Code Name Caesar
The Secret Hunt for U-Boat 864 during World War II
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- 7,49 €
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- 7,49 €
Publisher Description
As World War II was nearing its end Hitler desperately tried to land a decisive blow against the Allies. He ordered U-Boat U-864 to transport blueprints, parts and scientists to Japan, providing the Japanese with Germany's most advanced rocket and aircraft technology. It was a decision that could have lengthened the war. With this technology the Japanese would divert more Allied troops to the war in the Pacific and give Germany time to regroup. British codebreakers based at Bletchley Park discovered Hitler's plan and, working with the Norwegian resistance movement, the RAF sent its 'Dambuster' squadron on bombing raids against German naval installations in an attempt to destroy the U-Boat and its deadly cargo. However, U-864 evaded all attempts to destroy it and was able to slip out to sea. Off the Norwegian coast the British submarine HMS Venturer lay in wait for the U-Boat, and the two would engage in a cat-and-mouse battle that would change the course of the war. It is the only recorded instance of a submarine being sunk by another submarine while both were submerged and many of the men abroad HMS Venturer would be awarded for their courage by King George VI. Jerome Preisler and Kenneth Sewell recreate one of the least-known, but most crucial, victories of World War II. Drawing on military and naval archives, interviews with those involved and archive photographs Code Name Caesar brings the tense, action-packed underwater battle alive with all the suspense of a thriller.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
On February 9, 1945, the German U-boat 864 sank in the North Sea off the western coast of Norway. The undersea battle of U-864 and the British Navy's HMS Venturer is the only recorded instance of one submarine stalking and sinking another while both were submerged. In 1944, with the Allies closing in, Hitler's desperate stratagem was "sidetracking the Americans by racheting up the pressure in the Pacific," sending German engineers, parts, and blueprints to Japan in order to jump-start production there of Germany's advanced secret weapons. One of the items onboard was mercury, used in explosive detonators. Yet surveillance by the Norwegian underground resistance movement of coast watchers and dockyard spies sealed U-864's fate. Today, leakage of toxic mercury from the sunken sub off Norway's coast is an environmental threat. With suspense surfacing amid the military intrigue, this latest by Preisler and former submariner Sewell (co-authors of All Hands Down: the True Story of the Soviet Attack on the USS Scorpion) reads like a tense thriller, but the authors also keep a steady course on the human aspect of their tale as they reconstruct the events behind this little-known WWII incident and its aftermath. Photos, map.
