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With Honour in Battle Characters

Hans Kruger: Korvettenkapitän (Lieutenant Commander). Nearly burnt out, Kruger is only 27-years-old, but has spent five years in u-boats, nearly all of that time in the thick of battle. A winner of the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords, Kruger is the most highly decorated u-boat commander still at sea. More than ready to come ashore as U-702 returns to Kiel in the winter of 1944, he is instead immediately placed in command of U-2317, a super-secret boat powered by the Walter Hydrogen Peroxide turbine. The boat is a wonder, but despite that his life remains a shambles, with most of his family dead in the war, and his own difficulty reconciling his job of sinking ships and killing enemy sailors with his certainty that the war is already lost and that he is just killing innocent seamen for no good purpose.

Siegfried von Saltzmann: Kapitän zur See. A senior planner on the Naval Staff, von Saltzmann commanded a tiny Typ II u-boat in the opening months of the war. The genius behind the plan to divert U-2317 from training duties to combat in the hope of gaining a little time.

The Admiral: A submarine officer during World War I, the Admiral is the officer in charge of a secret department of the German Navy charged with special operations. Like his assistant, von Saltzmann, the Admiral recognizes the hopelessness of Germany's situation, but is willing to gamble on the effect of pitting the world's first "true" submarine against the enemy.

Hannah Meisenhelder: A Leading Writer in the Navy Women's Corps, Hannah is the Admiral's personal assistant. Kruger's love interest.

David Ralston: Captain, DSC & Bar. Senior officer of a British killer group in the Skagerrak, Ralston finds himself in a life raft after Kruger demonstrates his new boat's remarkable abilities by sinking the entire group in less than an hour. Ralston is taken prisoner and turned over to Naval Intelligence after U-2317 arrives in Bergen, Norway. Escaping with some help from an S.A.S. officer, Ralston is given command of a new killer group and instructed to use his knowledge of U-2317's capabilities to hunt down and destroy her, for the new boat is raising hell in the Atlantic and leading to fears that Germany has produced a weapon capable of bringing back the perilous days when the u-boats ran wild in the shipping lanes. The fact that Ralston personally likes Kruger—who did, after all, save his life after sinking his ship—tends to complicate the professional conflict between the two men.

Rolf Wiegand: Kapitänleutnant (Lieutenant, senior). U-2317's First Watch Officer.

Parsifal Eisenberg: Fregattenkapitän (Ing) (Commander, Engineering Branch). Assigned as U-2317's chief engineer, Eisenberg is older than most of the officers. As an engineer, he is a specialist, ineligible for command. Eisenberg is an expert on the Walter turbine system, which uses an exotic form of hydrogen peroxide to drive the boat's streamlined hull through the ocean depths at speeds of nearly 27 knots. He is also, more than most of the others, aware of just how dangerous the propulsion system actually is.

U-2317: The first of her class to be commissioned, U-2317 is a Typ XXVIw Walter u-boat. This advanced design represented a huge leap forward in submarine design, capable of submerged speeds that would not be routinely achieved by other countries until the adoption of nuclear propulsion in the 1950s. She is so fast that surface escorts are virtually powerless to attack her, for if they travel fast enough to keep up with her, the noise of their passage through the water renders their Asdic (sonar) useless. Yet this ability comes with a price. The perhydrol fuel is highly corrosive and extremely reactive, presenting an ever-present danger of explosion. And there is only one boat, so that, no matter how advanced she may be, her ultimate role can never be decisive.

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