany was winning the Battle of the Atlantic through a "wonder weapon"--the U-Boat itself. The halting allied response helped. Allied victory in the battle relied on some wonderful weapons, radar, HF/DF, and continuous air cover chief among them. But the combination of arms, practice and teamwork won the battle--there was no single "knockout blow". In assuming, then seeking countermeasures for, a Mil-Tech deus ex machina, Germany arguably over-thought its way out of the battle. Still, by April 1943, the balance of resources had tilted so decisively toward the Allied Navies, that even Germany's attempts to overcome the imbalance through technology (e.g., the snorkel) were too little, too late.
Offley's book covers these events--but at nowhere near the "meta" level of this review. His focus, instead, is on ships, and the men, of the specific convoys mentioned (along with about four others). We learn of the convoy command structure, sailing orders, and allignment. He diagrams the placement of the escort ships, their leaping ahead, sideways and behind looking for U-Boats on ASDIC (Sonar)--but ordered not to stop to pick-up sailors from torpedoed merchantman (to avoid becoming targets themselves). We learn of a senior British officer on an Eastbound convoy anxious to keep schedule, to meet his fiancée at the alter as promised.
The book also dives underwater with the Unterseeboten. Captains and crews of about 50 each; stuffed with provisions leaving France, at best limping home through a rain of bombers in the Bay of Biscay. For German military, it was the most deadly occupation of the war--more foot soldiers (as a percentage) survived the Russian front.
My problem with the book is the micro focus. It's a helpful addition to any understanding of the Battle of the Atlantic. But, one has to have read overall histories of the Atlantic Naval war, plus books like Budiansky's "Blackett's War," Kennedy's "Engineers of Victory," and Werner's "Iron Coffins" first. And after reading Offley, I highly recommend Snow's "A Measureless Peril", an idiosyncratic account of the author's father's experiences as a U.S. Navy Lieutenant on an anti-submarine destroyer.
In sum, don't read Offley first. But, should you have time for the details, read "Turning the Tide".
More importantly, U-Boats sent millions of tons of vital food, oil and petrol supplies destined for Britain to the bottom of the Atlantic. (U-Boats rarely challenged warships: prime targets were tankers, troopships and ammunition cargo, probably in that order.) After a pause some months before, by early Spring, 1943, Donitz's U-Boats were threatening both the starvation of the British nation AND survival of the troopships, material, food, necessary for the buildup (on British shores) of Canadian and American troops for Roundup (the canceled 1943 invasion of France) and, eventually, Overlord (the June 6th 1944 Normandy invasion). Something had to be done.
"The Battle of the Atlantic was the longest and deadliest naval conflict in world history, and the crucial naval battle of the Second World War. For the British, starved by a protracted War with Germany and almost entirely dependent on supplies being rushed by Allied ships, the Battle of the Atlantic was a last-ditch struggle for survival. For the Germans and their enemies across the Atlantic, the battle had more far-ranging consequences. If the Allies could sustain the British war effort long enough to assemble an invading force in the British Isles, they could carry on the fight to the European continent and, eventually, to Germany itself. But if the U-Boats won, Germany would thwart Allied invasion, strangle the British economy, and force the United Kingdom out of the War."
Donitz's Wolf-Pack's were ready, aided by breaks in the British Naval Cypher #1 and the British and American Merchant Marine codes. The British had broken the German Naval Enigma (except for a few crucial black-outs, such as when the German Navy switched to a four-rotor system). Max Horton had assumed British Western Approaches Command in November 1942; Horton was a near genius, and determined to review every doctrine and alter it were something better available.
The book opens with four late-winter 1943 Eastbound convoys: (SC121 &122-slow; HX228 & 229-fast). Each were forced into the teeth of a winter gale. And with multiple U-Boat hunter-groups tipped off and perfectly positioned, it was a slaughter. "'All hell broke loose,' Signalman Third Class John Orris Jackson later said of the night of March 16-17." Twenty one surface ships were sunk; over 82,000 tons of cargo were lost; and, of the 19 vessels stricken in SC121 and HX228 alone, 740 of the 1114 crewman perished. One U-Boat was sunk during the battle (by a Scotland-based B17). For SC122 and HX229 less life was lost (373 sailors), but almost 147,000 tons went to the bottom. This was one of the low points in the Battle of the Atlantic.
New Allied technology and tactics trickled, then flooded, in: (1) longer-range Liberator" bombers began closing the dangerous "Greenland Air Gap" where convoys had no air cover; (2) Escort, or "Jeep" carriers slid down slips in American shipyards to be deployed in the mid-North Atlantic, shepherding the convoys--bringing near-continuous air power to their flocks; (3) radio direction finding (HF/DF) combined with new centimeter radar moved from the lab to escort vessels, allowing precise triangulation of nearby U-boats; (4) a Churchillian-inspired spread depth-charge device -- the Hedgehog -- as well as a mathematical analysis of U-Boat turn and dive capabilities, increased the probabilities of kills from escort destroyers and corvettes; and (5) an acoustic homing torpedo -- codenamed FIDO -- dropped from aircraft in the wakes of submerging U-Boats, lessening the likelihood of crash dive escapes.
There was a bit of a pause in late March/early April when many of Donitz's U-Boats refueled and re-armed at French ports. Coincidently, during that same time, the allies both closed the "Greenland air gap" (by allotting sufficient Very Long Range Lancaster bombers to Iceland and elsewhere) and, on March 20, the British again cracked the German Naval cipher (ending the Enigma blackout). The next 23 convoys, therefore, were far more successful: 11 didn't lose a single ship; 7 others lost only one or two.
The real test began in mid-April; the Wolf-Packs were back on station. But the wolf went from hunter to hunted. Making full use of continuous air coverage (from both land based and (under-rated in the Battle of the Atlantic) carrier-borne aircraft, the allies sunk 16 German submarines in the North Atlantic in April 1943. Especially for a largely hand-tooled economy being bombed in the homelands daily, this was an unsustainable loss rate.
"Donitz finally reached his boiling point in the last week of April when the combination of British intelligence, escort reinforcements, and air support spoiled a well-planned U-boat assault." There were 43 merchantman in convoy Hx-234 (fast). (No U-Boat ever fired upon an Allied Navy vessel except in, shall we say, extreme unction.). A dozen U-Boats shadowed them for two thousand miles, gaining only two merchant losses. In frustration, Donitz re-formed to await ONS5 and ONS4, two westbound convoys, in ballast, with 44 merchant ships each. Thanks to Enigma, not only did the convoys re-route to avoid the Wolf-Packs (one detoured North, the other South), the new tactics led Donitz to believe that the Allies introduced some new kind of radar that made attacks in ice and storm impossible. Actually, Donitz never understood that the turn-around was made possible by the combination of new tactics introduced and finally practiced together. Still, Donitz completely missed that fact Allied ships used HF/DF to triangulate U-boat locations from the very radio messages that U-Boats used to gather Wolf-Packs for the kill. What the Admiral thought buoyed his odds turned out, literally, to sink them.
Heartened by the fact that the U-Boats had at least managed to sink 13 ships, 61,958 tons, Donitz decided on one final try in the North Atlantic--as it turns out, the last time Wolf-Packs were deployed there. Unquestionably it was an opportunity--flush with success, the Allies made convoys larger and more frequent. So, on May 6, seven convoys were at sea, with five other convoys departing within a week. The Germans thought they would have 505 merchant targets, so Donitz ordered multiple low-seas night attacks to show the Fuhrer all was not lost.
The Germans managed to send 7 more merchant ships to the bottom of the ocean. But four U-boats were so damaged they had to return to France, and another six submarines were sunk--including the U-Boat on which Admiral Donitz's son served. Amidst the funereal atmosphere at German Naval headquarters, official records blamed the losses on the unusually calm weather--forgetting that the previous losses were blamed on fog. If U-Boats couldn't attack in storms and couldn't attack in the clear, then when could they attack? After a few days, Donitz reached the same conclusion, manned-up, and got Hitler's permission to move his submarines to harass shipping off the African coast "until new weapons could be developed" again to cut the all-important North Atlantic lifeline. Of course, no significant weapons ever arrived; indeed, money was shunted from the Navy to von Braun's rocket programs.
In the early stages of the war, Germany was winning the Battle of the Atlantic through a "wonder weapon"--the U-Boat itself. The halting allied response helped. Allied victory in the battle relied on some wonderful weapons, radar, HF/DF, and continuous air cover chief among them. But the combination of arms, practice and teamwork won the battle--there was no single "knockout blow". In assuming, then seeking countermeasures for, a Mil-Tech deus ex machina, Germany arguably over-thought its way out of the battle. Still, by April 1943, the balance of resources had tilted so decisively toward the Allied Navies, that even Germany's attempts to overcome the imbalance through technology (e.g., the snorkel) were too little, too late.
Offley's book covers these events--but at nowhere near the "meta" level of this review. His focus, instead, is on ships, and the men, of the specific convoys mentioned (along with about four others). We learn of the convoy command structure, sailing orders, and allignment. He diagrams the placement of the escort ships, their leaping ahead, sideways and behind looking for U-Boats on ASDIC (Sonar)--but ordered not to stop to pick-up sailors from torpedoed merchantman (to avoid becoming targets themselves). We learn of a senior British officer on an Eastbound convoy anxious to keep schedule, to meet his fiancée at the alter as promised.
The book also dives underwater with the Unterseeboten. Captains and crews of about 50 each; stuffed with provisions leaving France, at best limping home through a rain of bombers in the Bay of Biscay. For German military, it was the most deadly occupation of the war--more foot soldiers (as a percentage) survived the Russian front.
My problem with the book is the micro focus. It's a helpful addition to any understanding of the Battle of the Atlantic. But, one has to have read overall histories of the Atlantic Naval war, plus books like Budiansky's "Blackett's War," Kennedy's "Engineers of Victory," and Werner's "Iron Coffins" first. And after reading Offley, I highly recommend Snow's "A Measureless Peril", an idiosyncratic account of the author's father's experiences as a U.S. Navy Lieutenant on an anti-submarine destroyer.
In sum, don't read Offley first. But, should you have time for the details, read "Turning the Tide".
May 31, 2015
The focus of this book is on the point at which the allies gained the upper hand in the Atlantic during months around March, 1943. Offley does this by following various convoys, allowing the reader to understand the contrast between convoys before and after this turning point. The research is meticulous, and this book contained many details that I found to be very interesting. Although I have read many books on the second world war, this was the first book I have read which focuses on the Battle of the Atlantic. I feel that I now have a strong understanding of of the tactical, strategic, and human forces at play during this critical point of the war.
One of the strengths of this book is how much detail the author puts into his description of everything. Unfortunately, this is also in my opinion the biggest negative. During the convoy narratives, I was on hanging on to every word and found most details to be useful. In between convoys, the narrative got so that I almost called it quits. The only reason I ended up finishing the book was because of the sunk cost fallacy.
I would have given this book 3.5 stars, but I rounded up because during good parts of the book the author does a great job of weaving first-hand accounts into a compelling and informative narrative.
One of the strengths of this book is how much detail the author puts into his description of everything. Unfortunately, this is also in my opinion the biggest negative. During the convoy narratives, I was on hanging on to every word and found most details to be useful. In between convoys, the narrative got so that I almost called it quits. The only reason I ended up finishing the book was because of the sunk cost fallacy.
I would have given this book 3.5 stars, but I rounded up because during good parts of the book the author does a great job of weaving first-hand accounts into a compelling and informative narrative.
July 14, 2016
the narrator sounds like Simon Winchester.
i think the book could be an interesting read, but listening to all the individual numbers of the Uboats and Ships and the tonnage of everything they carried and the number of men on each boat - just too many numbers. fell asleep listening to it. but for someone who wants the exact detail, reading it could be good.
i think the book could be an interesting read, but listening to all the individual numbers of the Uboats and Ships and the tonnage of everything they carried and the number of men on each boat - just too many numbers. fell asleep listening to it. but for someone who wants the exact detail, reading it could be good.
March 10, 2023
THE CRUCIAL WWII "BATTLE OF THE ATLANTIC", May 20, 2011
This is a sweeping, very detailed, often action-packed portrait by author Ed Offley of the Battle of the Atlantic, describing activities within the five phases of the "longest and deadliest naval conflict in world history" stretching from 1939 to 1945: the "crucial naval battle of the Second World War."
Along the way, he places the battle into historical context and gives a detailed picture of the treacherous Atlantic ocean routes, made all the more dangerous because of the weather.
The book describes crucial battle encounters between the Allies and the Axis forces on the high seas and in coastal waters as U-boat 'wolf packs' pursued Allies' vital supply convoys across the Atlantic ocean. The author looks at both the strategic and tactical points of view, using diagrams and photographs. The book's opening engagement between the HMS Hersperus on 12 May 1943, hunting the trailing Nazi U-boat, U-223, which was stalking the 24 merchant ships of SC (Slow Convoy) 129 is mesmerizing and just a foretaste of what is to follow, such as the carnage of The Battle of St. Patrick's Day, with its heroes and its fainthearted.
The book is loaded with detail on the ships and subs, their weaponry, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of the opposing forces, with input from crew member's postwar interviews. Superbly researched and well written with great attention to detail, linking the Battle of the Atlantic to the land and air wars and the political climate of the time, "Turning the Tide" gets my Highest Recommendation. Five HISTORICAL Stars! (This review is based on a Kindle download, in text-to-speech, Mac2, and iPhone platforms. 14 Chapters with numerous pictures and diagrams; Epilogue; Appendices of critical convoy ships, U-boats, and Escort warships; bibliography; and a very helpful glossary of acronyms and unique terminology.)
This is a sweeping, very detailed, often action-packed portrait by author Ed Offley of the Battle of the Atlantic, describing activities within the five phases of the "longest and deadliest naval conflict in world history" stretching from 1939 to 1945: the "crucial naval battle of the Second World War."
Along the way, he places the battle into historical context and gives a detailed picture of the treacherous Atlantic ocean routes, made all the more dangerous because of the weather.
The book describes crucial battle encounters between the Allies and the Axis forces on the high seas and in coastal waters as U-boat 'wolf packs' pursued Allies' vital supply convoys across the Atlantic ocean. The author looks at both the strategic and tactical points of view, using diagrams and photographs. The book's opening engagement between the HMS Hersperus on 12 May 1943, hunting the trailing Nazi U-boat, U-223, which was stalking the 24 merchant ships of SC (Slow Convoy) 129 is mesmerizing and just a foretaste of what is to follow, such as the carnage of The Battle of St. Patrick's Day, with its heroes and its fainthearted.
The book is loaded with detail on the ships and subs, their weaponry, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of the opposing forces, with input from crew member's postwar interviews. Superbly researched and well written with great attention to detail, linking the Battle of the Atlantic to the land and air wars and the political climate of the time, "Turning the Tide" gets my Highest Recommendation. Five HISTORICAL Stars! (This review is based on a Kindle download, in text-to-speech, Mac2, and iPhone platforms. 14 Chapters with numerous pictures and diagrams; Epilogue; Appendices of critical convoy ships, U-boats, and Escort warships; bibliography; and a very helpful glossary of acronyms and unique terminology.)
November 3, 2018
A good book, easy to read, interesting and informative. The copy I read (ebook) had a few annoyances in naming a 4 inch/50 caliber gun as a 4 inch/0.50 caliber this I presume is a typo or spell check error, there were others (the 50 bit means the barrel was 50 x the caliber ie. 200 inches long so the 0.50 is nonsense, a well used machine gun at the time was the 0.50 inch which is where I suspect the problem came from). The story told is interesting and I admit I didn't know all that happened, the politics played the part, the sailors on both sides played there part but for my opinion it was the technology which changed it all. This seems to be a unpopular opinion to hold at the moment as we are told it is patriotic to believe it was the people who won the war but was it the soldier, sailors and pilots or the guys who invented the Cavity Magnetron and the technicians who built and used it. The Cavity Magnetron was probably the greatest invention of the war until the atom bomb came along. The are still around today and in every microwave oven we use!
October 5, 2024
A super specific account of a couple convoys crossing the Atlantic during the UBoat war on Allied shipping. It was so much more specific than I was looking for, so it was a little bit much. Crazy details from both sides talking about the offense and defense that they had to play in a game of life and death.
August 29, 2017
Monotonous - regurgitation of official reports of a few convoys during the war.
November 27, 2018
a little too technical and rambling
July 10, 2024
Solid history of the pivotal year in the Battle of the Atlantic, with excellent details of both sides strategies.
February 16, 2016
From September 1939 until May 1945, a battle raged in the North Atlantic. German U-boats attacked Allied shipping in a deadly attempt to stop the flow of material going to England. By the time the Americans entered the war, the Germans had developed their deadly wolf-pack offense, where instead of a single U-boat seeking targets of opportunity, U-boats were instructed to locate a convey, and wait until a sufficient number of submarines could be assemble for a devastating coordinated attack.
The Germans had early success with this tactic. The Allies had insufficient men and material to hold off the Germans, and allied shipping loses were becoming unacceptable and threatened to starve planned allied offensives.
The month of March 1943 was the worst month for the Allies, and the best month for the Germans. This book details the actions of the allies to stem the losses. Several factors developed: the Allied navies increased the number of escort ships assigned to convoys. Then the Allies were also able to triangulate German radio messages and locate U-boats before they could form up a wolf-pack. Also, the navies were finally able to persuade the Air Force to assign long-range aircraft to cover the convoys. The wolf-packs were primarily effective in the ‘Greenland gap’, an area where land-based planes were unable to fly. The introduction of long-range aircraft closed the ‘Greenland gap.’
By the final year of the war, the Allied convoys traveled with complete air protection.
This was a well written and exciting book that reads like fiction and I found it hard to put down.
The Germans had early success with this tactic. The Allies had insufficient men and material to hold off the Germans, and allied shipping loses were becoming unacceptable and threatened to starve planned allied offensives.
The month of March 1943 was the worst month for the Allies, and the best month for the Germans. This book details the actions of the allies to stem the losses. Several factors developed: the Allied navies increased the number of escort ships assigned to convoys. Then the Allies were also able to triangulate German radio messages and locate U-boats before they could form up a wolf-pack. Also, the navies were finally able to persuade the Air Force to assign long-range aircraft to cover the convoys. The wolf-packs were primarily effective in the ‘Greenland gap’, an area where land-based planes were unable to fly. The introduction of long-range aircraft closed the ‘Greenland gap.’
By the final year of the war, the Allied convoys traveled with complete air protection.
This was a well written and exciting book that reads like fiction and I found it hard to put down.
December 2, 2011
The book covers the spring of 1943 which the author tries to show as the turning point in the battle between the Allies attempts to keep open shipping traffic to England and the Axis attempts to use submarines to hamper that traffic in the Northern Atlantic seas. I remember as a kid going to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago and reading there how important the capture of U-505 was in both deciphering the Enigma code and in developing anti-submarine tactics for the Allies. So I was a little disappointed to learn that the Enigma code was actually deciphered in 1941 and again in 1943, and that submarine loss rates began skyrocketing while tonnage loss decline radically at the end of spring 1943 well before the capture of U-505. It might be that the loss of this childhood memory worked against the likeability of the book itself.
With that said, Offley does an admirable job of detailing events during multiple convoy crossings in the timeframe of the book highlighting the changes and reactions to the changes on both sides of the war. Sometimes the book would go into too much detail without imparting knowledge (i.e. the breaking of the Enigma code is talked about at length, but the mechanisms for breaking the code are sketchy). At other times it seemed to end abruptly (the time from the end of spring 1943 until the end of the war is 20 pages.
Overall a decent read that gives a general feel for the turning of the war through specific examples
With that said, Offley does an admirable job of detailing events during multiple convoy crossings in the timeframe of the book highlighting the changes and reactions to the changes on both sides of the war. Sometimes the book would go into too much detail without imparting knowledge (i.e. the breaking of the Enigma code is talked about at length, but the mechanisms for breaking the code are sketchy). At other times it seemed to end abruptly (the time from the end of spring 1943 until the end of the war is 20 pages.
Overall a decent read that gives a general feel for the turning of the war through specific examples
December 17, 2016
Offley focusses on the tipping point of the Battle of the Atlantic: between March and May 1943 - catastrophic months for the Allies and the Kriegsmarine respectively. That's not to say that there were no good moments for the Allies before then or bad ones after, that is the point where Doenitz recognised (retrospectively) that he lost the 'tonnage war.'
The story is told mainly by looking in detail at the progress of a few convoys battling their way through the wolf packs arrayed against them. Too much detail for some but I think the approach is valid as an illustration of how the picture could change so radically so quickly.
Offley pulls back the focus from time to time, giving an overview of the strategic situation and technological background to the fight. He makes the point that, without the steady, reliable build-up of materiel in Britain during 1943, D-Day could not have happened in 1944. Another year's delay would have made the V-weapon assault much worse, might have allowed the Germans to get the Type XXI U-boat working and made the liberation of Western Europe much trickier (though I take issue with his assertion that it could have bought enough time for the German nuclear programme to reach fruition).
Down in the detail there are a few niggles. The T-4 and T-5 homing torpedoes, for example, were not a surprise because they were well trailed by prisoner-of-war intelligence. Overall, though, a worthwhile read.
The story is told mainly by looking in detail at the progress of a few convoys battling their way through the wolf packs arrayed against them. Too much detail for some but I think the approach is valid as an illustration of how the picture could change so radically so quickly.
Offley pulls back the focus from time to time, giving an overview of the strategic situation and technological background to the fight. He makes the point that, without the steady, reliable build-up of materiel in Britain during 1943, D-Day could not have happened in 1944. Another year's delay would have made the V-weapon assault much worse, might have allowed the Germans to get the Type XXI U-boat working and made the liberation of Western Europe much trickier (though I take issue with his assertion that it could have bought enough time for the German nuclear programme to reach fruition).
Down in the detail there are a few niggles. The T-4 and T-5 homing torpedoes, for example, were not a surprise because they were well trailed by prisoner-of-war intelligence. Overall, though, a worthwhile read.
September 28, 2016
A good book. Great descriptive narrative of the North Atlantic convoy battles in the spring of 1943, when the fight turned against the U-Boats. I appreciated the in-depth discussion on the "mechanics" of the Battle of the Atlantic, with plenty of personal accounts from both sides and all services. Though there weren't any major revelations on the reasons for the Battle's change, I did like the emphasis placed on ship reinforcements as a deciding factor. There is the usual story about the Allied technological and intelligence dominance, but the author also shows that increasing escort ship numbers and adding maneuverable support groups was another major factor for success. Overall, a good detailed look at a specific turning point in WWII.
September 29, 2011
If old Offley stuck with the story of the convoy vessels and the true tales of their encounters with the U-boat "wolf packs" of World War II along with some insight into the logistics of the North Atlantic crossings that supplied Britain and later the Americans on the European Continent, this would be a four star winner, as well a 150 pages shorter. The tedious recitation of detail, however, such as the tonnage of each vessel (also to be found in appendices) and the cargo of each gets, well, tedious - and interrupts the action.
July 20, 2011
This book epitomizes why we are fascinated by war! The escalation of technology, tactics and the character of individuals play out on time and society. The pioneering U-boat wolf pack tactics of Admiral Donitz gave Germany an advantage of many years. But Allied scientists kept improving the technology to hunt and track U-boats until with enough resources the Allies won the "Battle of the Atlantic."
January 25, 2014
Well written account of the turning point of the battle of the Atlantic. Covers the back story and events leading up to the US entry into the war, including the fact the US Navy was engaged in combat operations with the German Navy before the outbreak of the war, something I knew about but haven't seen clearly covered in many accounts. I don't really care of the small band of sailors subtitle- but over look that and you get a good naval history.
April 30, 2013
Interesting book that focuses on two major convoy battles during the Battle of the Atlantic in early 1943. The first was a major U-Boat victory, while the other showed how the Allies changed their tactics and turned the tide. Lots of good 1st person naaratives from both sides. I wish I could have had a little more background information.
May 15, 2015
They Sarted too Soon
The war started too soon. Another year of production and upgrades to Uboats & the battle of the Atlantic could have delayed DDay and Russia may have just stopped fighting as their losses were horrific.
The war started too soon. Another year of production and upgrades to Uboats & the battle of the Atlantic could have delayed DDay and Russia may have just stopped fighting as their losses were horrific.
April 9, 2016
Exceptional read. Very well written. Excellent accounting of the battle of the North Atlantic during the time when Britain's survival hung in the balance. Very good accounting of the geo-political background that hindered and eventually supported the Allies in the North Atlantic.
October 5, 2011
To be supplied later.
March 26, 2012
Wonderful history of the Battle of Atlantic, U-boats, and ASW in general. Enjoyed it very much.
September 3, 2016
I couldn't wait to give this to my friend who served in the Merchant Marine......too much, tonnage. Perhaps a great record and scholarly, but a tough read. There as no way to absorb all the details.
Read
January 7, 2013MEticulous detail!
October 18, 2016
I listened to the book on tape, a good account of the Battle of the Atlantic.
December 14, 2016
Too much like a history book. It had a couple exciting moments, but overall a bit too statistical to remain interesting for 12 hours of listening.
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