I also took a break from Blair's first U-Boat book. But I plan on getting back to it very soon, and will start his second book shortly afterwords. I do agree with Blair's opinion of the U-Boat war. I think Blair may get a little misinterpreted due to the way he presents his opinion from time to time. He clearly does not like the fact that the U-Boat war gets so much attention why the American Sub War gets very little attention. But, if you really look at what Blair is saying, he is really just saying what Donitz was saying during the entire war. Hitler simply did not fund the U-Boat war in a way that made it effective. It isn't that the U-Boats, or their crews, were not effective. It is that the numbers of U-Boats available for operations were never at a level to make them effective as an overall force.
Blair only says the factual truth, and backs it up with actual numbers. Hitler never had enough U-Boats to make his U-Boat war effective, and he misused his U-Boat forces on a regular basis. This is simply fact. Well over 90% of allied shipping made it to their final destination. There were always just a handful of U-Boats chasing down huge convoys, and the lact of U-Boat numbers is why the U-Boat effort never really was that big of a threat. If Hitler would have properly funded the U-Boat war, and built hundreds of U-Boats like he did tanks, I think it could have definitely changed the outcome of the war in the early 1940's.
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