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Beware Raiders: German Surface Raiders in the Second World War

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Although there have been a number of histories written about German Kriegsmarine commerce raiding operations in the Second World War, veteran merchant captain Bernard Edwards takes a somewhat different tack in Beware Raiders! Instead of canvassing all of the disguised raiders (Hilfskreuzer) as James P Duffy did in Hitler's Pirate Fleet, Edwards focuses on just two raiders. Even more interesting, Edwards selects the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper as his first ship and the Hilfskreuzer Pinguin as the second, which offers an interesting comparison of Germany's overt and covert commerce raiders. Most of the book focuses on the main raiding period in the Atlantic and Indian Ocean in 1940-1941, although the author does touch on events following this time frame. Overall, the book offers some interesting views and is more detailed about some combat actions, but it also has a tendency to wander off topic and the book appears to be based mainly upon existing secondary sources and a sprinkling of merchant sailor eyewitness accounts. Thus, Beware Raiders should be viewed as an evocative-type history that sets out to give the flavor of commerce raiding operations, rather than as a more comprehensive approach to this topic.

The book is divided into sixteen chapters that interweave the raiding careers of both Hipper and Pinguin. The first three chapters deal with Pinguin's breakout into the Atlantic in mid-1940 and early operations, then shifts into the Hipper's early operations. Unfortunately, he gets side-tracked for a whole chapter on the invasion of Norway, which had nothing to do with commerce-raiding operations. He returns to commerce raiding in chapters 5-7 to take back up with Pinguin's operations in the Indian Ocean. Noteworthy in this narrative is the author's attention to details, such as the German radio codes and low-frequency radios used to avoid detection by the British. In chapter eight he returns to the Hipper's storyline, by way of discussing the captured liner Cap Norte as a lead-in to Hipper's pathetic attack on convoy WS 5A in December 1940. Despite catching a weakly-protected convoy by surprise, Hipper failed to score and was driven off once British escorts raced to intervene. He then slips back to cover Pinguin in chapter ten and then uses the next chapter to cover a Focke-Wulf Condor attack on convoy HG 53. At this point, some readers may tire of this format of switching perspectives every other chapter, particularly since the Hipper's operations were not in any way related to Pinguin's. Chapter twelve covers Hipper's more successful attack on convoy SL 64 in February 1941 in some detail, but a diagram of the attack would have been helpful.

Chapters thirteen and fourteen cover the final operations of the Pinguin and her last battle with HMS Cornwall in May 1941. The battle description is good, but the Pinguin's story comes to an abrupt end here with no mention of what happened to any of her survivors. Chapter fifteen is an odd diversion that covers the final fate of some of the merchant ships from convoy SL 64, although this more almost entirely about merchant seaman versus the sea, rather than versus raiders. The sixteenth chapter covers Hipper's later career including the frustrating attack on convoy JW 51B. The book includes sixteen B/W photos, a short bibliography, but no footnotes or appendices.
Although the author is knowledgeable about the sea, at times the lack of real research is apparent, such as when the author mentions that the Pinguin was equipped with "40-year-old 5.9-inch guns taken from the obsolete pre-dreadnought battleship Schliesen." In fact, the Schliesen had never been equipped with 5.9-inch guns and Pinguin's armament came from elsewhere. This mistake has been repeated in a number of other secondary sources (including Wikipedia) and the author repeats it here. He also includes some obvious factual errors, such as noting on page 44 that the cruiser Blucher was sunk at Narvik, instead of near Oslo. While a number of British eye-witness accounts are used, very few from the German side appear. Yet the author does have a knack for including interesting contributions by individual sailors, such as stocker Harry Penter's impromptu creation of a smoke screen that helped save several ships from Hipper's guns. Edwards' main intent is to compare the relative merits of an expensive, overt raider such as Hipper versus a cheap, covert raider such as Pinguin and he clearly comes down in favor of the later. Overall, Beware Raiders is an interesting read, although it is heavily derived from existing sources and some readers may find its quirky switching-back-and-forth style annoying.