It is often a fact that first person accounts are rife with errors. I am an airplane junky more than anyting else and pilot combat reports are full of inaccuracies. WWII infantry combat reports on the allied side report a Tigre tank behind every hill. WWII infantry combat reports on the German side frequently seem to expound on the vast superiority of the German soldier ... ummm ... if you won all of the battles then how did you lose the war? However, factual errors do not IMHO make first person accounts less valuable.
First person accounts are more about what it was like and what was the common soldiers perspective. The common soldiers perspective was often wrong, so why should one expect first person accounts to be 100% accurate? The feeling that one gets from Iron Coffins comes closer to putting one in a U-Boat under attack than anything else I have read or seen. You don't have to take its account verbatim to accept that this is what a German U-boat commander might have felt.
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