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Excerpt from Iron Coffins: A Personal Account of the GermanU-Boat Battles of World War II

First published in 1969; reprinted in 1998

Germany's invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, marked the beginning of World War II (1939-45). Great Britain and France had promised to protect Poland if it were attacked and declared war on Germany two days later. On that same day the British passenger ship Athenia, traveling westward across the Atlantic Ocean toward Canada, was sunk by a German submarine. The attack had come without warning. Over one hundred of the ocean liner's thirteen hundred passengers perished. The Battle of the Atlantic—a deadly, six-year-long campaign—had begun.

Great Britain (England, Scotland, and Wales) is surrounded by water: the Atlantic Ocean to the west and north, the North Sea to the east, and the English Channel to the south. Throughout World War II, Great...