I had a tear in my eye reading Chickenhawk when I was 16. 20 years later it was good but not the same effect, in fact I wondered at which part I found emotional.

I was pretty sad when I finished Threat Vector.... I had finished all of Tom Clancy's Books.... :wah:

I'm actually waiting for Iron Coffins to come in at my library, had to request it, also requested Das Boot book an the blu ray special edition(for a 2nd time:D ). I have read some excerpts from Iron Coffin, what I wanted to mention was as far as some thinking he was straight up lying about what he did or didnt sink, it was common among many many commanders to think they hit a ship an in reality didnt. Most of the time they relied on sound they'd fire an dive or fire an lower the periscope since they knew the escorts would be coming for payback. I just finished the book Wolf Pack the story of the U-Boat in WW2 an it talked about the differences between the allied records an the German records. It listed a few reasons why a Kaleun or the watch crew may of mistaken the amount of ships hit an sunk, such as pre-mature detonations, inexperienced crewman, ships actually being struck by the eel's but not sinking etc. I think the Allies, mainly Britain didn't always give out honest reports on sunken merchant ships, for two reasons, 1 being so they could continue to get more ships to become merchants for them. Like "Oh look the U-Boats are not as good as ppl make them out to be see?" cuz they had to recruit ships, an number two, propaganda to discourage the Germans an to cause confusion inside BDU. An for Werner saying he wasn't a Nazi I believe it Donitz went to pretty big lenghts to keep Nazis out of the U-Boats especially political officers, like the soviet commissars, I guess the German Navy had a history of trying to keep political types out, but from what I've read Donitz definitely didn't want them in his U-Boats.

Just finished Steel Boat, Iron Hearts by Hans Goebeler who served on the U-505 which was captured 1n 1944 by the USS Guadalcanal. Hans later moved to the Chicago area to be close to the boat now on display at the museum of science and industry. He became a docent at the museum and often met with members of the capture team and members of his own crew. It is type IX and worth the visit. The book tops Iron Coffin as herr Goebeler was enlisted and has no axe to grind in his strait-forward recounting of his boat and crews' story. :arrgh!: