Kemp, Paul. U-Boats Destroyed: German Submarine Losses in the World Wars. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1997.

ISBN 1-55750-859-3
288 Pages

Preface; Glossary; Bibliography; Index of U-Boats; Index of U-Boat Commanders; General Index

As befits a publisher of its reputation, Naval Institute Press continues to publish some of the most important naval books reaching the market today. Earlier this year NIP released Jurgen Rohwer's Allied Submarine Attacks of World War, an impressive compendium of tabular data resulting from decades of painstaking archival research.

Paul Kemp's new book proves to be another remarkable achivement of careful research, presenting in standardized format the specifics of more than 1000 U-boat sinkings from August 1914 to May 1945. For each sub destroyed Kemp provides its number, type, date launched, date commissioned, name and rank of skipper, date of loss, location, cause, number of casualties, number of survivors, whether or not the sub was salvaged, and notes ranging from brief sentence to several paragraphs.

Here's an example:

	Launched	Commissioned
U534	23 Sept 1942	23 Dec 1942
Class	Type IXC/40
CO	Kapitanleutnant Herbert Nollau (survived)
Date of loss	5 May 1945
Location	Kattegat, N of Helsingor, 65 39N 11 48E
Cause	Air attack
Causalties	2
Survivors	50
Salvaged	Yes (see notes)

Notes U534 had spent most of her operational life on weather-reporting duties. Her last voyage was to take urgently needed spare parts and supplied to the U-boat flotillas concentrating in Norwegian ports. She, in company with two other boats, was attacked by Liberator 'E' of No 547 Squadron, which was shot down. Liberator 'G' of No 86 Squadron, flown by WO J.D. Nicol, then made two attack runs through fierce flak and dropped a total of ten depth charges. The submarine was afterwards seen sinking by the stern, leaving men, wreckage and oil on the water.
   The wreck was raised by a Danish consortium in August 1993 amid considerable press speculation that the boat contained bullion, works of art and documentation which was being shipped to Norway in preparation for a 'National Redoubt'. However when the boat was opened up she was found to contain nothing more than an above average quantity of spare parts and tinned food and a large supply of condoms. At the time of writing (February 1997) plans exist to display the submarine permanently in Birkenhead.

While U-Boats Destroyed offers valuable information and stands on its own very well, it's even more useful when studied in conjunction with some other books about naval losses.

One important comparison is with Search, Find and Kill: The RAF's U-Boat Successes in World War Two by Norman Franks. The RAF accounted for about 250 German and Italian subs during WWII, so there is significant overlap in the two books. Frank's accounts of U-boat sinkings from an RAF perspective complement Kemp's rather more U-boat centered approach.

Another comparison is with Warship Losses of the Second World War by David Brown (also from Naval Institute Press). Brown chronicles the loss of every warship from every nation from every cause-- but excluding submarines. Kemp thus also nicely complements the missing data from Brown.

Finally, it's interesting to contrast Kemp's accounting with The Last Patrol by Harry Holmes (another from NIP) which documents American sub losses during the war. For all the brilliant successes and heroic sacrifices of the US undersea campaign, the relative magnitudes of the American and German efforts can be summed up in the WWII sub losses covered in the two books: 52 American and almost 800 German.

"A fine book and deserving of a place on everyone's WWII naval bookshelf," we originally wrote when this book was published and reviewed. In the meantime, it has been completely supplanted by a much more accurate and up-to-date volume devoted to U-boat losses. See Niestle's German U-Boat Losses during World War II.

Available from mail order booksellers, local bookshops, or directly from Naval Institute Press.

Thanks to NIP for providing this review copy.

Reviewed 14 September 1997