Customer Reviews

The Golden Horseshoe: The Wartime Career of Otto Kretschmer,U-Boat Ace

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I first read this book many years ago, long before I developed my abiding interest with ships and the sea and was enthralled by the history of the central character who was Germany's most successful U Boat commander of all time. Even as a Prisoner of War, Otto Kretschmer continued to serve his country from behind enemy lines with such effectiveness that he also became, perhaps the only!, POW ever to have been promoted during his incarceration for such service. How odd that his captors failed to smell a rat and wonder why he should have received such advancement...

In keeping with U Boat tradition, Otto Kretschmer adopted the golden horseshoe as the motif for his submarine - U 99. His exploits, however, soon became so legendary within the U Boat arm that he was personally known as `The Wolf of the Atlantic.' The tonnage of ships this single U Boat commander sent to the bottom of the seas is far greater than any other commander of any other vessel, in any navy, in the history of the world.

Author Terence Robertson provides an excellent account - one which is as equally enthralling as his earlier `Walker RN' whilst I also thoroughly recommend and I am please to say I found the book as captivating as I did first time around.

Such was his conduct during the war that Kretschmer's held the respect of those on both sides of the conflict and was later able to join the new German Navy where he was eventually promoted to Captain. Ordinarily, such a person would have been revered as one of his nation's War Heroes but little or not such adulation was available to those in a defeated country. For all the right reasons, however, this account remains one of my favourite books.

NM

This is a fine book about Otto Kretschmer, focusing on his wartime carreer and exploits. There is scant information on his shildhood and early years, but the author paints a magnificent portrait of this highly capable skipper from the moment he took command of his first U-Boat, U-23. Of course the most terrific action happened in the period June 1940 - March 1941, when Kretschmer eas commanding the famous U-99 and Robertson gives many details regarding U-Boat and antisubmarine tactics of the era, as well as the every day life of a typical U-Boat crew. U-99 had also guests onboard in some of her cruises and the anecdotes about them are good enough. Kretschmer was a fine marksman spending most of the times just a single torpedo for every ship he sent to the bottom and he was the first U-Boat skipper to attack convoys on the surface and duting the night hours-a practice that brought to him great success and the Oak Leaves and Swords to the Knight's Cross. Luck run out for Kretschmer in March 1941 when he sunk many ships during a convoy battle in North Atlantic but he was also depth charged and forced to surface by the Royal Navy destroyer "HMS Walker". There are also interesting episodes from his years in captivity as well as his late release in 1947. The only shortcoming of the book (which has the fine writing style of so many old books) was the fact that it was written in 1955, just before Kretschmer started a new carreer in the Budesmarine and so it dosen't contain any information about the next decades. Otto Kretschmer died in 1997, when he slipped on a staircase and fell, during a trip to Danube for his wedding anniversary.

Having read several other biographies of other U-boat aces, I was somewhat disappointed in the relative lack of anecdotes and the necessarily detached viewpoint of the book. (being written in the third-person) Overall, however, the book is well written and provides a very good whole-view of Kretchmer and his career, both pre-war and through the course of his somewhat brief war and much longer time in captivity. A good starting point to learn about the man, and some interesting insight into the Battle of the Atlantic, very much from a British perspective, but with quite apparent admiration for a worthy and gentlemanly adversary.