Customer Reviews

With Honour in Battle

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Okay, if you are like me you only read non-fictional books about U-boats and the naval history associated with them. The thought of reading a fictional book just does not appeal to you and you would rather not even waste your time. Well this book is different. Once I started reading it was hard to put down. If you are a historian, profesional or amateure you will start to see simularities of actual events that took place during the war and the non-fictional events in this book. This did not bother me at all in fact it actually helped me visualize what I was reading about and the events that were taking place. At times I felt as if I was actually there experienceing the events. This book covers the broad spectrum of war and the emotions associated with it from the military/governmental aspect, to battle and the bound shared between men and even love and the will to survive. Like the title of my review, Okay U-boat fans this is a must read book and would even make a great movie in my opinion.The book is about a young decorated U-boat commander who gets a new assignment near wars end. This assignment is both a war mission and experiment. The new boat is like no other and military officials hope it is not to late to make a difference in delaying the end of the war so better surrender conditions can be established for the soldiers and people of Germany.

Arriving back to his base after an extended patrol, Captain Hans Kruger is hoping to rest. Instead he is assigned to a new experimental U-Boat. U-2317 is the first of its type, with a radical design, to be operational. It is a very advanced design but has problems with its turbines and fuel which run the risk of the power plant blowing up. Kruger is Germany's most highly decorated submarine commander still in sea duty. He has been given the job of delaying the end of the war to enable Germany to dictate surrender terms that will not fatally damage their country. Kruger will do his duty as he is a member of the Navy. He has no politics and has doubts about the conduct of many of the Nazis. He will do his utmost to sink as many of the enemies' naval vessels and shipping, but will have nothing to do with the Nazi atrocities. Since U2317 runs quieter and faster and can dive deeper than any previous submarines, Kruger's campaigns are extremely successful...so successful that the British Admiralty attributes the devastation to a wolf pack. It isn't until David Ralston escapes on the way to a German prison camp and returns to England to describe Kruger's sub that they realize the truth. Ralston had been rescued by Kruger when Kruger sank his ship, and so had the opportunity to observe the new submarine. A task force is assembled with Ralston in command. Its purpose is to seek and destroy U2317. This becomes a race to determie who is the hunter and who is the hunted. The culmination of the race has quite a twist. McDaniel has successfully evoked the spirit of the people and places during the last days of Third Reich. The characters are finely drawn with the dilemma of killing as a duty while deploring doing this. The action is suspenseful; the battles realistic. This is a well-written book. This is the best naval warfare book I have read in a long time. It is very reminiscent of the war novels of British novelist, Douglas Reeman...

This is a great book! It is the story of a German U-boat commander, his crew and his U-boat. If you like war stories, you'll love this one. The boat represents the next generation of submarines that would have been deployed if World War II had not ended when it did.

I especially like its technical and historical accuracy. It does an excellent job of describing the major events that dictated the outcome of the U-boat war. The historical facts are woven into a very compelling story of a U-boat commander and his crew. The important advantages this new U-boat has are carefully contrasted with the actual limitations of the U-boats that fought the war.

When you have read this novel you not only come away with a great story, you have learned a great deal about how that war was actually fought on all sides. The main character although fictional is a composite of the real U-boat commanders. The boat and the technical innovations that make it such a potent weapon were actually developed or on the drawing board at the end of the war. The tactics used in the story are those that would have been used with this boat. It is one of the "miracle" weapons Hitler told the German people would snatch victory from the allies. I found it fascinating to see just how good it was and how it would have been used. The story takes place at the end of the war so you don't get to see what counter measures the allies would have developed had the war continued but you can plainly see how damaging it would have been to the allies if enough of them could have been produced before the war ended.

Members of my family served in the Merchant Marine during this war. They were hunted by the U-boats but I still liked this book. I think that says a lot about the book.

I spent most of World War II in battleships and the one thing that scared me the most was a submarine. This novel looks at it from the other side. The captain, Kruger, is an old fashioned, completely professional Navy officer. You get a strong feeling that he'd be doing this no matter what, but that he'd really prefer a different German government.

This is the sort of book I really enjoy. It's also the sort of book you don't see that often these days. The sub is the most advanced Germany could produce - I don't think they ever really built one like it, though - but the author doesn't waste hundreds of pages describing every little detail. He just says, it can go this fast, and this deep, and the story is really the men. And the men are real human beings, not cardboard cutouts. Some of them seem very familiar from my own Navy service.

When the book begins Germany is close to losing the war. Kruger certainly knows this, but he has his duty to perform and he does it spectacularly. The battle scenes are realistic, and the love scenes manage to avoid the porn you usually get today. You feel you could like these people, mostly, if you ever met them. As in any war story there are the inevitable deaths, some heroic, others tragically ordinary.

I'd recommend this book to anyone who likes traditional naval adventure stories. I hope there will be more to come.

This is not your typical techno-thriller or naval story. It tells the events surrounding a U boat introduced in the final months of the war which has several technological advantages over previous U boats, principaly in speed, torpedoes and sensors.

However the technology is only there to set the scene, the real action is how the different people, the U boat commander, crew, other German military, civillians and British naval personell interact. The people are the centre of this book and you get to see into the minds of Germans waiting for the war to end, possibly even thinking they might survive (only a quarter of U boat crew survived).

This is one book I couldn't put down. If you like war stories or books that get into the minds of people caught up in the events then this is one book you'll enjoy. I just hope that there are more like this from the author.

The book title "With Honour in Battle" fittingly describes the character of the
protagonist in this novel. Hans Kruger a U-boat captain, not only discharges his duty as a
Wolf pack hunter, but also shows valor by respecting the lives of his enemy. The story is
set during the last months before the victory in Europe. The Allies have cracked the radio code
used by the Wolf Pack and U-boats are easy pickings by the British destroyers. Even so,
Hans Kruger a W.W.II U-boat captain, manages to bring his crew home from the hunting
grounds of the North Atlantic time after time. Kruger is given command of a new
revolutionary sub to buy time for Germany to negotiate a favorable ending to the war.

Loved the "what-if" aspect of the story that is what if one of Hitler's super-subs had actually made it into the war before the Nazi surrender. The technical details of the story are sharp and intriguing. However, the human elements of the story are a little flat. The characters are primarily too stereotypical and as a reader I kept asking myself, "why do I can about this guy?" The subplot concerning the U-boat captain's love interests doesn't work well at all.
With Honour in Battle is still worth a read despite the flaws. McDaniel's speculations on how a Nazi super-sub would have affected the war are quite compelling.

This book succeeds on several levels: There's a good plot with excellent characters and all the suspense of WWII. There's enough submarine nuts and bolts to keep any techie happy. There's good naval lore, particularly as pertains to the title "With Honor in Battle." The book is set in the final days of the European War, just before the cease-fire. The reader finds himself pondering why would German U-boat crews continue to risk their lives in a war that is certainly lost. And finally, the book comes down to a duel between two combat sea dogs. All in all, McDaniel has crafted an excellent book that the reader will find riveting and, at the end, wholly satisfying.

Fortunately for the Allies, a new generation of U-boats never made it to sea. These "Elektro-Boats", some with the revolutionary Walter turbine engine, were the first true submarines, and they pointed the way to the future. This "what if" novel postulates that one of them was indeed finished and set sail in the dying days of the War to create havoc.

Having recently watched the brilliant "Das Boot" again, this looked to be interesting. I did indeed find the whole thing interesting conceptually, but the tale itself very ordinary, told in an ordinary manner. It's not bad, but I simply didn't find it that engaging.