The U-Boat Commander's Handbook

[Pax Melmacia]

This is a US Navy translation of the 1943 book of hints and tips for U-Boat Commanders.

This should be required reading for anyone involved in designing WW2 sub games. It contains useful nuggets they could include like which areas are good/poor for hydrophones or ASDIC and ways to minimize detection while surfaced.

That said, despite the fact that the cover claims the 'text is . . . very readable', it is anything but. The English translation is rife with ponderous, overlong and convoluted passages with confusing sentence structure that would give a corporate lawyer cold sweat. The book is a 'direct wartime translation', and IMHO that is the problem. It is too direct. I suspect the translators were so exact in their work that they probably followed the original German structure and syntax. The result is something like this gem from Paragraph 35:

The submarine must endeavor to keep a sufficiently sharp look-out to be able to see the aircraft before it is spotted by the latter. It is then master of the situation, and will soon learn to decide whether it must submerge or can remain on the surface; if it is not certain that the latter can be done, it is better to reduce the chances of success by a premature temporary submersion, or a retreat to greater depths to avoid being spotted by the aircraft, than to spoil the chance altogether of being spotted.

I have no doubt that the translators are accurate. They're just not writers.

Well, having too much time on my hands, I decided to rewrite the whole book (it isn't too long. - like 115 pages with photos) to what I hope is a more digestible style. Here's my version of the foregoing passage:

The submarine must maintain a sharp look-out to spot enemy aircraft before they themselves are spotted from the air. If your crew sees the enemy first, you have the initiative, and can decide whether to stay on the surface or to submerge. While staying on the surface has its advantages, remember, too, that it is far better to delay or make more difficult your attack by submerging even to great depth than it is to be spotted on the surface, which would certainly ruin any planned attack altogether.

I'm sure there are more capable writers out there than myself. You might like to give it a go.