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Turning the Tide
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Turning the Tide (2011) (edit title/settings)

How a Small Band of Allied Sailors Defeated the U-boats and Won the Battle of the Atlantic

by Edward Offley (Author) (edit contributors)

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Description edit see section history

The United States experienced its most harrowing military disaster of World War II not in 1941 at Pearl Harbor but in the period from 1942 to 1943, in Atlantic coastal waters from Newfoundland to the Caribbean. Sinking merchant ships with impunity, German U-boats threatened the lifeline... read more

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First Sentence edit see section history

Dawn came cold and dreary along the Manhattan waterfront as the great city stirred to life. Deep in the shadow of the skyscrapers and office building, the advance guard of hundreds of thoushands of people had begun pouring out of the subway entrances on their way to another day of work, dodging clumps ofsnow and ice from a storm two days earlier.

Table of Contents edit see section history

Introduction: A Fight in the Dark
1. A City at War
2. The adversaries
3. Movement to Contact
4. The U-boat
5. The Battle of the Codes
6. The Sighting
7. The Battle of St. Patrick’s Day
8. Heavy Losses
9. Crisis in the North Atlantic
10. The Allies Fight Back
11. The First Skirmishes
12. The Melee at 55 North 042 West
13. Battle in the Fog
14. Defeat of the U-boats
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Appendixes
Notes
Glossary
Bibliography
Index

Glossary edit see section history

  • BdU: Befehlshaber der Unterseeboote or the German Submarine Command.
  • Gruppe: German word for 'group'. German wolf-packs were given names, all of which started with the word 'gruppe' or group, such as Gruppe Amsel, Gruppe Donau, or Gruppe Elbe.
  • Asdic: British term for early sonar--stands for 'Allied Submarine Detection Investing Committee,' a World War I panel that first researched this technology.
  • Dead reckoning: The calculation of one's position at sea based on course, sped, and elapsed time since the last observed position, factoring in ocean currents, winds, and compass declinations.
  • HF/DF: High Frequency Direction Finding: a system of shore stations and/or ship mounted direction finding gear to pinpoint U-boat locations via interrecepted bearing to source of high-frequency radio transmissions. Pronounced Huff-Duff.

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Edward Offley (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: Basic Books
Country: USA
Publication Date: 2011
ISBN: 9780465013975
Page Count: 478

Classification edit see section history

  • Library of Congress: D770 .O36 2011
  • Dewey: 940.54293
Popular Tags
  1. 2012, 
  2. history, 
  3. nautical, 
  4. non--fiction, 
  5. world war ll, 
  6. ww ii, 
  7. ©2011 

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

  • Book Review: The epic, six-year Battle of the Atlantic that could possibly excel great fictional accounts – a great historical account: Ed Offley’s disturbing, fantastic new book Turning the Tide. Offley has sifted through a towering heap of official records, read a library’s worth of histories, even interviewed surviving U-boat sailors. He’s brought all that formidable research together, crafted it with a very considerable degree of narrative skill, and produced a volume worthy to stand with Gunter Hessler’s The U-Boat War in the Atlantic: 1939-1945 or Clay Blair’s magnificent 2-volume Hitler’s U-Boat War. In passage after passage, he brings the submarine experience – Allied and Axis alike – vividly to life.
  • Book Review: This book itself is incredibly well-researched, coherently written, elegantly edited, has ample supplemental material enhancing the text, and should stand as one of the best naval history books of World War II. While the author has a limited scope (the time frame is quite short: the first six months of 1943), he gives us both the Allied and German perspectives on what was happening, who was involved, what lessons were learned, and how it impacted the rest of the war. It was fascinating, and surprisingly easy to follow in print. Our eyes and brains seem to have been conditioned to grasp "Convoy ON166" as a single reading bullet vice the seven syllables we had to absorb in the audio. The charts, maps and pictures added so much- giving us faces to go with names, outlines to go with ship shapes, and places to imagine.
  • Book Review: Offley's story of "How a Small Band of Allied Sailors Defeated the U-Boats and Won the Battle of the Atlantic" has all the guts and glory of the best World War II novels. Here, the heroes are real in this most important battle. As students of history are aware, the battle of the Atlantic was the pivot on which the war rested. Without the resources of the West, the British would have succumbed to the German onslaught. The modern world would have been very different.
  • Book Review: Allied plans for a Britain-based amphibious assault on the European continent, not to mention the very survival of the United Kingdom, depended on unharried use of the North Atlantic’s shipping lanes, lifeline to the United States and its vast supplies. In March 1943, Grossadmiral Karl Dönitz suddenly stepped up the attacks of his deadly U-boats. Striking day or night, the German submarines posed a critical threat to the merchant convoys and, consequently, to the outcome of World War II.
  • Book Review: Ed Offley brings writing and research skills to his book on the World War II Battle of the Atlantic. The conflict featured German submarines (U-boats) versus the combat ships of the U.S. Navy, Coast Guard, Britain’s Royal Navy, and the Royal Canadian Navy and their respective deadly fleets of corvettes, destroyers, destroyer escorts, cutters, frigates, patrol boats and aircraft which took off from aircraft carriers and land bases. Offley’s book reflects his experience as a military reporter, author, and U.S. Navy Vietnam veteran.

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