![]() ![]() “ U-230 set out to sea at dusk,” opens Chapter 15, for example. It became an instant bestseller on publication in 1969 and has rarely been out of print since, largely because of its taut prose style and electrifying story. Werner’s account of the war at sea is intensely personal, often reading like a novel. ![]() By the time he reached his own command-of the 769-ton U-415 in April 1944-the Battle of the Atlantic had been comprehensively lost. That submarine was lost through accident in August 1942, although much of her crew survived and were transferred to U-230, of which Werner became first lieutenant. When he became first watch officer of U-612 in April 1942, Germany seemed to be winning the all-important Battle of the Atlantic. ![]() When Herbert Werner first went to sea aged twenty in April 1941 in U-557, U-boats were sinking British ships twice as fast as they could be built he himself took part in the sinking of five merchantmen in that vessel. Yet back in 1939 that outcome was anything but certain, indeed Winston Churchill stated in his war memoirs that “The only peril that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril.” Of Germany’s 842 U-boats operational in the Second World War, no fewer than 779 were sunk-“iron coffins,” as Captain Herbert Werner called them, to some 28,000 submariners. ![]()
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