Customer Reviews

Bitter Ocean: The Battle of the Atlantic, 1939-1945

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This is a fascinating subject. The sacrifices made by the merchant marines in WWII deserve to be remembered and honored. David Fairbank White does this.
However, I found his writting style to be choppy. Many times he revisits topics with almost the same wording he used in previous chapters. The flow of the narrative was inconsistent and at times when describing incidents or battles he takes off on tangents describing the future careers of the naval officers invovled that disrupt the flow and also clearly reveals the outcome of the battle before the narrative gets there.
I would expect better writing and story telling from someone with Mr. White's credentials.

This book relentlessly pummels the reader with powerful uppercuts of adjectives and vicious jabs backed by adverbial power. The author, a former NY Times reporter, seems to have felt constrained for years by the drab objectivity required of print journalists, and here he is relishing in his new freedom to express himself in an overwhelming outburst of descriptive clauses.

Consider two paragraphs on page 7 devoted to the merchant ship SS San Demetrio. In just a handful of sentences, the vessel alternates between plodding, pushing, nudging, chugging, and drifting. It only lacked the ability to lunge, which ships frequently do in this narrative. Pretty much, Mr. White employs the "more cowbell" theory of writing. One can picture him agonizing over a sentence such as "The sea was vast, cold, surging, a bleak expanse of empty slate-grey, pitiless in its epic expanse", and wondering how to cram in more words such as giant, frigid, remorseless, wind-whipped, and perhaps ineffable.

For all its flights of lyricism, the book sadly suffers from a significant degree of repetition, as if the various chapters and sometimes individual paragraphs had to repeatedly carry the entire weight of the story and recapitulate its hight points again and again. Sometimes the same point is made three times on the same page, and we almost reach the level of "The Germans were determined to destroy the convoys. Determination was perhaps the key attribute of the Germans in their battle against the convoys. Determined, those Germans were, in their efforts to sink the convoys. Were the Germans determined to annihilate the convoys? Many suspect the answer was yes."

As to strong points, the author supplies a wealth of information and provides an excellent bibliography, set of chapter notes, and index. The selection of photos is superior, with some coming from his own collection. Maps are plentiful. Mr. White also conducted an enormous amount of research and a lot of personal interviews with surviving combatants of both sides, and I feel the book would've been far stronger with more of these oral histories.

A stronger editorial hand would also have been advised, but still, this is a serviceable account of an important chapter of WWII, and possibly just the thing for readers who like their books bursting with flavor.

No WWII buff, no naval history aficionado should miss this superb and exciting history of the battle for the Atlantic. As riveting and intimate as Walter Lord's "A Night to Remember," "Bitter Ocean" places you on the bridge of merchantships hunted by wolfpacks and in the CIC of German U-boats as they hunt down their prey. Don't miss this excellent history.

Took "Bitter Ocean" out of its package and read it straight through. Unputdownable. Puts the reader alternatively at the helm of Nazi U-boats torpedoing Allied convoys, on the ships under attack, and in the cockpit of sub killing Sunderlands and Catalinas. Combines the technical clarity of Tom Clancy with the vivid style of Capote's In Cold Blood, while weaving in the political and social currents of the day in the UK and US and illuminating brilliantly the strategic importance of the Battle of the Atlantic. First rate.

The Battle of the Atlantic, 1939-1945, was fought across 32 million square miles of the pitching heaving, Atlantic Ocean, in the frigid, green wastes up by Iceland, in the empty waters off the Azores, and in the gray, quick approaches to the English coast.

This epic struggle saw lone, knifelike German U-boats surface in the pit of night on heaving seas to set, aim, and slam torpedoes into aging merchant ships; it saw wolfpacks of ten or more U-boats maul convoys of forty or fifty merchant ships in desperate battles that stretched over three or four days.

As the war progressed, the Germans developed advanced, futuristic Type XXI U-boats which could race along underwater at phenomenal speeds. Hitler's ambitious bid was to win the war on the Atlantic with his U-boats, long, tapered, bristling with guns.

"The battle, it was not really a battle but a struggle that lasted the entire war," writes White, "was a six-year effort of fundamental importance to every other engagement of World War II. On this battle hinged the efforts to bring massive convoys of merchant ships across the Atlantic, carrying the provisions, food, raw materials, and oil to keep solitary England alive during the years she stood alone against the Germans until 1941, and later every tank, gun, tent, helmet, bomb, all the troops, gasoline, coffee, wheat, rations to feed, fuel to supply the Allied armies sprawled across Europe. Without the men and ordinance on the ships, no battle, on any front, in any country overseas could be fought. The Battle of the Atlantic was the confrontation upon which the rest of World War II depended."

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill spoke words to the same effect, namely, that the Battle of the Atlantic was the dominating factor all through the war. "Never for one moment," said Churchill, "could we forget that everything happening on land, sea and in the air depended ultimately on its outcome and amid all other causes, we viewed its changing fortunes day by day with hope and apprehension."

In short, the strategy of the war in Europe rested on the war at sea.

In the worst year of the war, 1942, U-boats bagged a total of 1,006 Allied merchant ships. The Germans were sinking Allied shipping faster than the ships could be replaced. The situation was grim; the lifeline between the United States and England was in danger of being severed.

Hampered by American isolationist sentiment, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was unable to come directly to England's aid. He did, however, sign the "Lend-Lease Act," whereby America, "the Arsenal of Democracy," supplied much-needed food, fuel, and weapons to England.

On Dec. 7, 1941, the "sleeping giant" was awakened by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Soon, the industrial might of the United States swung into high gear, producing armaments for a two-ocean war, in the Atlantic and in the Pacific.

Eventually, the Allies were building ships faster than the U-boats could sink them. Radar and sonar were improved and perfected; Enigma, the complex German code, was cracked; and the growing Allied air power exerted its supremacy. Many bloody battles were still to be fought, but the crisis had past; the tide had turned.

A tense and gripping narrative of a crucial, yet often unrecognized and unappreciated part of World War II, Bitter Ocean reads like an enthralling novel. Whoever thinks history is necessarily dull and boring should read this book.

I don't think the best book on the Battle of the Atlantic has been written yet. This one doesn't come close. Mr. White writes from the POV of the men on the convoys. He hits the high spots, he tells a few good stories-- especially that of the San Demetrio. He makes no glaring factual errors, and his book is a convenient size. However the Good Guys vs Bad Guys tone, especially the over-the-top language heaped on the Germans weakens his efforts. Definitely not a balanced view in any sense.

I will admit to being surprised that, having devoted most of a chapter to Joachim Schepke's attack on convoy SC-11, Mr White failed to mention how Schepke got his comeuppance. Unfortunately, that might have made the Good Guys look bad for a moment-- dismembering one's enemies is not a nice way to kill them.

My enjoyment of this book was diminished by the author's style. He uses two or three adjectives or adverbs where one would suffice. He uses the wrong words often enough to interrupt the flow as the reader tries to figure out what was meant. He frequently uses cliches and sometimes even they are used inappropriately. Sometimes all the reader can do is laugh. My favorite sentence: "The United States fell in." What?
The book needed an editor facile in the English language.

I'm a writer myself, so I usually hesitate to pen a poor review knowing how much work goes into coming up with an idea, crafting a proposal, securing a publisher, doing research, writing a book, and all that comes afterwards.

It pains me, then (really) to give this book a single star, but is in fact the worst WWII book I have ever read. What's worse is that i was naturally disposed to like the book as I am very interested in the subject.

Mr. White goes to far in his flowery and descriptive language at the expense of the subject itself...in short I didn't learn anything about the Battle of the Atlantic except that U-Boats can slither, slide, slice, and swim, and that the ocean is heaving, anonymous, wide, dark, blue, foaming, and wet...all on the same page.

Perhaps the fault is not the author's but an inattentive and incompetent editor's.

Save your money.

I must echo some of the other reviewers sentiments on the Authors writing style. The use of extra adjectives in many of the descriptive sentences of the book is noticeable right away, and gets to be tiresome quickly.

The author never seems to delve too deep either. While the entire length of the battle is covered, the author tends to focus on convoy battles and individual encounters, but things like technological advances seem to take a back seat. You'll leave the book knowing the names of some of the key players and some interesting stories, but nothing in depth.

Overall it depends what you expect from the book. I'd recommend this book for someone just starting out on the subject, or someone looking for an easy read. There are some interesting facts scattered throughout the book, and some very memorable stories that will surely stick with the reader. But if you are looking for anything more, you'll need to look elsewhere.

I appreciate that sometimes an author can go to a lot of effort in research. And there is no doubt that the research shows through in this volume about the Battle of the Atlantic. But having been reading such histories for five decades I found this one extremely...errrr....different!
For a start I'd like to see some stats on how many computer thesaurus he used and burnt out. That would be facinating. I got the impression after a while that he was sure to run out of flowery phrases and launch into some other language seeking more. I am of the opinion that the Author set out to write a litery masterpiece and decided half way through gathering descriptive phrases, that he had sufficient to cover something at sea.
The personal stories are interesting, but I kept on thinking 'oh please hurry up and get on with it' as he leapt through language that one would normally only find in some heavy poetry.
I guess for some people who just want to read something about the subject, this book could be of value, and probably interest. But for the serious historian it is a dead loss. I calculate that if he had left out some of the long winded attempts to win a prize in literature, he could have provided us with half a book more, of valuable information. Perhaps he couldnt find enough to do that, hence he filled it out with what is really writers nonsensical tripe from more flowery era's of the written word.
Could someone pass the thesaurus please?