PHANTOM FLEET

On June 4, 1944, American sailors captured Nazi submarine U-505 and its invaluable Enigma coding machine and code books.

Successful small-unit World War II operations were much less common than portrayed by Hollywood, but this was one, writes journalist and bestselling historian Rose, author of Empires of the Sky: Zeppelins, Airplanes, and Two Men’s Epic Duel To Rule the World. Taking advantage of massive archives and memoirs and with an admirable absence of purple prose, he tells a gripping story. Saving the fireworks for the final 60 pages, Rose delivers an expert account of the U.S. Navy’s anti-submarine campaign. During the months after Pearl Harbor, U-boats sank hundreds of ships off the U.S. coast until the Navy got its act together to organize convoys and protection. Rose builds his story around three men, Commander Kenneth Knowles, the brilliant head of the intelligence division of the Tenth Fleet, which possessed no ships. Formed in May 1943, its function was to locate U-boats and pass the information to anti-submarine forces. Mentored by his equally brilliant British counterpart, Rodger Winn, he analyzed data pouring in from a high-tech intelligence-gathering operation that included the famous Enigma code breakers. Leading the attack was Capt. Daniel Gallery, the commander of the escorts who had long yearned to capture a submarine and had trained his men on how to do it. Leading up to that day, the author mines his sources to deliver detailed biographies of his main characters and the painfully bumpy three-year campaign to track down U-505 and its crew. Its capture was a major, if not world-shaking, achievement. British seamen had seized Enigmas from U-boats in 1941 and 1942, when it really mattered. By 1944 the U-boat threat was minimal, but access to the latest secrets made allied code-breakers’ job easier.

World War II submarine derring-do, a well-worn subject but worth a reader’s time.