U-Boat Hunters: Code Breakers, Divers and the Defeat of the U-Boats 1914-1918 [Hardcover]

Robert M. Grant (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 2004 | ISBN-10: 1591148898 | ISBN-13: 978-1591148890 | Edition: 1

The story of how British naval intelligence was able to break German naval codes in World War I is fully explored by the noted U-boat historian Robert Grant. Examining radio interception records, telegrams, and the records of the Admiralty salvage department, Grant has unearthed an amazing tale of resourcefulness and danger. Along with collecting cipher information from many differing sources, intelligence personnel in Room 40, the nerve center in the Admiralty, sent Royal Navy divers to collect data from U-boat wrecks around Great Britain and Ireland and had ground crews comb through the wreckage of crashed zeppelins. Their efforts paid off. With their new-found insights into U-boat operations, the "men of Room 40" could hunt down and destroy U-boats at sea. This intriguing look at early successes in deciphering U-boat codes is sure to join the author's previous work as a standard reference on U-boat warfare. It includes an updated list of German submarines sunk or interned. 184 pages. 20 photographs. 3 line drawings. Hardcover. 81/2 x 121/2 inches.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 184 pages
• Publisher: Naval Inst Pr; 1 edition (April 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1591148898
• ISBN-13: 978-1591148890
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 1.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,029,751 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A Mistitled, Difficult-to-Follow Book, August 31, 2004

By 

George Coppedge (Czech Republic) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: U-Boat Hunters: Code Breakers, Divers and the Defeat of the U-Boats 1914-1918 (Hardcover)

Personally, I was disappointed in this book. The book's subtitle "Code Breakers, Divers, and the Defeat of the U-Boats, 1914-1918" led me to believe this would be a more comprehensive treatment of the WWI anti-submarine campaign. Instead, I found lots of very short, clipped individual accounts which certainly lacked a coherent, intelligible, smoothly-flowing narrative. I found it confusing. The book makes countless references to German ciphers, marine locations, personalities, and individual German submarines. Unfortunately, it fails to present these references in an intelligible manner. For example, the book needs a chronological chart for the German ciphers, numerous maritime maps for the geographical references, and an explicit explanation of the differences between U, UB, UC boats, including mission types, armament, displacement, etc. Also, the book lacks an effective, overall analysis of how the anti-submarine campaign was conducted and led.

This work is really a reference book, not a narrative history. It lists underseas cable-cutting operations, salvage diving operations (and cipher recoveries) on U-boat wrecks, and numerous accounts of U-boat sinkings. The last third of the book is set in a much more readable, interesting narrative format. Perhaps the book's greatest strength is that it was well-researched from multiple, mostly British sources, and documented with many explanatory notes.

In summary, this book is a good supplementary reference work on the anti-submarine campaign during WWI. However, this book is quite difficult to follow if you are not already throughly familiar with German codes, maritime geography, and the German submarine classes. Don't make this the first book you read on the WWI submarine campaign. A better title for this book would have been "List of WWI German submarine sinkings, mining actions, cable-cutting operations, and cipher recovery efforts".

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Useless!, February 11, 2007

By 

Andersson Torbjoern (Stenhamra, Sweden) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: U-Boat Hunters: Code Breakers, Divers and the Defeat of the U-Boats 1914-1918 (Hardcover)

This book is useless! There are countless references to interesting archived documents in the text, but not a single picture or facsimile of any such document. Also, when referring to broken ciphers etc., an explanation and/or picture of such a system would have helped a lot, but -alas - nothing of the sort!