U-Boat Killer: Fighting the U-Boats in the Battle of the Atlantic

Summary

A classic memoir from the Battle of the Atlantic

Donald Macintyre’s U-Boat Killer is a unique account of the Battle of the Atlantic from the perspective of a British destroyer captain who fought through this brutal campaign. Few other books transport the reader to the deck of a convoy escort in the cold, stormy seas of the Atlantic Ocean and bring to life the terrifying conflict between the Royal Navy and the U-boats.

Over the course of four unrelenting years, Captain Macintyre escaped the clutches of the German “wolf packs” and brought dozens of convoys to safety. Credited with destroying seven U-boats, Macintyre was a calculated master of combating his underwater foes and, during one savage night, captured Germany’s greatest U-boat commander, Otto Kretschmer, and sank another famous ace.

His memoir, U-Boat Killer, charts the course of the Atlantic war and explores how both Allied and Axis strategies developed until the convoys were able to turn the tide of the war in 1943.

This book should be essential listening for all fascinated by the longest campaign of World War II and for those who wish to learn more about the lives of the men who kept the war against the Nazis going even through the Allies’ darkest moments.