Measureless Peril: America in the Fight for the Atlantic, the Longest Battle of World War II

by Richard Snow

Book Overview

An exciting history told with a novelist's eye and filled with intimate details of the longest and largest battle of WWII--the fight for the Atlantic Ocean.

Of all the threats that faced his country in World War II, Winston Churchill said, just one really scared him--what he called the "measureless peril" of the German U-boat campaign.

In that global conflagration, only one battle--the struggle for the Atlantic--lasted from the...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1416591117
• ISBN13: 9781416591115
• Release Date: May 2011
• Publisher: Scribner Book Company
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.6" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

Lost my father on a DE USS Plymouth to U-566.

Fine book. From personal point of view I was quite pleased to see such attention to paid to the Atlantic Front. Hollywood uses Europe & Pacific as basis for WW2 probably reflecting high school text books. Amazing how many New Yorkers today have no concept of this period. 9/11 shattered the new college grad level of City people but barely touched me past initial sense of civilians being targets. USS Plymouth itself was turned over by Vanderbilt to the Navy for $1 to be converted from world class yacht to a DE. Ship ran convoy duty from NY to Key West and Gitmo. Finally caught a torp out of Staten Island harbor on last convoy. Lost half the crew & officers of total 183. Made it to front page of NY Times a week or so later, censorship delay. Dad could have been one of those guys saluting Snow's dad on the subway. There's a dramatic write up of the rescue of many of the men as Plymouth sank in about 2 minutes from midship hit. Coast Guard cutter Calypso rescue action in high seas, shark waters, subs around, was described as "ROUTINE ACTION AT SEA" (USCG Historian). Lost crewmen are named on the Victory in Atlantic war memorial in Battery Park overlooking the Statue of Library. Big slabs with names & giant eagles on top. U-566 commander had fired his last torp having sunk several ships on his mission. Cmd Hornkohl went on to lose 6 subs under him in one way or another, and lived.

Recalling the Other Naval War

_South Pacific_ is a musical set in the naval war in the Pacific during World War II. There were no musicals about the naval war in the Atlantic. Richard Snow, in his book _A Measureless Peril: America in the Fight for the Atlantic, the Longest Battle of World War II_ (Scribner), points out the difference: "The Pacific was the picturesque war, the one where naval victories took the form we think they should: battleships hammering it out gun to gun, aircraft carriers deciding in a morning the fate of nations... Conquer an island; then conquer another island; then sink some battleships." The war in the Pacific was to destroy an enemy; the war in the Atlantic was to keep supplies delivered to Europe. It was a vital battle; if it had been lost, the war would have been lost. It was not at all like the one in the Pacific: it was "... strange and diffuse, week upon week of boredom endured in constant discomfort, fires on the sea at night and yet nothing there in the morning, eventually the unheroic sight of Halifax through the fog if you were lucky." It was not only a long battle, starting on the first day of the war and ending on the last, but it was harsh, with maybe 80,000 lives lost. It was a battle we were losing badly at the start of the war, but gradually because of new ships, new technology, and continued confidence and courage, we were able to bring out a victory. If it is a neglected battle, Snow's book, full of anecdotes and personal stories from the engineering rooms up to the White House, nicely puts it back into perspective. The great enemy in the battle was the _Unterseeboote_, the U-boat, of the Nazi navy. Hitler never wavered in his support of Admiral Doenitz's U-boats, providing nearly 1,200 of them before the war ended. Snow shows that winning the battle against the U-boats involved learning or relearning new tactics to deal with them, like forming convoys. There was resistance to the convoy effort. Warships were to take the offense, went the thinking, and defending merchantmen was not really war, and the merchantmen themselves thought it would be too difficult and too slow to try to stick together in a convoy. Once the lesson was relearned, though, the tonnage battle began to be won. The great technological blow against the U-boats was the destroyer escort. It was cheaper than a destroyer, smaller, slower, and weaker. A destroyer escort was no match against a real destroyer, but real destroyers were needed in the Pacific; German destroyers had been wiped out. Destroyer escorts were specifically designed to fight U-boats. They formed "hunter killer" groups that would pursue the wolf packs, applying depth charges with lethal effect. U-boats were doomed; at the end of the war, one U-boat sailor returned for every four sent out. Snow carefully charts the process by which the allies changed technology and tactics to bring a victory over a real threat, the one Churchill called "the only thing that ever really frighten

A marvelous popular history of the "longest battle of World War II"

Richard Snow is the son of an architect turned WWII sailor who served on a Destroyer Escort in the North Atlantic. Snow junior uses memories of his father and the letters he wrote home in a stunningly unique way to personalize the battle of Britain and the United States against the submarines of Germany. Beginning just hours after Britain's 1939 declaration of war against Germany (in response to the latter's invasion of Poland), the submarine war went on for just short of six years. During that time, more than 80,000 Allied seamen died of drowning, burning, freezing, thirst, starvation, explosions and other kinds of mayhem and violence. For months, the German submarines had the run of the Atlantic, sinking Allied ships far faster than new ones could be produced and denying the Americans, British and Soviets their valuable cargoes. For months, in fact, Germany was within a hairsbreadth of prevailing in the submarine war. This is, happily, far from a formal history, It is a series of 37 stories, each encapsulating an important piece of the developing battle. Often, Snow brings in his father's progress from trying to establish his architecture practice to his pursuit of a naval commission to his training for combat sea duty and his shipboard life. The resulting book is simply brilliant, fast-paced, exciting, interesting and informative. As people forget the miracles wrought by the allies in WWII through inspired genius, tenacity, courage and the acceptance of enormous sacrifice, it is good that we have people like Richard Snow not only to remind us, but to explain to us just how close the light of freedom in the world came to being extinguished. This is a book for people who would probably be bored by a formal history. Snow makes this long ago war seem as vital as today's news. He doesn't dramatize: rather he lets the drama of the battle itself carry his narrative forward. We learn of the privations of the 50 or so Germans aboard each of the U-boats, of how their fierce camaraderie kept them going out on missions even as the odds increased against their returning home. Snow paints us a picture of democratic Britain and the United States hoping to avoid war and thus being unprepared when it came. We see the driven genius of the German Admiral Doenitz, the architect of the submarine war against the allies. We can all be thankful that he was never able to get all the resource he wanted. He did frighteningly well with what he had. Snow reminds us of the hidebound nature of some career military officers, while showing as well that talented amateurs in the political arena like Churchill and Roosevelt could spur the development of new weapons, strategies and tactics. Snow's literary stratagem here brings home individual aspects or times of the Battle of the Atlantic without ever becoming confusing or boring. The action never stops, of course, because the submarine war was fought every day, around the clock. Ultimately Snow brings in mor

From guarding to hunting

Richard Snow authors a book that at times seems choppy like the waters of the Atlantic he writes about, but as you make your way through it, you realize he is achieving a huge and thorough history. He gives little credit that the Battle of the Atlantic is thought of as war duty by only a few - with this book he has done his duty to complete a marvelous history that will stand as one of the definitive works of the battles of WWII. The book covers the forming of Hitler's navy, Doenitz's wolf pack (submarine) formations, life and conditions aboard a German sub. There are tales of sinkings, including the account of the 'Reuben James' and gallant rescues, the adventures of the lend lease ships and a detailed almost touching account of the first meeting of Churchill and Roosevelt aboard the `Prince of Wales' in what became known as the Atlantic Conference. The growth of modern sonar and radar is well told. This history includes how the convoy system came into being and specifics of German submarines gazing on the brightly lit shores of the East coast, even after America had declared war. Even for one who has read much about WWII, some amazing facts came to light in this reading: no one had the authority to darken the city lights that illuminated the ships to be sunk by the waiting Germans and the commander of the sub that sank the first ship in the Atlantic after war had been declared was also the commander of U-110, the sub that the Royal Navy was able to board and capture papers and an Enigma machine with its settings. The story of the U-505 that now resides at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry and was the first enemy ship captured by Americans since the War of 1812 is also described. The Americans were also able to capture its' codebooks . Snow's inclusion of his fathers time aboard a destroyer escort adds to the story. There are just a few pictures included, a huge bibliography for further study and an index. To one who grew up with tales of enemy submarines off the coast and spies brought ashore during WWII and grandparents remembering smoking hulks on the horizon, the Battle of the Atlantic has always held a fascination. The watch towers on the Delaware beaches still stand as a fascinating reminder of that time; so there should be a resounding interest in this book by those who have heard these sagas or seen those towers and of course anyone with an interest in WWII, the sea or navy - a huge audience

Gripping, filled with memorable people ....wonderful read

Full disclosure: I read this book immediately because I know the author. I looked forward to it because I know he is a brilliant writer, from his years at American Heritage Magazine. But the reason I kept interrupting a friend who was reading a different book, as we sat by a pool yesterday, to read passages from A Measureless Peril is because the book is so damned terrific. The writing is, as expected, wonderful. Sometimes it's an amazing story: the heroism of an American almost-boy, Oscar Chappell, who had the helm of the Dixie Arrow when it was hit by a U-boat. "Standing in the furnace heat, he looked about the ship and saw that the crew were huddling at the bow. He told the five other sailors on the bridge to join them, then took the wheel again and turned the Dixie Arrow into the wind. This drove the flames away from the bow and toward Seaman Chappell. He had just enough time to lock the wheel before he died beside it. Because of him, twenty-two men of the Dixie Arrow survived." Sometimes it's poetry "Captain Lemp had biefly pushed open the heavy lid the present keeps on the future. What he had done to the Athenia was how the Atlantic war would be fought." And sometimes it's a vivid glimpse of FDR and Churchill as the future of the world is determined. How their first meeting went -- adding the delicious tidbit that Churchill, as head of Government, was inferior to FDR, as Head of State, and how that affected them. Reading this book, I learned a lot -- but it never felt like work, it was fun. I am lucky enough to have discovered this book early and want to share that joy around. You will thank me.