Category: The Atlantic Battle Joined

Views the battle from the perspective of the merchant navy. An excellent account.

A very detailed political and strategic overview of the American position.

The small but bitter war fought out in the Arctic Circle, where tiny groups of men existed in atrocious conditions while trying to predict the weather which would affect the movement of larger forces and to prevent the enemy from doing the same. A revised edition was published by Severn House in 1976. (ISBN: 0727801317).

An excellent history, much concerned with the latter part of 1942, when the RCN was in crisis.

Describes daring attacks by U 513 and U 518 on the iron ore terminal anchorage on 5 September and 2 November, 1942.

Tells the story of the defence of the Fifth Naval District and refutes claims that Chesapeake Bay was penetrated. Concentrates on the battles of 1942.

"An uncompromising account of the broken promises, slippery evasions, and illegal decisions which impelled America inexorably into World War II".

The administrator of the programme describes the creation and course of the "arsenal of democracy."

A history of the development of convoy and patrol operations against U-boats on the East Coast of the United States.

In December 1942, the requisitioned yacht Zaida was lost for 21 days in a storm and there was an enormous hunt for her up and down the Atlantic seaboard.

A good account of how the war stretched into the Gulf of Mexico, where the U-boats wreaked terrible havoc.

A background book. The destroyers-for-bases deal was only a part of the massive American aid to the Allies. This book charts the internal American political struggle to pass the bill which was an inexorable step toward war.

xii, 323p., bibliog., illus., index. London: Davies, 1941. A pot-pourri of fact, personal experience, and lurid rewriting of official accounts describing the nature, importance, and course of the Battle of the Atlantic.

Polish Troops were an important component of the Allied Forces. Little naval coverage.

LEE, William B. V. A Heavy Harvest: German Submarine Operations in the Gulf of Mexico in World War II. Ridgeland, Miss.: Alveley, 1994.

U-boats mounted a successful assault in the gulf.

THOMPSON, Chester. The Long Day Wanes: A Memoir of Love and War. xiv, 202p., illus. New Smyrna Beach, FL: White Sound Press, 2004. ISBN: 0932265758.

An autobiography. He served on Beverley in the Battle of the Atlantic and with Landing Craft at D-Day.

JOHNSON, Brian. The Secret War. 352p., bibliog., illus. London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1978. ISBN: 0563174250.

Based on a six part television series, the book covers relevant topics as varied as the development of radar, Enigma, magnetic mines and the various new technologies deployed in the Battle of the Atlantic. A corrected edition was printed in 1979 (ISBN: 0563174250), and there have been several reprints since then.

WIBERG, Eric. U-Boats off Bermuda: Patrol Summaries and Merchant Ship Survivors Landed in Bermuda 1940-1944. 288p., bibliog., illus., index. Stroud: Fonthill, 2017. ISBN: 9781781556061.

Expands upon a little known theatre of war in great detail. Gives full accounts of German actions and patrols, merchant shipping movements and Allied military responses.

SMITH, Alistair. U-108 at War: Rare Photographs from Wartime Archives (Images of War). 154p., bibliog., illus. Barnsley: Pen & Sword Maritime, 2012. ISBN:1848846673.

Pictures taken from an unpublished album belonged to a member of the crew. They show every aspect of life aboard before, during and after a typical mission into the Atlantic, including some of the sinking of Allied shipping and the rescue of their crews.

NAISAWALD, L. VanLoan. In Some Foreign Field: The Story of Four British Graves on the Outer Banks. xiii, 82p., illus. Winston-Salem, N.C.: Blair, 1972. ISBN: 0910244650.

The British anti-submarine trawler Bedfordshire was sunk with all hands off the North Carolina coast by U-558, while on loan to the USN. A few bodies came ashore and the history and tragedy of the trawler and her crew and the cemetery in which they lie is described. Reprinted by the University of North Carolina Press in 1997, ISBN: 0865262721.     

HOCHSTUHL, William C. German U-Boat 156 Brought War to Aruba February 16, 1942. 40p., illus. Aruba: Public Relations Dept., Lago Oil & Transport Co., Ltd., 1962.

A well-documented account of the U 156 attack on the refinery and lake tankers in Aruba on 16 February 1942. It includes pictures of the crew, personal memories of the lone survivor, log book of the attack, and the lake tankers hit. Reprinted by the Aruba Scholarship Foundation in 2002, to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the attack, with a new introduction and postscript and a translation of the relevant part of the U-boat logbook.

EDWARDS, Bernard. From Hunter to Hunted: The U-Boat War in the Atlantic 1939-1943. 217p., illus., index. Barnsley: Pen & Sword Maritime, 2020. ISBN: 9781526763594.

An experienced and prolific author provides another account of the battle based on individual case studies of convoys.

The dramatised story of Newmarket, a Town Class destroyer thinly disguised as "HMS Porchester." This allows the author to give his (rose-coloured) view of the war in the Atlantic without any great need for accuracy or censorship. Based on personal experience.

A full and rigorous scholarly analysis of this little discussed part of the war. The well-known Kearny and Reuben James incidents were only the tip of a large-scale American involvement well before Pearl Harbor.

A review both of how Irish neutrality was preserved and of the damaging air raids on Belfast.

An account of the diplomacy involved in the Free French liberation of St. Pierre and Miquelon from Vichy. This unauthorised operation seriously strained the relationships of the Allies. The role played by Free French ships is described. Reprinted as Free French Invasion.

A political and diplomatic history of the American Atlantic War prior to Pearl Harbor. It suggests there was an element of personal enmity between the two leaders.

An interesting and thorough look at a neglected area, concentrating on the period to 1942 when the Americans arrived.

Local history which criticises the failure to institute a convoy system and considers the losses off North Carolina early in 1942.

A lovingly assembled collection of facts and pictures on the battles and losses at the mouth of the Chesapeake.

A tribute to a 50-year-old American who forced his way into the RN, but died in the North Atlantic. He was the first American to be killed on active service with the RN in WWII.

Tells the story of how the capture of City of Baghdad's codebooks by the raider Atlantis led to the destruction of four convoys in the autumn of 1940.

The Tenth Fleet was the US Navy anti submarine warfare think-tank and this book records its part in the Battle of the Atlantic.

A photographic record and recruiting pamphlet.

A war correspondent's account of a 2,000-mile trip in a pre-war destroyer acting as an Atlantic convoy escort in the spring of 1941.

The author follows the career of U 123 in the assault on the American East Coast in order to analyse how the U-boat war was conducted.

Examines the diplomatic background to the Lend-Lease agreement, which brought 50 badly needed American destroyers to join the Royal and Royal Canadian Navies as the Town class. A 25-page chapter is devoted to their wartime career.

A popular account of the battles in Canadian waters which took over 300 Canadian lives.

A good account based on operational records and the contemporary press, which not only records the attacks and responses, but also sets them in a political context.

The first "Happy Time" when U-boats savaged shipping.

The tale of a short-lived German weather station on the Greenland coast and of the authorities' moves to suppress it. Published serially in the Saturday Evening Post as "Secrets of the Unknown War."

Covers the period January-July 1942 and the autumn of 1943 when the U-boats prowled freely off the American East Coast. "Shows the American High Command at its worst.".

The Coast Guard served in the Pacific and the Atlantic and it is their connection with the RN in the latter that is of interest.

Originally published in 1988 in 1000 copies by Paria Publishing in Trinidad, this facsimile reprint by the Naval Institute Press, with a new foreword, deservedly brings an excellent book on a neglected battlefield to a wider audience.