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Submarines at War
Michael Gunton

Michael Gunton's Submarines at War makes me a little conflicted. Gunton has written a fairly good, and eminently readable general history of submarines. Being British, he tends to concentrate on British subs, which is fine. He also covers the German boats and captains fairly thoroughly, again understandably, as British operations were predominantly directed against Germany. Gunton served in minesweepers during the war, in the North Sea and Western Approaches, where German subs were the primary threat.

What conflicts me about this book is that, despite a strong research effort and good writing, too many errors creep in. A lot of these strike me as probably computer spell-checker based. At one point U.S.S. Batfish is called U.S.S. Beatific, and American sub captain Frank Latta is repeatedly called "Latte." A few just seem careless, such as on page 166, where Gunton writes of "...the German battleship Lützow, later renamed Deutschland..." This is a double error, for Lützow was a Panzerschiff, sometimes referred to as a "pocket battleship," and not a battleship, and Deutschland was her original name. Earlier, he confuses the British battleship Royal Oak with the carrier Ark Royal.

I tend to think writing for newspapers is a good background for book writing. Sometimes, though, it can have its drawbacks. This book, while generally well-researched, gives the impression of having been written very quickly and with inadequate editing. You have to write fast when working against a deadline. It's generally a good idea to work a little slower, and to triple-check both your spelling and your facts, when doing a book.

As I said at the beginning, this is actually a fairly good book. Should the author care to go back, fix the typos and factual errors, and produce a second edition, I'd be very happy to raise my rating.