Dieser Autor hegt eine tiefe Faszination für Geschichte, insbesondere den Zweiten Weltkrieg, was seine literarische Arbeit maßgeblich prägt. Seine Werke setzen sich mit den Verwicklungen historischer Ereignisse und menschlichen Schicksalen auseinander. Durch sein Schreiben bietet er den Lesern fesselnde Einblicke in die Vergangenheit. Diese einzigartige Perspektive auf die Geschichte bereichert seinen unverwechselbaren literarischen Stil.
Als sich die militärische Niederlage im Zweiten Weltkrieg immer deutlicher abzuzeichnen begann, griff die deutsche Kriegsmarine zu aberwitzigen Waffen und Methoden, um gegnerische Schiffe zu zerstören: Mini-U-Boote und Sabotageeinsätze durch Kampf-schwimmer etwa. Orientiert an den Erfolgen menschlicher Torpedos auf Seiten der Italiener und Engländer wurden Kleinkampfverbände geschaffen, deren Einsätze häufig selbstmörderischen Himmel-fahrtskommandos glichen. Auf Basis intensiver Recherchen gelang Paterson die detaillierte Rekonstruktion und Darstellung dieser verzweifelten Operationen.
Dieser Titel bietet einen einzigartigen Einblick in die Geschichte einer 70-tägigen Feindfahrt im Atlantik und in der Karibik. Im Sommer 1942 von einem Kriegsberichterstatter dokumentiert, wurden die Fotos 1945 im U-Bootbunker von Brest entdeckt und nach England gebracht, wo sie fast 60 Jahre unbeachtet blieben. Erst jetzt können sie durch die Forschungsarbeit des Autors veröffentlicht werden. Paterson erzählt die Geschichte von U 564, seiner Besatzung und dem beliebten Kommandanten 'Teddy' Suhren. Die Dokumentation zeigt praktisch jede Station des U-Bootes und die Aufgaben der Besatzung, ergänzt durch über 260 bisher unveröffentlichte Abbildungen. Neben der Darstellung der Besatzung werden auch andere U-Boote und ihre Kommandanten charakterisiert, die sich zur Unterstützung oder für gemeinsame Angriffe trafen. Das Wappen von U 564, '3 X Schwarzer Kater', zählt zu den bekanntesten der deutschen U-Boot-Geschichte. Reinhard 'Teddy' Suhren, der das Wappen von U 48, dem erfolgreichsten U-Boot des Zweiten Weltkriegs, mitbrachte, ist für seine berüchtigte Haltung bekannt. Die Fotos, die 1945 von britischen Soldaten gefunden wurden, sind nun dank der sorgfältigen Arbeit von Lawrence Paterson und dem Royal Navy Submarine Museum zugänglich.
A detailed examination of the before, during and after of Operation Colossus,
the first British airborne raid of WWII. Draws on interviews with relatives of
some the men involved and unearths previously unknown facts and information.
This study of the Kriegsmarine's Sicherungsstreitkräfte, their security forces, fills a gap in the study of the German navy in World War II. This book describes the wide array of vessels including patrol boats, minesweepers, submarine hunters, barrage breakers, landing craft, minelayers, and even the riverine flotilla that patrolled the Danube as it snaked towards the Black Sea. These vessels may not have provided the glamour associated with capital ships and U-boats, but they were crucial to the survival of the Kriegsmarine at every stage of hostilities. As naval construction was unable to keep pace with the likely demand for security vessels, Grossadmiral Erich Raeder turned to the conversion of merchant vessels. For example, trawlers were requisitioned as patrol boats (Vorpostenboote) and minesweepers (Minensucher), while freighters, designated Sperrbrecher, were filled with buoyant materials and sent to clear minefields. Submarine hunters (U-Boot Jäger) were requisitioned fishing vessels. More than 120 flotillas operated in wildly different conditions, from the Arctic to the Mediterranean, and eighty-one men were to be awarded the Knight's Cross; some were still operating after the cessation of hostilities clearing German minefields. Paterson documents organizational changes, describes the vessels, and recounts individual actions of ships at sea. Extensive appendices are included.
The Kriegsmarine's Schnellboote fast attack boats or E-boats to the Allies were the primary German naval attack units in coastal waters throughout the Second World War. Operating close to their various bases they became a devastatingly effective weapon in nearly all the Kriegsmarine's theatres of war, from the Baltic to the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. It was in the English Channel, however, that they scored their most notable successes, destroying some forty warships and more than one hundred merchant ships. In addition to interception and attack, they were also used for minelaying, landing sabotage troops and general escort duties. There has been, to date, no comprehensive operational history of the S-boat service in all the theatres in which it saw service, but due to the relatively small number of units it is possible to recount the duties and fates of each individual craft and in this new book the author examines the career of each in detail. In addition, operations alongside the commando units of the Kleinkampfverbande are covered, and the smaller S-boats, designed primarily for their use, are described. As the War progressed, S-boats suffered from the increased Allied mastery of the seas and skies but they were a formidable foe right to the end; this new book is the first to do full justice to their record of success
After the June 1944 D-Day landings Dönitz withdrew his U-boat wolf-packs from the Atlantic convoy war and sent them into coastal waters, where they could harass the massive shipping movements necessary to supply the Allied armies advancing across Europe. Caught unawares by this change of strategy, the Allied anti-submarine forces were ill-prepared for the novel challenges of inshore warfare. It proved surprisingly difficult to locate U-boats that could lie silently on the seabed, and the shallow waters meant less than ideal conditions for sonar propagation. Furthermore, because the battle was nearer home, the U-boats wasted less time on transit, so at any one time there were more of them in combat. in the final months of the war there was also the threat of far more advanced and potent submarine types entering German service, but thanks largely to overwhelming numbers of escorts this last gamble by Dönitz was defeated. In fact, the Allied navies had never really established superiority, and this was to have enormous significance later during the Cold War, when the same tactics were planned by the Soviets. Since it had such a major impact on post-war naval thinking, it is a story of the utmost importance told by an accomplished U-boat author.
The arduous development of a dedicated naval air arm for Germany's resurgent military was fraught with the kind of fierce inter-service rivalry that was rife throughout the turbulent history of the Third Reich. However, almost despite the odds, a small dedicated maritime strike force was assembled, germinating during the Spanish Civil War before being committed to action from the first days of the invasion of Poland. Concurrently, the operational Luftwaffe developed its own maritime units that would eventually subsume all of the Kriegsmarine-controlled formations as the war years progressed. This new book by the well-known author of German naval operations in WWII offers, for the first time, an in-depth study of all the Luftwaffe maritime operations. This is the first of two volumes and takes the story up to 1942.
