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

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About Operation Drumbeat: Germany's U-Boat Attacks Along

Product Description The dramatic national bestseller and remarkably exciting account of Germany's little-known U-boat campaign against merchant shipping along the North American Atlantic coast during the first six months of 1942. Amazon.com Review Historian Michael Gannon argues that the systematic assault by German submarines on merchant tankers and freighters along the U.S. eastern seaboard in 1942 "constituted a greater strategic setback for the Allied war effort than did the defeat at Pearl Harbor." The case for the claim is intriguing and includes a damaging assessment of the U.S. naval command, which ignored information that might have allowed it to avert the disaster, but Gannon never lets his argument distract from the compelling wartime story. Through original interviews and archival research, he describes the exploits of U-123 and its 28-year-old Lieutenant Commander Reinhard Hardegen, who terrorized American home waters on two separate missions. Operation Drumbeat presents a remarkable picture of life on the U-boats. (Fans of the movie Das Boot especially won't want to miss it.) Gannon's book eventually may become a classic work of naval history; for now it's a great book on a particular aspect of the Second World War. --John J. Miller From Publishers Weekly Interviews with a U-boat skipper, former German crew members and U.S. and British military personnel help explain why the Allies lost nearly 400 ships to U-boat attacks; evidence suggests that well-informed British intelligence was disregarded by the Anglophobic U.S. chief of naval operations. "The book will be of enormous interest to sub warfare buffs," said PW. Photos. Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. Review "Gannon's book is a crisply written, vivid and thoroughly researched account of the adventure of U-123 inAmerican waters." -- -- Michael L. Hadley, author, U-Boats Against Canada "Operation Drumbeat is a splendid book, moving in description, instructive in well supported analysis. Gannon knows how everything worked in a U-Boat, and he gives brilliant descriptions of all the technological conditions that shaped its warfare. He also makes a memorable contribution to our understanding of the nature of the U-Boat war and warriors. He is fully informed and he is full, fair and justifiably critical of some [U.S.] policies, personalities, and performances." -- Elting E. Morison, author, Men, Machines and Modern Times, and Admiral Sims and the Modern American Navy "Operation Drumbeat is a truly wonderful bookthe best by far that I have read on U-boats and believe me I have read them all. It combines a great knowledge of U-boats and meticulous scholarship with dramatic narrative. The upshot is an important and riveting story that gives the reader the most reliable and penetrating account of U-boat warfare ever written. Furthermore the `Atlantic Pearl Harbor' thesis is well developed and unassailable. On every page the author demonstrates complete mastery of immense primary source material with shocking new revelationssuch as the failure to bring the 25 American destroyers into play despite clear warning from Bletchley Park that Drumbeat was afoot." -- Clay Blair, author, Silent Victory: The U.S. Submarine War Against Japan "Engrossing reading, most especially the part in which the dereliction of our naval leaders along the eastern seaboard is so well described." -- Capt. Edward L. Beach. author, Run Silent, Run Deep "Gannon's book is a crisply written, vivid and thoroughly researched account of the adventure of U-123 inAmerican waters." -- Michael L. Hadley, author, U-Boats Against Canada "I started reading Operation Drumbeat and literally could not stop. I think it's an absolutely stunning bookrevelatory. It should startle everyone who thinks there is nothing more to be said about World War II. His expos of the U.S. Navy's incompetence in the opening months of the war is the stuff of Pulitzer Prizes. His grasp of the German side of th