Operation Drumbeat : Germany's U-Boat Attacks Along the American Coast in World War II

Rating:
Summary: Tells an important, forgotten WWII Story.
Review: Michael Gannon meticulously documents an underreported element of our nation's involvement in WWII. It's amazing that more hasn't been written about the attacks by German U-boats along the US east coast, but Gannon's book seems to be one of only a relative few that documents this aspect of the war. The most striking fact that sticks in my mind from this book is how slow the U.S. was to react to the attacks, finally taking measures against the attacks only after constant prodding by British intelligence, which was, by Gannon's account, much more advanced in tracking U-Boat movements, and quite willing to share this information with the U.S. despite the stubborness of some in the U.S. command. Gannon's suggestion that the U-Boat attacks were more damaging to the war effort than the Pearl Harbor attack is provocative, and seems to underestimate the emotional impact of December 7th, but Gannon clearly shows the heavy damage the U-Boat attacks had on the war effort until the U.S. command did its part to repel such attacks. All in all, a worthy effort to document an under-reported aspect of the WWII struggle.

Rating:
Summary: Great Research, Great Read
Review: A very enjoyable book for any World War II naval fan. The author did extensive research using German sources to describe part of World War II that few knew about. The most interesting part of the book was not the extensive German organization, no surprise there, but the complete lack of organization on the American side. The U.S. was extremely slow in adopting to meet the threat. The Navy was battleship based. Admirals and Captains wanted large sea battles with other battleships, not hide and seek anti-submarine warfare. As a result, they were unprepared to defend the East Coast from submarine attack. It was amazing the Germans did not do more damage than they did. Check this book out.

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Summary: history book that reads like a great novel
Review: Operation Drumbeat is far, far from a dry history text. Though skilled writers can most the seemingly most arcane and esoteric aspects of history interesting, Gannon has written a riveting account of the first U-boat attacks along the US coast in World War II. Reading ever bit like a great Tom Clancy novel (or something similiar), Gannon puts you in the action as if you were on a U-boat, or the merchant ships that were hunted, or in Bletchley Park trying to figure out U-boat actions and intentions and warn the slumbering American merchant ships and port cities.

Much of the work focuses on the actions of a representative U-boat from this operation, U-123 commanded by Captain Reinhard Hardegen. You follow him, his officers, and crew from their U-boat pens in occupied France as they sortie out into the stormy North Atlantic and engage in operations up and down the American coast, attacking merchant ships that were not prepared for a sudden Nazi assault, backlight by cities that were not apparently aware that a war was going on. Often in full view of major cities and beachgoers on vaction, Hardegen and other U-boat commanders sunk merchant craft in a period of extraordinary success for the German Navy.

Gannon also chronciles the efforts to find and track the U-boats, both in war-weary and desperate British circles and in somewhat naive and arrogant American circles. Gannon paints an interesting contrast between the highly effective and dedicated British Naval Intelligence, working around the clock to amass as much information on each U-boat, right down to personal details on the commanders, and their American counterparts under Admiral King, who were unprepared and were slow to see the need to take countermeasures against the sudden attacks, at some points unsure of what to do, and slow to implement them. Gannon describes King as a man unconcerned and ill-prepared to deal with the Battle of the Atlantic. For all his heroics in the Pacific, King, accoring to Gannon, costs lives and equipment again and again in the war versus Hitler's submarines through inaction and poor action.

A great book, highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: U-boats: Toys and Games
Review: Operation Drumbeat was the name Hitler and his admirals gave to the great German submarine offensive against America's east coast shipping. The author says that the German U-boat offensive gave the United States Navy its greatest defeat in our countries history. The attack on Pearl Harbor had greater shock value but the ships sunk in Hawaii were for the most part obsolete or readily replaceable.

The freighters and tankers sunk in the German offensive were not replaceable until more than a year had past. Admiral Ernest King was a battlewagon admiral who held the British in low esteem according to Gannon. He refused the help and advice of the British, felt convoys were useless, called the British skill on plotting the course of U-boats as "toys and games." He made little effort to install air surveillance of the East Coast and was against using smaller craft to track and fight submarines.

One of his most incomprehensible errors was failing to order seacoast cities towns and even amusement parks to observe blackouts. This meant that American vessels going north or south along our coast were backlit like targets in a shooting gallery. Gannon follows the fortunes of a U-Boat commander whom he met and interviewed after the war. The commander was one of the few survivors as the war later turned sour for the Germans.

Rating:
Summary: Better Than Fiction
Review: This amazing book is a thoroughly footnoted piece of professional historical research that reads like a well-written novel. Although the pace slows a bit toward the end, despite knowing the eventual outcome this is a real page-turner about some historical events that are not widely known.

Gannon concentrates on the background, strategy and techniques of the initial German submarine attacks on shipping along the United States' East Coast in the early months of 1942, which the Germans called Operation Drumbeat. Despite the British Royal Navy passing on timely, accurate intelligence about the pending attack, this book documents the disorganization and incompetence with which the U.S. Navy responded to the initial German submarine assault that sunk dozens of ships and killed hundreds of people literally within sight of American cites and towns from New England to Florida and, eventually, the Gulf coast.

Gannon's interesting technique is to focus his account on the still living, at least as of 1990, captain and crew members of U-123 which was one of the boats that participated in the mission. U-123 scored a number of kills from New York to Florida, sometimes operating so close to shore that they could hear the music from beachfront honkytonks. The true story of the U-123 mission has many elements of the tale told in the German movie Das Boot, right down to an out-of-place propaganda journalist accompanying the patrol.

Buy Operation Drumbeat, crank up the soundtrack to Das Boot (also available from Amazon in an expensive but well-worth-it CD) and return to the exciting days of 1942 when the outcome of the titanic struggle between good and evil known as World War II was still uncertain!

Rating:
Summary: Better Than Fiction
Review: This amazing book is a thoroughly footnoted piece of professional historical research that reads like a well-written novel. Although the pace slows a bit toward the end, despite knowing the eventual outcome this is a real page-turner about some historical events that are not widely known.

Gannon concentrates on the background, strategy and techniques of the initial German submarine attacks on shipping along the United States' East Coast in the early months of 1942, which the Germans called Operation Drumbeat. Despite the British Royal Navy passing on timely, accurate intelligence about the pending attack, this book documents the disorganization and incompetence with which the U.S. Navy responded to the initial German submarine assault that sunk dozens of ships and killed hundreds of people literally within sight of American cites and towns from New England to Florida and, eventually, the Gulf coast.

Gannon's interesting technique is to focus his account on the still living, at least as of 1990, captain and crew members of U-123 which was one of the boats that participated in the mission. U-123 scored a number of kills from New York to Florida, sometimes operating so close to shore that they could hear the music from beachfront honkytonks. The true story of the U-123 mission has many elements of the tale told in the German movie Das Boot, right down to an out-of-place propaganda journalist accompanying the patrol.

Buy Operation Drumbeat, crank up the soundtrack to Das Boot (also available from Amazon in an expensive but well-worth-it CD) and return to the exciting days of 1942 when the outcome of the titanic struggle between good and evil known as World War II was still uncertain!

Rating:
Summary: Gannon vs. Adm. King
Review: This book was an enjoyable read. It seems like the type of story that a movie producer would want to put on film. Perhaps Gannon had that in mind when he wrote the book. As history, however, I believe that it is flawed.
Gannon tries to convince the reader that Adm. King was soley responsible for the losses to U-boats in the Eastern Sea Frontier during early 1942. He displays an apparent bias against the USN and in favor of the RN. The term "anglophobe" is applied so frequently that it becomes trite. Any facts which would tend to weaken his case against King are conspicuously absent from OPERATION DRUMBEAT.
I admit that I may have failed to understand precisely what Gannon was attempting to communicate in some sentences, which ran for nearly half of a page.
For a more accurate and balanced history of ComInCh, ESF and Drumbeat, read HITLER'S U-BOAT WAR: The Hunters, 1939-1942 by Clay Blair. In this 1996 book, Blair refutes directly much of what Gannon wrote about the availability of escort vessles and the culpability of Adm. King.

Rating:
Summary: Gannon vs. Adm. King
Review: This book was an enjoyable read. It seems like the type of story that a movie producer would want to put on film. Perhaps Gannon had that in mind when he wrote the book. As history, however, I believe that it is flawed.
Gannon tries to convince the reader that Adm. King was soley responsible for the losses to U-boats in the Eastern Sea Frontier during early 1942. He displays an apparent bias against the USN and in favor of the RN. The term "anglophobe" is applied so frequently that it becomes trite. Any facts which would tend to weaken his case against King are conspicuously absent from OPERATION DRUMBEAT.
I admit that I may have failed to understand precisely what Gannon was attempting to communicate in some sentences, which ran for nearly half of a page.
For a more accurate and balanced history of ComInCh, ESF and Drumbeat, read HITLER'S U-BOAT WAR: The Hunters, 1939-1942 by Clay Blair. In this 1996 book, Blair refutes directly much of what Gannon wrote about the availability of escort vessles and the culpability of Adm. King.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent and comprehensive account of little-known battle
Review: This is a very good account of a sadly ignored part of World War Two -- the campaign by German submarines off the East coast of the United States in 1942. The author has certainly done an impressive amount of research and this shines through clearly in a compelling account. He is lucky that the U-boat captain he focuses the tale on was one of the very few to survive the war and could therefore recount his experiences at leisure, but this does not detract at all from a book which shows how U.S. incompetence and arrogance in the face of a clear threat they'd been warned about almost cost the Allies the war.

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining and readable
Review: While armchair historians will not learn much new about the U-Boat war from this book, enthusiasts will find a lively account of a German submarine's career against Allied shipping. Michael Gannon has written a detailed and accurate account of not only the initial onslaught against shipping off the East Coast in the first half of 1942, but of one U-Boat's entire war. Extremely absorbing.