Customer Reviews

German E-boats 1939-45 (New Vanguard)

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Most accounts of the German Navy in the Second World War focus on either the U-Boat arm or the occasional sorties of celebrity warships such as the Bismarck or Scharnhorst. However, very little has been written about the small surface warships of the Kriegsmarine that fought throughout the war and in many theaters. This Osprey Vanguard Edition on E-Boats (or the German S-Boats), provides a good summary of the equipment and operations of the German motor torpedo boats in the Second World War.

German E-Boats consists of short sections on the development of fast motorboats in the German Navy, a general description of the E-Boats, armament, power plant, color schemes, radar, organization of the E-Boat squadrons, and operational use. Technologically, the E-Boats suffered from lack or radar and this deficiency would reduce their effectiveness by 1943. The book includes seven color plates: four depicting various E-Boat configurations, two action scenes and one cutaway diagram.

The author spends almost fifteen pages detailing E-Boat operations in the North Sea, the Channel, the Baltic, the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. Several points are interesting. First, the E-Boats could inflict substantial damage and sank or crippled a surprising number of enemy destroyers. Second, the E-Boats were capable of massed attacks on convoys with up to 20-30 boats involved in one action. Third, the Germans lost a significant number of E-Boats in accidents. Fourth, despite complete Allied air superiority, the Germans were still able to conduct E-Boat attacks on coastal convoys as late as April 1945 (given the complete suppression of the U-Boat arm by this point, the ability of E-Boats to score successes in 1945 is phenomenal). Although the author's narrative is succinct, he does mention individual E-Boat successes and losses.

There are a few deficiencies in the volume, but given the size constraints of the series, understandable. The author does not discuss E-Boat tactics in any detail, and it would have been worthwhile to mention exactly how 10-20 E-Boats would attack a convoy (how was command and control accomplished? Was it a decentralized or centralized method of attack? How did E-Boats deal with convoy escorts?). There is also no final tally of how many E-Boats were built, how many were lost and what their total successes were in terms of tonnage sunk. Finally, it would also have been useful for the author to discuss E-Boat construction (where? How long? How much did they cost?) and what kind of resource trade-offs the Kriegsmarine made in regard to E-Boats, U-Boats and the surface fleet. Nevertheless, this account sheds further light on this neglected aspect of the Second World War.

If you've ever purchased a New Vanguard book, you can anticipate what this is like. 48 pages, concise history of the subject, a few color drawings to show the paint schemes used and some B&W photos to show the subject in action. The cutaway in the middle of the book is good, but the binding makes some of it hard to see.

E-Boats are a very interesting topic - most similar to American PT Boats, the Schnell boats were 30% larger, with a crew of 24 vs. 13 on US PT Boats. Pound for pound, I think PT Boats would be a better buy - they packed more of a punch than the E-Boats, but were smaller. Both were made of wood (the Germans did later develop an armored bridge) and therefore vulnerable. E-Boats used diesel engines, had a slightly longer range. PT Boats and E Boats both have a mixed history of success, although in later WW2, PT boats were devastating to Japanese barges and small supply ships. Factoid - E Boats sank more Allied shipping during the Normandy invasion than any other weapon in the German arsenal.

If you do not want to spend a lot of money on this subject, this is a good intro to the E Boats. For modelers, the photos are very small as are the color drawings. Very small. Many photos were taken on the sea, so they are grainy and hard to see.

Despite its limited number of pages the volume is quite fact packed and detailed in a well structured and easily readable way.
The tactics employed in the use of the E-boats are unfortunately not covered in the volume (or only covered in a very superficial way).
Nor is there much mentioning of the personalities of the e-boat service.
The side view illustrations are ok, but the cutaway illustration is rather rough and the "in action" drawings/illustrations of the boats are also somewhat rough and un-life like and reminds one quite a bit of the sort of graphics one encounter in computer games (and have probably been created with the same sort of software (i.e. Maya) with the limit of such graphical tools with regards to the level of detail one can put into the illustration.
I also miss cross section drawings of the hulls, that can be quite handy with regards to getting a real impression of the hull shape of the boats.
And though the author is undoubtedly knowledgeable about the subject of his book, through some phrases here and there in the book, I somehow get the impression that the author are somewhat lacking with regards to sea-legs and knowledge of nautical terms.
F.ex if a picture shows e-boat crew wearing fur-skin caps, it doesn't have imply that the picture is taken mid winters.
As anyone who has done a bit of sailing in European waters know, you don't need to go all that far offshore to experience a quite noticeable drop in temperature even well into the spring/summer season, from what one's accustommed to on the shore.

This book is certainly fact-filled, and I did learn a lot about this historically significant arm of the Kriegsmarine. However, I agree with the shortcomings mentioned by other reviewers. A lack of detailed maps of critical patrol areas and virtually no mention of the unique individuals who fought them are serious drawbacks. It should also be mentioned that Britain's Coastal Forces were seriously unprepared for the E-boat's superiority in a gunfight with British MTBs(Moter Torpedo Boats).There were so few MGBs(Motor Gun Boats)available to escort MTBs that many MTBs had their torpedo tubes removed and extra guns added.

Such is the nature of evil, that when its tools of war are concerned it is unavoidably attracted to the gigantism and indeed, for the sea warfare, each of the cruellest regimes of the 30s and 40s produced or attempted to produce the most enormous battleships possible: Hitler got the infamous "Bismarck" and "Tirpitz", Mussolini had the gigantic "Littorio", "Vittorio Venetto" and "Roma", Japanese military regime build "Yamato" and "Musashi" super-battleships and Stalin would have got his "Sovetsky Soyuz", "Sovetskaya Ukraina" and "Sovetskaya Rossiya" monstrous super dreadnoughts, if Hitler's attack didn't stop their construction.

However, one of the deadliest and busiest weapons in III Reich sea arsenal was the exact OPPOSITE of the above mentioned steel covered behemoths - they were the "Schnellboote" or "S-boats", which the allies named "E-boats" ("E" meaning "enemy"). The "E-boats" were the smallest warships of the Kriegsmarine - but together with the "U-boots" they were the ones that served their master the best and which hurt the allies the most...

Small, fast boats armed with torpedoes demonstrated their full potential for the first time during World War I. In the night of 9-10 December 1917 two Italian MAS fast torpedo boats attacked and sunk an aged Austro-Hungarian battleship SMS "Wien". Next year, in the night of 10 June 1918, two other Italian MAS boats torpedoed and sunk the SMS "Szent Istvan" - a very modern and strongly armed Austro-Hungarian battleship. The destruction of powerful "Szent Istvan" by those two "sea mosquitoes" shocked all the naval headquarters around the world. In 1919, during British intervention in Russian civil war, fast torpedo boats again scored big, when British crafts sunk Bolshevik cruiser "Oleg" and fatally crippled the battleship "Andrei Pervozvanny" (she was never repaired and ultimately scrapped).

The potential of fast torpedo boats was duly noticed by German military hierarchy even before Hitler's rise to power. Unable to build a surface fleet which could wrestle the control of the seas from Royal Navy, Germany could however challenge the United Kingdom in the open waters with its submarines and in the coastal areas with a large fleet of "Schnellboots". S-1, the first "S-Boot", was commissioned in 1930. The development of "S-Boots" was first slow, but their construction accelerated after 1936 and even more - obviously - once the war began in 1939. In all, between 1930 and 1945 many hundreds of "Schnellboote" were build (the exact number is a much discussed topic). Most of them served in the Kriegsmarine, but some were also exported to Spain and Italy.

The "S-boots" were build fast and on the cheap, so they were vulnerable to the elements, accidents and enemy fire. But still, they served German war effort well, from the very first to the very last day of WWII. They began the war on 1 September 1939 operating against the small Polish Navy and they ended it only on the 8 of May 1945 (and for those based in Norway even a little bit later). They served in all naval fronts where it was for them physically possible to go: North Sea and La Manche, Norway coastal waters, French Atlantic coast, Baltic Sea, Mediterranean, Black Sea and even Arctic waters. The story of their travels through the network of European canals and rivers to get from North Sea to the Mediterranean and Black Sea is a real saga in itself. Some of the smallest ones were even carried by German armed merchant cruisers during their raids and used operationnally as far as the Indian Ocean and Pacific!

The first mission of "S-boots" was to launch torpedo attacks and conduct mining operations in enemy controlled coastal waters and in those missions those small warships were quite successful. In torpedo/gun/depth charges attacks they sank 101 merchant ships (displacing more than 500 tons) and also numerous small coastal freighters (displacing less than 500 tons), as well as numerous warships. The largest amongst the latter were twelve destroyers: HMS Vortigern, HMS Wakeful, HMS Hasty, HMS Lightning, HMS Exmoor, HMS Penylan; USS Rowan; HNoMS Eskdale (Norvegian), Jaguar (French), Cyclone (French), Sirocco (French) and Quintino Sella (Italian, sunk after Italy changed sides). Other destroyed allied warships were 2 British frigates (HMS Halstead and HMS Trollope), 1 Soviet submarine, 1 American minesweeper, 1 British fast gunboat, 8 American and British landing ships, at least 14 British armed trawlers and many smaller units (fast torpedo boats, patrol boats, rescue tugs, transport barges, etc.). The "S-boots" also heavily damaged significant numbers of allied merchant vessels and war ships - amongst those latter there was one British light-cruiser and at least one Soviet destroyer.

Mines laid by the "S-boots" sank at least 37 more merchant ships and also at least three destroyers, one big minelayer, two minesweepers and four landing ships.

Royal Navy had to build and deploy a great number of its own small fast warships to counter the threat of the dreaded "E-boats". Numerous bloody and ferocious battles were waged between British and German small warships in the North Sea and the Channel and in some fights both sides resorted to ramming. Sometimes things went up so close and personal that boarding was used, with the fight which began with 37 mm automatic guns ending with pistols, handgrenades, knives and fists! In one such occasion a British fast armed craft was captured and towed in triumph to Germany. In another fight it was German ship "S-111" which was captured - but just minutes later other "Schnellbootes" came to the rescue and re-captured her again.

In many other occasions however British fast gunboats, heavily armed Beaufighters and Mosquitoes fighters-bombers or destroyers and frigates escorting the convoys triumphed - and when the menace of mines and all the hazards of nightly coastal navigation at fast speed and in frequently foul weather are added it becomes clear that the service on board of a "S-boot" was a very dangerous one...

The "S-boots" were also used for many other missions - they patrolled and scouted, hunted the submarines (loading for those occasions depth charges), escorted friendly coastal convoys and minesweepers, kept British torpedo boats at bay and operated search-and-rescue mission to recover downed aviators (including allied ones). Ocasionnally they also escorted larger German warships, like "Scharnhorst", "Gneisenau" and "Prinz Eugen" during the Channel Dash or the auxilliary cruiser "Komet" during her (ultimately unsuccesful) sortie attempt in October 1942. They even helped to fight Tito partisans in Dalmatia, as this Yugoslav resistance movement was one of the few guerillas in history to have a naval branch...

Towards the end of the war the "S-boots" assumed also some less usual tasks, like co-operation with the K-Verbande, German naval special forces which operated midget submarines and explosive boats and also included frogmen-commandos. They also made nightly blocade runs to resupply isolated German strongholds and evacuate the wounded and sick.

In the very last weeks of the war they even were used in humanitarian missions, possibly their noblest work during the whole war, by evacuating German civilians from areas threatened by advancing Soviets. Considering the crimes Red Army soldiers committed against German civilians in 1944-45 one can safely say that "S-boot" crews saved in April-May 1945 many thousands men from torture and death and many thousands women from gang rape.

Because of heavy war time losses and the great amount of "wear and tear" amongst those "S-boots" which made it until the end of war, there is today only one surviving "Schnellboote", the "S-130" - restored to her original aspect she is exposed in Wilhelmshaven, Germany.

Because of their speed, fire power and menacing predatory design those little ships packed also a serious "cool" factor - when in the film "Guns of Navarone" heroes embarcation is intercepted by a "Schnellboot" the atmosphere of danger and tension is immediately obvious and it takes the combined firepower of Gregory Peck, Anthony Quinn and David Niven to take care of this threat...)))

If the bloody saga of Hitler's "sea mosquitoes" and their fight between 1939 and 1945 interests you, this little and unexpensive but very well written and densely packed with information book is a very useful thing to begin the research on this topic.

This is a good book for anyone interested in these boats. Good pictures and background info for anyone modeling one of the exceptional boats.

I gave this to my 90-yr old friend who served on an "Schnellboot" during WWII. He was thrilled to see pics of his old boat and it brought back a lot of wartime memories for him. He is now a retired MD living in Arizona. This book has a lot of technical info and interesting, seldom seen photos of these torpedo boats in action. A good buy if you are making a model of an S-100 patrol boat.

The book was fine, the history of the german schnellboots was very interesting. I was hoping for more photographs of the boats. I was hoping to use this book for building an e-boat model, but the limited photo supply was disapointing. If you want some history than the book is fine. If your looking for photo references this is not the book for you.