The War for England's Shores. S-Boats and the Fight against British Coastal Convoys

Книга на английском языке
This book frames its subject matter, the German S-boat offensive against Britain’s coastal convoys, in three distinct ways: 1. As occupying an overlooked, and yet critical, aspect of the Battle of the Atlantic on which Britain’s survival depended during World War II. The battle is generally accepted as one of the defining factors in that war, but in reality it was a campaign rather than a battle lasting from 1939 to 1945, and that campaign extended well beyond the borders of the Atlantic to the adjacent oceans, and to areas such as the English Channel and North Sea. 2. As occupying a geographical and cultural space - the coastal, the traditionally “English” (and European), rather than the oceanic (and global) part of the national identity of Britain/England as a maritime nation - that ensured that it would be neglected in popular memory and historical writing after 1945. For Imperial Britain, for Cold War Britain, and for Global Britain, naval thinking, history writing, and popular memory have been framed by the Atlantic and the connection to the United States instead of the narrow seas between the British Isles and a Europe, toward which British attitudes were frequently ambivalent. 3. As occupying a significant moment in the development of coastal warfare that is not properly understood by the practitioners of naval warfare in a twenty-first century in which, once again, there is a renewed emphasis on military operations in the coastal zone. The development of intelligence and information networks; the connections by 1943 between ship, shore, and aircraft; the integration of strategy, naval tactics, scientific developments, and shipbuilding; and their impact on naval operations in English waters to thwart the German navy prefigures many of the features of what might be called “sea denial” and networked warfare in the twenty-first century. It also highlights the efficiency and effectiveness of the wartime British state, its flexibility of thinking, and the increasingly technocratic nature of the British way of war. In terms of history in its broadest sense, and in ways of thinking about coastal warfare in the twenty-first century for naval practitioners, what happened in “English” waters between 1940 and 1945 is deeply significant even if it has been neglected and misunderstood.

Содержание
List of Maps and Tables
List of Acronyms and Abbreviations
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1 German Naval Strategy, 1870-1940
Chapter 2 The Rise of the S-Boat, 1940-1941
Chapter 3 The Campaign in the Balance, 1941-1942
Chapter 4 The Human Dimension
Chapter 5 Donitz Replaces Raeder
Chapter 6 The 1943 Turning Point: The Emergence of a Multilayered System of Defens
Chapter7 The 1943 Turning Point: The Role of Intelligence
Chapter 8 The 1943 Turning Point: German Failure to Respond Effectively
Chapter 9 S-Boats and the Shift to the Defensive, 1943-1944
Chapter 10 D-Day for the Kriegsmarine
Chapter 11 The Long Retreat, 1944-1945
Conclusion
Appendix: Vessels in English Waters Lost to Torpedo Attacks by S-Boats, 1940-1945
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index