Reassessing U-Boats and Convoys

With the plethora of books available on the Battle of the Atlantic and on German wartime U-boats, it would be reasonable to ask, why more of the same?Particularly in that Edwards' book was first issued some ten years ago.But after receiving Paterson's The U-Boat War to review and then acquiring a new printing (not a reprint, evidently) of Edwards' book about Jervis Bay's loss, I decided to reread the second in light of the tone and implications raised in Paterson's more recent assessment of the same war.In his book, Edwards has made a well-argued assessment that, in the long run, Admiral Doenitz's U-boat arm really never had an obvious or continuing chance of winning the "U-boat tonnage war."His is a wide-ranging reexamination of that back-and-forth struggle from the German perspective, rather than the usual assessment of Allied attacking ships based on aircraft reports and memories.Meanwhile, Paterson continues the emphasis on the diaries meticulously kept in Doenitz's headquarters, augmented by the Kriegstagebuchs (boat logbooks), personal reports and diaries of U-boat commanders and others.This provides a valuable and largely different view of