The classic, standard work Axis Submarine Successes 1939–1945 by Jürgen Rohwer is now to be published in a new and revised edition, with the adjusted title Axis Submarine Successes of World War Two: German, Italian, and Japanese Submarine Successes, 1939–1945. Since the original book was published in 1983, and became recognised internationally as the standard reference work on the subject, considerable research has continued resulting in this new version of the book. Professor Jürgen Rohwer says in his Preface: "This book is the outcome of more than fifty years of research. Immediately after the end of the Second World War I began to build up a collection of naval records. At first I was interested mainly in the German navy of the Second World War and its ships, including data on the latter's construction, their technical specifications and information on their fate. Often working under difficult circumstances, I copied plans and transcribed data from the remaining business records I found in the partly dismantled shipyards at Hamburg, Kiel, Bremen, Bremerhaven and Wilhelmshaven; in Hamburg's Navy House, the headquarters of the German Minesweeping Administration, I gathered information from the official records on the operations and fates of the naval defence forces; and, in the Allied office responsible for notifying families of the deaths of relatives who had perished in combat, I searched for documents relating to the operations and fates of other naval vessels, particularly U-boats." Professor Jürgen Rohwer, in his Preface, details his work over half a century to verify information, working both from German records and the records of all the nations at war. Over the years more records became available officially, private information became available, and of a special importance has been the recent access to Soviet records. Each entry in Axis Submarine Successes gives the date of the attack; the nationality, name and commander of the attacking submarine; a map reference giving the precise location of the attack; and the type, tonnage, nationality and name of the ship sunk. Additional information, aimed at resolving controversial claims and clarifying hitherto inexact data, is also provided. As Professor Rohwer says in his Preface: "The result of my work collating U-boat reports on torpedo attacks, regardless of whether they were erroneously considered to be successful or were recognised at the outset as failures, threw up some interesting comparisons with my work on Allied submarine attacks. It has long been established that the figures relating to U-boat and submarine successes contained in the reports of the higher commands generally exceeded the results actually achieved. Postwar studies invariably made it seem as though these overestimates of successes were the result of deliberately falsified reports by U-boat or submarine captains, inflated estimates by headquarters or even fabrications by various wartime propaganda agencies. However, an examination of almost every attack report made by German U-boats or Axis and Allied submarines has shown that these are, with relatively few exceptions, false conclusions. The real reason for the inflated claims was the difficulty the U-boats and submarines had in obtaining the necessary data following the attack. Here geographical and hydrographical conditions, and also the efforts of the anti-submarine forces, played a crucial part. When single U-boats attacked solitary unescorted merchant ships, false reports of hits or sinkings were quite rare; and when conditions for visual observations were normal, gross errors in estimated tonnage were relatively unusual. However, when anti-submarine operations made a visual observation of the results of an attack difficult or even impossible, the U-boats were much more liable to misinterpret acoustic phenomena. U-boat captains were apt to classify almost all torpedo detonations heard as hits and all manner of acoustic sounds as 'sinking noises', despite the fact that torpedoes often exploded for a wider variety of other reasons, including contact with a bottom feature such as a rock behind the target, failure of the detonating pistol (especially in the case of the magnetic torpedoes used by various navies), detonations of acoustic torpedoes in ships'wakes and end-of-run detonations. Moreover, almost all U-boats participating in co-ordinated operations against convoys calculated their hits on the basis of explosions seen or heard, notwithstanding the fact that very often the attacks occurred at almost the same time and hits were therefore duplicated in the various reports. The U-boats also generally assumed that multiple detonations meant that this had been scored against more than one ship, whereas in fact several different torpedoes may have struck the same vessel. That is why the number of ships in a convoy reported as sunk or damaged by the members of a 'wolfpack' was usually on the high side. Reported tonnage could seldom be determined with precision in operations against convoys. U-boat captains made estimates that could be grossly in error, depending on the level of anti-submarine activity and the prevailing light conditions (most attacks took place at night)." The reference value of Axis Submarine Successes is enhanced by four very detailed, comprehensive indices: Index of Submarines Index of Commanding Officers Index of Convoys Index of Ships Attacked The companion book by Professor Rohwer Allied Submarine Attacks is still in print (but his major work of reference Chronology of the War at Sea 1939–1945, co-written with Gerhard Hümmelchen, which Greenhill published in 1992, is out of print). Back to Greenhill Military Book News No. 86 Table of Contents Back to Greenhill Military Book News List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 1998 by Greenhill Books This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com