Iron Coffins Redux

[RoaldLarsen]

There was a thread at the end of March / early April about the book Iron Coffins by Herbert A. Werner, a u-bootwaffe officer who survived the war. The thread was closed after it had, in part, degenerated into a squabble about whether the book was accurate. With some trepidation, I reopen the topic to provide some specific references.

I have recently obtained a copy of the book, and have begun reading it. But rather than just reading it through cover to cover, I thought I'd treat it as a research project, and compare its claims with other sources, such as the FdU KTBs, the databases at uboat.net, uboatarchive.net and ubootwaffe.net and with various books, such as Blair's two volumes. I checked sailing dates, dates of engagements, sinking claims, award of medals and promotions, and postings.

The innaccuracies, exaggerations and falsehoods start on the cover page. The author is identified as "Commander Herbert A. Werner". I can find no record that Werner was ever promoted higher than Oberleutnant zur See. The equivalent American rank is Lieutenant, Junior Grade. Werner has promoted himself three grades.

Werner claims that his first u-boat assignment was to U-551. No precise date is given, but the assignment was delivered to him at least one day after "a day in late April 1941". U-551 was sunk on March 23, 1941. BdU was aware that U-551 was missing as of the next day, considered her existence doubtful on April 1, 1941, and had ceased to list her as present on patrol by 15 April 1941. It seems unlikley to me that a Faehnrich would be assigned to a u-boat already considered lost.

Werner claims that KptLt. Paulssen grew up in the same town and went to the same high school as Werner. Werner claims he grew up in two small towns in the Schwarzewald in southern Germany. The only biographical information on Paulssen I could find claims he was born in Berlin-Charlottenburg. It would be unusual for somebody born in the capital to move to a rural area of the south-west.

Werner claims his duties when first assigned to U-557 included assisting the IIWO in decrypting "top secret messages". It is my understanding that top secret messages were only seen by senior officers. Werner probably did assist with decyphering regular encrypted traffic.


The timelines between Werner's graduation on "a day in late April 1941" and the arrival of U-557 at Kiel on April 26 1941 don't add up. Between those two dates Werner claims

• 1 day of travel to Kiel
• "Several days passed" and he heard of the loss of U-551
• "Nothing materialized after several more days."
• "The next day" he gets his assignment to U-557.
• One day of travel to Koenigsberg.
• One day at Koenigsberg.
• A five day voyage from Koenigsberg to Kiel, arriving on April 26 1941.

if "several days" means no more than three, then from graduation to arrival in Kiel is 1+3+3+1+1+1+5=15 or more, so "a day in late April 1941" can be no later than April 11.

Werner gives May 13 1941 as the date of departure for U-557's first war patrol. This corresponds with other sources.

Werner claims U-557 sank a 7000 ton ship on May 19, at a location SW of the Shetlands at latitude 59 degree. I can find no record of such a sinking being attributed to U-557, and position records of U-557 do not show her being this far south on her outbound leg.

Werner claims U-557 sank three ships in a convoy on May 25 1941. No such loss is recorded. In fact on the previous day BdU had ordered U-557 to move to AJ68 for arrival on May 25

Werner claims U-557 visited the site of the sinking of the Bismark on May 29 to look for survivors, but found none. Position records for U-557 have her just south of Greenland at the time, where she is credited with her only sinking on this patrol: Empire Storm, in convoy HX-128. BdU KTB archives agree that one ship of this size is all that was claimed by U-557 on this patrol.

The day after "an afternoon in early June" Werner claims U-557 sank a large fast freighter travelling independantly one day's sailing from AK50 . There is no record of such a loss and position records for U-557 show it operating further south-east at this time.

After the above sinking, Werner claims U-577 was directed westward to AJ94 and arrived two days later. In fact, U-557 had been travelling southward and then moved eastward. Werner claims an order to refuel from Belchen arrived at this time. BdU records show the order was issued on May 29.

Two days after this, Werner has U-557 refueling from Belchen 80 miles south of Greenland. Given the chronology of the previous two paragrpahs, the earliest this could have been was June 6. Belchan was sunk on June 3. Uboat.net shows Belchen refueling U-577 on June 2. Werner claims to have seen three London class cruisers in the area. In fact there were two Fiji Class cruisers.

Werner claims an attack on U-557 by a British Thames Class sub. Fdu has a record of this report.

Werner has U-557 operating in BB90 and CC36 in "mid-June". This seems correct.

Werner claims a ship sunk by U-557 in a convoy late on June 24th, followed imediately by an attack by escorts on U-557. There is no record of such a sinking or attack.

Werner clams U-557's commander Oblt.zS Paulssen was promoted to KaptLt during this patrol. In fact, this promotion came through after U-557's second patrol.

That's it for Werner's account of U-577's first patrol. For this one patrol alone he claims six sinkings that did not exist and were not claimed by the boat, a detour that did not take place, fails to mention the one sinking that did occur, (because it happened when he claims U-557 was elsewhere?), gets dates and ship identities wrong and makes up patrol assignments and a promotion. The pattern of fictional aggrandizement continues for the account of the second patrol, which is as far as I have yet read.

Clearly there are a lot of statements in this book that are inaccurate. Probably there are several accurate statements as well. The problem is to identify which unprovable statements are correct. Some of the inacccurate claims may be simple confusion or error due to faulty memory or missing notes. Others are clearly fabrications. Given that many of the inaccurate claims are of a type which Werner must have known to be untrue, we cannot rely on any of his other statements that do not have outside corroberation. Therefore I would suggest that it would be unwise to rely on this book as providing any useful insight into life on u-boats or of the times.

Iron Coffins is a work of fiction masquerading as fact.
In contrast, Das Boot, a work of fiction that never claimed to be fact, probably comes closer to communicating some truth.

[Platapus]

I like reading Iron Coffins.

[mookiemookie]

Iron Coffins has long been known to be full of inaccuracies. Werner most likely knowingly made up many of his anecdotes. I was with you up until this statement though:

Originally Posted by RoaldLarsen

Therefore I would suggest that it would be unwise to rely on this book as providing any useful insight into life on u-boats or of the times.

I disagree. Though many of the events have been made up, one indisputable fact is that Werner did serve as the captain of a U-boat. While I would say read Iron Coffins as a fictional novel written by someone with firsthand knowledge of the subject matter, I wouldn't go far as to say he offers no insight on what it was like on a U-boat.

[RoaldLarsen]

Originally Posted by mookiemookie

Iron Coffins has long been known to be full of inaccuracies. Werner most likely knowingly made up many of his anecdotes. I was with you up until this statement though:

I disagree. Though many of the events have been made up, one indisputable fact is that Werner did serve as the captain of a U-boat. While I would say read Iron Coffins as a fictional novel written by someone with firsthand knowledge of the subject matter, I wouldn't go far as to say he offers no insight on what it was like on a U-boat.

And I didn't go so far as to say he offers no insight on what it was like on a u-boat. I said it would be unwise to rely on the book as providing useful insight.

Yes, Werner had experience in u-boats, as a junior officer, and executive officer and a commanding officer. Undoubtedly he had insights. Probably at least some of these are written in the book. But which ones are they? Which ones are useful information and which are self-serving B.S.? When you read the book and come across what you think is a gem, how can you tell if it is genuine?

By his own admission, Werner had an agenda: "If I have succeeded in handing down to the reader the ancient lesson that every generation seems to forget - that war is evil, that it murders men - then I consider this my most constructive deed." This book was published in the USA in 1969. Remember the context.

As I understand it, other surviving u-boat captains have little time for Werner or his book, because it does not represent the war as they knew it.

Because of his experience, Werner undoubtedly has much he could tell us. Because of his lies, we will never know which part of what he has told us is the truth, except that which is supported by other sources. Hence, we don't rely on Werner, we rely on the other sources.

[Stiebler]

One must remember that, at the time of writing, Werner could have had no access to official sources, such as KTBs, to verify facts. All these primary documents were locked away, for reasons unknown*, in the vaults of the British and American admiralties.

Werner was writing more than 20 years after the events he described. He claims himself that he is writing from memory, and, inevitably, he tends to focus on events that made a big impression on him. How much can SubSim members recall of events 20 years ago in their own lives? In fact, Werner has done a remarkable job of recall.

The British Admiralty sent trained interrogators to interview U-boat crews immediately after the German surrender in May 1945. Although the U-boatmen now lacked any reason to give false information, most of it was hazily inaccurate when cross-checked against actual events. A leading military historian of the British Admiralty's Naval Historical Branch once told me that he would not trust eye-witness accounts spoken just 2 years after the event without cross-checking, let alone after 20 or more years.

Werner's account should be read as being just as accurate and honest as memory permitted - and his memory was surprisingly good. His book can scarcely be beaten as an account of what it was like to be at sea in a U-boat, for which specific facts are not required, only general impressions. The only items of contention today are his heavy criticism of the direction of the U-boat war by Doenitz and BdU. Generally speaking, most other U-boatmen are less critical of Doenitz and BdU. With the considerable advantage of hindsight, I think that Werner had better insight than his fellow U-boatmen. BdU made some rather elementary blunders.

[*Well, maybe we can guess. The naval authorities lacked sufficient staff to read every KTB and related material to check that none contained references to Allied decryption efforts, which might have been too accurate for comfort, when Russia remained a large threat. So they released none of these records until other reports of the decryption of German codes were publicly released in the 1970s. After that, there was no point in delaying release of the KTBs.]

Stiebler.

[Hitman]

I heartly support this thread as long as it keeps civil, the idea of confrontating the facts narrated in teh book versus real life records is good.

Having said that, I would like to add my 2 cents about the book here:

-Writing an interesting book is not easy, specially if you are narrating historic facts. Life aboard an U-Boat was most of the time boring, and it is logical that Werner spiced up things a bit. The book must be understood in its full object, it depicts well first years of glory and then hell, both in the U-Boat and outside it, as well as how people evolved and changed during the war.

-When Werner wrote the book, most of the historical facts and figures were not available to him. If he just sat down and started writing off his memory, it is understandable that many things came up being inaccurate. I would have troubles being completely exact in remembering important things that happened ten years ago, so I guess for Werner it was the same.

-Werner's position and functions in the U-Boat would not always have allowed him the best picture of the battle. Probably many of the things he narrates were in fact just heard by him, not seen directly.

-Werner doesn't entitle himself with a higher rank, in the german Navy it was customary to call the skipper the "Kommandant", which is frequently translated to english using the similarly looking word "commander", but has a slightly different meaning. For the britians, a commander is a military rank mostly, if referring to the guy who commands a ship they use rather "skipper" or a generic "captain" (Not referred to the real military rank). A german Kommandant is therefore simply the skipper, and you can confirm this if you look at the WW2 german navy ranks and notice that there is no rank called "Kommandant" (There is a captain though, the "Kaptain zur See").

Cheers

EDIT: I cross-posted with Stiebler, but we ended up saying more or less the same! Cheers!

[Paul Riley]

Just thought I may as well give my vote on the book,which I have had a few years now,and as Platapus said,I enjoyed it.Admittedly it does feel more like a novel in areas,but it did at times give me a sense of what it would have been like aboard a UBoat,especially the terror felt when under air attack,mainly in the chapter 'above us hell'.

Some useful charts and statistics are to be found at the rear if I remember rightly.

[nikbear]

I would also like to agree with Hitman on the commander title,its just a problem with the translation not with him giving himself promotion,he's just the chap in charge,skipper,captain....so no problem there,as for the date's,there are bound to inconsistencies due to the time that has elapsed.For comparison I cant even give you date's accurately from things 'I' did last yearnever mind 20 or 30 years after a traumatic event so where thats concerned I think we can cut him some slack.As for the number of ships being sunk then it becomes harder to quantify.Unlike us playing a game like SH3 and waiting for ships to sink to earn renownMost U-boats when attacking ships got the hell out of dodge after fireing there eels and counldnt cofirm there sinkings,we now know that they far over estimated they're tally of ships sunk by quite a margin,this can be put down to a few reasons 1,end of run detenations were sometimes confused as strikes and hits when they weren't,problem being you couldn't go up top and confirm this,Bdu new about this and took it into account when trying to work out just what had been sunk 2,It was not unkown for Bdu to get its signals/decripts confused when gathering info as to what had been sunk.What with hazy info relayed to them from the actual U-boat concerned,the reading of RN ciphers,and the actual radio messages from stricken ships its no wonder that they got things crossed up at times.There are plenty of reports of ships being sunk multiple times by different U-boats attacking the same convoy at different times in the atlanticagain confirming anything in the heat of battle is a hard thing to do.Finally the 3rd and most important thing to consider,PROPAGANDABoth sides used it in various ways and not always in ways that are apparent or would be considered logical,both sides lied through there teeth about the battle for the Atlantic at various points,and with good reason and I think that has to be taken into account when it comes to criticising a book written in good faith by a combatent,they aren't always privvy to the actual facts of a certain battle and sometimes are under pressure from publishers to"Spice things up" and thats hardly suprising.Actual combat is limited at best,I've heard it described as 90% boredom and 10% sheer terror and that doesn't sell books,You only have to look at 2 examples we know so well,Das Boot and SH3.Das Boot was originally shown as a series and had to edited to be shown as a film cause it showed the sheer boredam that the crew went through for most of the time,to boring for the average filmgoer And as for SH3,ships show up far to frequently,plainly because if it was totally accurate,90% of us wouldn't be playing it cause we wouldn't sink a damn thing in our to short careers.....All in all I think certain things have to be taken into account when reading any book about combat,or any book at all come to think about it,you are reading always someone else's point of view,and that is always singular and original to them and it might not always be what you want to read or agree with,or even the true facts of events as they happened,always and only as they saw them at the time.And that has to be taken into account and put into context

[Paul Riley]

Well said nikbear,some good points there,justifying these so called 'inconsistencies'.I totally agree about not getting everything SPOT on due to all this happening 60 odd bloody years ago,and in the heat of such a terrifying experience its no wonder some of the details may be out,or even exaggerated.
I for one can sympathize with the real veterans (both sides),and must commend the book solely for its attempt at engaging the reader,at least I was when I first read it.

[Coyote88]

Nikbear! Paragraphs, please please please!

Back to the topic, then. I don't think the Fog of War explanation works in this case. It's not just that Werner claimed more ships than actually sank - he made claims that his own commander at the time never made.

There are numerous discrepancies, I'm told, between U-Boat claims and Allied records, which is only what one would expect (for all the reasons stated). However, here we're talking about discrepancies between Werner's account and his own commander's account.

On the other hand, I would absolutely expect 20 years to have thoroughly confused dates and places. I would even expect the different patrols to get confused with one another. I worked many summers at a seasonal job where the location and faces changed from year to year, and believe me, it gets to tough to keep track of when you knew whom and where such-and-such an event took place.

[nikbear]

Sorry about the paragraphs,or lack of,my train of thought was distracted by trying to recall actual reading material to do with the subject at hand
Won't happen again
Oh I would agree with you that he may have embroidered his tales a bit,that is natural and has been a part of old soldiers tales since warfare began,but having read some books recently it seems endemic right from the top down.
I don't think anyone person during the war was ever in possession of the full facts regarding any matter you care to choose,
Just regarding the Atlantic war you get the allies lying to the public about the early disasters at sea,you get Donitz lying to the Hitler and exaggerating the successes in order to get better funding for the U-boat program,
And you get Donitz Lying to his crews about there losses and about they're sinking's tally in order to make them try harder
Its no wonder that people who were actually there experiencing all that going on being totally confused then and more so later
I think as long as the reader is intelligent enough to read with an open mind and take on board the circumstances in which all the events took place,and there place in time,then I don't see the need to criticize to harshly,
the fact remains that we weren't there,we don't know what it was like,and 99.9% of historians don't either,although sometimes they would have you think otherwise by the way they write and by the uncalled for accusations they so cheaply throw around

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by RoaldLarsen

I said it would be unwise to rely on the book as providing useful insight.

I think the same can be said for pretty much any memoir one might read.

By its very definition a memoir (from the French: mémoire from the Latin memoria, meaning "memory") is the author's remembrances and impressions. It is not, nor intended to be, an academic research project. It is, by its nature a biased account.

This is why memoirs seldom have citations or bibliographies associated with them and why memoirs are cited with caution, if at all, in other academic works.

I think you are being a bit hard on Werner.

[FIREWALL]

I think his book adds spice to SH-3.

[AVGWarhawk]

I liked the book. Read it twice. I believe many books who's subject is the author himself will have some incorrect dates or events and how they happened. Memories get muttled and things lost in translation. Even so, I believe it to be a good book on the uboats.

[ReallyDedPoet]

Originally Posted by AVGWarhawk

I liked the book. Read it twice. I believe many books who's subject is the author himself will have some incorrect dates or events and how they happened. Memories get muttled and things lost in translation. Even so, I believe it to be a good book on the uboats.