[cmdrk]

The book "Lone Wolf" by Timothy Mulligan - Unversity of Oklahoma Press - is an interesting read. Mulligan is an archivist that specialized in WW2 documents.

The book focuses on Werner Henke of U-515, but also compares his service to the Uboat service as a whole. He covers Henke early background and what motivated him to the Kreigsmarine to his capture by a hunter killer group. The books has interesting chapters about IX type boats and how the crew makeup compared to the service in general.

For the realism advocates, I ran across these facts. There were about 1200 uboats commissioned during the war. After taking account of the old boats, training boats, etc, about 870 boats made a war patrol. Out of these boats, 550 didn't sink any ships and 321 boats sank at least one ship. Of the 321 boats, I think the figure was about 160-180 boats sank 6 ships or less. I don't know how many boats were sunk in Biscay heading out on their first patrol.

Another fact, the depth charge kill percentage was fairly consistent at about 4.0-6.4%. I'm not sure if this is based on the total number of charges used or DC attack runs. Hedgehogs kill percentage increased as crews learned the weapon. In late 1943 it was 7.5%, early 1944 it was 15.4%, and by late 1944 it was 28.1%.

One of U-515's war patrols lasted 124 days. The layovers between patrols ran from 2 weeks to 2 months. It was typical to split the crew into three sections and give each section a week leave by turns for a 3 week layover.

There are various tables concerning 515 and the service in general.

A recommened read.