Hello folks,
I would like to announce that my book "Guenther Prien And U-47: The Bull Of Scapa Flow" will be released in Europe on Wednesday 17th October by Frontline Books -
This will be available in various places including Amazon -
https://www.amazon.co.uk/G%C3%BCnther-Prien-U-47-Bull-Scapa/dp/1526737752/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1539636794&sr=8-1&keywords=dougie+martindaleIt will be available in North America and Australia on 1st November via the publisher US Naval Institute Press. This is the same book, just different publishers for different regions of the world.
Some of you will know that I have been working on this book since the dawn of time. I finally finished it, though working on other book projects, AMP business and of course making models somewhat slowed the process down. A few of you are in the acknowledgements list.
Amazon lists it as 360 pages but it has 450 pages.
For those of you who don't already know, U 47 was commanded by Guenther Prien, who is one of the most important of all U-boat commanders. Doenitz even referred to him as "our best commander". His boat was U 47, which he commanded for ten patrols until he and his boat were lost in March 1941. Both Prien and his boat were referred to as The Bull Of Scapa Flow after the daring sinking of HMS Royal Oak at Scapa Flow in October 1939.
Part I has an introduction on the Battle of the Atlantic.
Part II is the patrol and refit history and is essentially a book in itself. It charts in chronological order all ten patrols and all the modifications in the refits. This took years to complete as the section was written with multiple sources including reference to all of U 47's original war diaries. Since it follows what Prien wrote in his diaries I hope it gives a feel for his view of their actions in the Atlantic. There are plenty of passages about frustration at missing convoys in heavy seas, encountering British warships in the North Sea, being attacked by RAF aircraft, moving stealthily around Norwegian fjords, frustration at torpedo failures, and of course the night surface attacks inside the convoy along with other aces. Jerry Mason was particularly helpful to me in kindly translating several war patrols for me. It ends with a discussion of the possible reasons for the loss of the boat.
Part III begins the second half of the book and covers the Scapa Flow raid in detail. Part IV is an entire section dealing with the various controversies surrounding the raid. Several books have been written on this subject but I have tried to go beyond these and answer all the remaining questions. I have chosen 41 controversial aspects; for each of these I have asked the question, had a discussion and then formed a conclusion. At the end I have listed over 20 new findings not covered in other works.
Part V ends the book and covers Prien and the crewmen of U 47.
My sincere thanks to everyone who assisted me over the years in writing the book. I got there...finally!
Cheers,
Dougie Martindale
Accurate Model Parts
