Iron Coffins Redux

[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