Edwyn Gray

Edwyn Gray's history of British submarine warfare in the First World War is less an examination of the employment of submarines in the war than it is a collection of stories of their deployments. Drawing upon their reports and postwar memoirs, Gray recounts their experiences in dramatic fashion, interspersed with the sort of humorous anecdotes that give a sense of how the sailors coped with the unique stresses they faced. While it makes for entertaining reading, there is little effort to connect it to the larger context of the war at sea, let alone the larger conflict taking place around them. Readers seeking entertaining accounts of combat will find Gray's book well worth reading, but those seeking an analysis of their role in the war or any comparison with the similar campaign mounted by Germany will likely be disappointed by its limitations.… (mere)

Captain Konrad Bergman was assigned to take a U-Boat to Japan to get information on a new torpedo the Japanese had recently developed. The Gestapo attempted to assassinate him part way through the trip as he was not a party member and they were suspicious of his actions on an earlier voyage. A second attempt in Japan failed as well but he got to see the torpedo which was too long for any submarine in the world but he learned the Japanese had a backup plan this new weapon. Could he steal it and get it back to Germany?

One of series of novels about Bergman and the German Navy.

There is a lot of information about living and fighting on a German U- Boat.… (mere)

This is the story of the British submarine service in the first World War, something which barely gets mentioned in general histories of that war. The reason for this, according the Edwyn Gray, is the misuse of the service by the Admiralty. In the North Sea, at least, the submarines were used primarily for fleet service and shore defense, unlike their German counterparts, who were unleashed to create havoc on virtually anything afloat. There were exceptions during the war in which the British submarines were allowed a more predatory role: in the Baltic and in the Sea of Marmora during the Gallipoli campaign. Those brief, harrowing episodes form the most interesting part of this book. Gray was writing for a British audience 50 years after the war, but he did a good job of telling the story in a breezy, journalistic style. His tendency on occasion to glorify war or depict it as some kind of game is a little off-putting to the modern reader, but I did learn a lot about the role played by what must have been some of the most courageous sailors ever to put to sea.… (mere)

"At 7:40 pm a tremendous explosion ripped the cruiser apart as she ran full tilt into the minefield which Kurt Beitzen had laid almost a week earlier. The heavy seas destroyed any chance there may have been to save the ship and within minutes she had vanished completely. Only fourteen members of her crew reached the shore, everyone else was lost. Despite an intensive search no trace was ever found of Kitchener or any member of his staff. Britain's greatest army leader, a legend in his own lifetime, had fallen victim to the U-boats, his mission unaccomplished. Nothing could now save Russia from revolution and surrender."
-from Thè U-Boat War… (mere)