I just bought a new book that follows a U-boat captain from his time as an ensign in 1941 to captain of his own u-boat in 45. I've just started but can hardly put it down! It is written by Herbert A. Werner (Who is the actual Captain.) the title is Iron Coffins [ 14 August 2001: Message edited by: Ron ]
Great choice!! but I still favor the book: "Shooting the War" by: Otto Giese much more. They if you can find a copy of Erich Topps book and a copy of Hans Goebelers book, I highly recommend all of these. The best one of all of these is: "Shooting the War" and I am a bit prejudiced about it but will not relinquish why--unless asked privately, that is.
Iron Coffins-A Personal Accountof the German U-boat Battles of World War II, By Herbert A. Werner, Holt Rinehart and Winston Press, 1969, 364 Pages, Photo's, Glossary, Amazon New: $135.00, Used: $5.29 This is an account of a young German officer who served exclusively in the U-Boat force from 1941 until the end of the war. One of the twists I did not expect was that unlike the American Submarine service prospective U-boat officers did not go through a 'submarine school' before deployment to a combat sub. Werner's first assignment after graduating as an officer was straight to U-557, along with two other ensign's. The book is broken into 3 part's, Year's of Glory, Above Us, Hell and Disaster and Defeat. Year's of Glory depict's Werner's first three patrols in the U-557. Judging by his account these truely were the "Happy Time' for the German sea wolves. Little difficulty to get close to and sometimes deep within the Allied convoy's and pracitly little more than a shooting gallery. Allied aircraft rarely seen and Allied escort's too few to search for prolong periods and only able to lay a few patterns of depth charges totaling perhaps a dozen charges at most and usually inaccurately. Above Us, Hell has Werner promoted to 'Exec' of U-220 and also serving for three patrols. This time however, Allied escort's seem to be everywhere, constantly forcing Werner's crew to turn away from ever larger Allied convoy's. When they do get a kill the escorts now spend hours dropping scores of depth charges. Worse, Allied aircraft seem to be nearly as numerous as the depth charges. Time and again the Captain cries 'Alarm' and the boat must submerge to avoid destruction from above. This section has a double meaning as on trips home Werner is able to see the ever greater destruction of German cities from Allied Bombers. In Disaster and Defeat see's Werner in command of his own boat. By now getting past the Bay of Biscay to thier patrol area is something of a victory. The qualities of his officers have dramaticly declined, and Germany is rapidly losing the technology war as well as the production struggle. Werner calls these patrols madness and it is hard to disagree. The end of the war finds Werner in Norway, and he briefly flirts with the idea of taking his boat with a picked crew and escaping to South America. The execution of 3 common sailors for desertion douses the idea. He is intered by British, American and eventually French troops. He escaped a POW cage deep in France and makes his way to Germany, where the book ends. In many ways, Werner was the ideal model German for the Nazi state. Brave, intelligent, trusting in leadership of the Reich and suffused with the general belief that Germany was fulfilling her destiny. Not a racist or nazi per se, but he does not begin to question what was going on until the reality became unavoidable. If his account is accurate this was true of many German's well into 1944. Well written and a delight to read, this is an excellent and rare account by a U-boat captain who survived the war. BR-XXV
Belasar, I enjoyed reading Werner's account very much But the bible of U-Boats....... uboat.net - Discussion Forums. A forum that keeps up with every keel laid and crew served compared his dates and notes to their records and took him to task for accuracy and truthfulness. If one was to publish a history I understand but if Captain Werner escaped the POW camp I doubt he had his logs with him and I would give him some credit for recreating 5 years mostly from memory and forgive him some errors. To me it was a good read. That forum is exceptional for it's data. War must be the messiest activity of mankind but everyone wants it recorded perfectly, myself included but it won't make it always happen. I am sure most stories told are " enhanced" over time or forgotten, or never fully understood when they happened.. That Captain Werner survived period is noteworthy. Gaines
I treat all autobiography's with a measure of caution simply because its history written from a personal perspective. On one side you get a person's gut level view of great events, on the other it is human nature to 'shade' the truth or the meaning of their personal history. In his account of other U-boat commander's exploits I was often left wondering did he know these as true facts or was he accepting the claims, much as he did with official war reports coming from Berlin, which like the 'Victory' at first El Alemien by Rommel that clearly were wishfull thinking. Also the conversations he claimed he had with Heer and Luftwaffe personnel serving in the east and on leave in 1943-44 where they claimed that Germany was suffering from 'temporary local setback's' made me wonder, were they each trying to convince one another that things were alright, when they knew the situation was worse than they were admitting to? I agree any account written by a survivor, that is reasonably accurate, is worth the look. As in my review of Fuchida's account of Midway, read it for is dipiction of life as someone who actually served in uniform, but balance his story with histories written by those without an agenda to promote.
I may not be correct here, but by 1944 it might not have been very smart to say the war in the East was a disaster.I like your general assessment of first hand accounts. They often have their own sub-points.
Thanks for the like! By Werner's account, the U-boat war was at this time also lost, but that is not what he told his family and other's he encountered in his movements. This leads me to believe that in public everybody spewed the party line that victory was just around the corner, yet privately they knew there was no hope for this, but were unwilling to divest themselves of the dream or hope that it was. A interesting dynamic into the mind of people under tremendous stress and the belief that all they worked for was a terrible sham.
Great book. I very much enjoyed the technical tit for tat going on in the U boat battle. And strategy and its implementation. Personal account here was quite good.
Yes, this is a very readable and interesting book. It has been around for a while, and for WWII students of the German side, it is required reading. What I like about Werner's book is the mix of the personal and the observational.
I just started reading Iron Coffins, and found something a little odd. In his book (end of Chapter 3), he briefly talks about arriving over the Bismarck's gravesite on May 29th, 1941. What doesn't make sense to me, though is that when I checked the location of U 557 on this site for May 29th ( http://www.uboat.net/boats/patrols/details.php?boat=557&date=1941-05-29 ), and even the 30th, they were over 900 nautical miles away from where the Bismarck actually sank. Am I missing something?
That Herbert Werner survived the war in the U Boat service is pretty amazing. 75% of his fellow submariners did not. I read his account decades ago so I doubt if he had more recent information about logs and uboat.net at his service. The uboat.net forum has gone over this thoroughly and critically and I think most realize it is a personal account from memory and perhaps imagination. It obviously is not an accurate tracking of every day of a mission but I am glad he wrote it. Interestingly I remember he moved to the US and died here. Gaines
