German Fleet At War, 1939-1945

Rating:
Summary: More than just U-Boats
Review: The stories of the German Navy's Graf Spee in the South Atlantic and the battles around the Bismark are well known, the German surface fleet actually had some 74 large (over 500 tons) fighting ships and engages in 69 surface actions against British, French, American, Polish, Soviet, Norwegian and Greek warships of similar size. In this book, the author describes each of these 69 actions from the standpoint of which ships were involved, the nature of the actions, and often some comment on the long-term results of the action.

In many of these actions the Germans did surprisingly well considering:
that the British alone had 275 ships and the French 106
that the lack of fuel oil seriously hampered training of the German forces
that the German Navy had several technical problems with torpedoes and large gun ammunition (a high percentage of duds)
that the British broke the Enigma based navel messages allowing them knowledge of German positions and intentions.

The German navy tended to build over complicated theoretically superior ships without a sufficient amount of experience that only long years of maritime experience can provide. One German admiral remarked after the war: We Germans knew how to build outstanding freshwater ships.

This book presents a view of World War II that has long been ignored with a unique approach to explaining what happened. This is the author's first book. I hope it's not the last. I'd like to see another that expands on his conclusions chapter and the appendices.