Hunt and Kill — U-505 and the U-boat War in the Atlantic

HJC: Your earlier book, Silent Hunters: German U-boat Commanders of World War II, was quite a success for everyone involved, and from what I can tell Hunt and Kill is shaping up to follow in those tracks. One of the prime reasons for this success is the caliber of the writers you brought together for both projects. What did it take to assemble them for these books?

TPS: Thanks very much for that kind observation. I have to go back in time almost a decade for this to make sense. In the middle 1990s I read Jordan Vause’s book U-boat Ace — the one on Wolfgang Lüth — and was pleased to discover he lived just a few miles from me in the San Jose area. We struck up a nice friendship. Our discussion on various commanders helped me flesh out an idea I had been thinking about for some time: that there were many U-boat captains who needed a fuller examination of their careers or some extraordinary achievement, but were not likely to ever receive book-length treatment. I wrote to other scholars in the field, shared the idea and my belief there was a gap in the literature that needed filling, and Silent Hunters (Campbell, 1997; Naval Institute Press, 2003) was the result. In my opinion other aspects of the U-boat war needed similar treatment. I finally got around to making a proposal that we work together again on U-505, many of the same contributors agreed, and here we are.

HJC: You made it clear in both books that you are not a U-boat expert, but every contributor to Silent Hunters and Hunt and Kill is a scholar in the field. What is your educational background?

TPS: It is absolutely is true. I have a decades-long interest and keen appreciation in the subject, but my real strength is in organization and getting a team to pull in the same direction. I dropped out of my high school German class, so my understanding of the language is rather weak. (laughing) I deeply regret that choice now, but trying to learn German as an adult has taught me I have little talent for picking up other languages. My educational background is in European and American history, and I have a law degree and practiced actively for a dozen years.

HJC: Why U-505?

TPS: What do you know about U-505?

HJC: Well . . . I suppose the ordinary things most know. It’s the boat in Chicago at the museum. It’s a Type IXC, and it had some modest success before being captured by Daniel Gallery. That’s about it.

TPS: And that’s why U-505. Ask most students and general interest readers of the U-boat war what they know about this boat and some will be able to tell you it was captured late in the war, some will be able to name the task group [22.3] and captor, a few will know one of its captains committed suicide during a patrol, and most know it ended up as an exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry. That’s it . . .