Published thirty years after his death, distinguished Royal Navy escort commander Vice-Admiral Sir Peter Gretton provides an authoritative history of the Battle of the Atlantic. Combining Sir Peter’s expert analysis of the records with his own experience of the war, The Battle of the Atlantic takes the reader to the heart of the action. Subjects range from merchant shipping and the role of Operational Research to the contribution of the Royal Canadian Navy and the strategies employed by the convoys to defeat the ‘wolf pack’ system of attack by the U-boats.
Sir Peter’s son, Vice-Admiral Mike Gretton, explains how the book came to be published:
“My father, the late Vice-Admiral Sir Peter Gretton, drafted a book about the Battle of the Atlantic in the early 1980s, when he was in his seventies and in declining health. The draft book was complete but unedited and with no publisher, and only a few of the planned appendices were completed. In the 1990s — after my father’s death — all his papers were donated to the National Maritime Museum (NMM) for archiving.
“In 2021, I visited the NMM Caird Library and Archive for a separate but related search: my memory — and that of my brother-in-law, General Sir Sam Cowan — is that my father told me of spending some fascinating days at the home of Admiral Karl Dönitz after the latter had been released from prison for war crimes. He had been Head of the German submarine arm, Commander-in-Chief of the Kriegsmarine and — for a short time — Führer after the death of Hitler. Knowing my father’s practices he would surely have kept a note of the visit, and I hoped it might be in the papers. My search of the NMM archives was fruitless, but there was reference to a meeting with Dönitz’s Chief of Staff, Admiral Godt.
“During that visit Librarian Penny Allen pointed out to me that the archives contained the typescript of a draft book by my father about the Battle of the Atlantic, accompanied by a large collection of correspondence and documents relating to the book. A brief skim, and a detailed read of my father’s conclusions, indicated to me that a draft should be available to a wider readership as well as naval history researchers who might visit the NMM archives. This feeling was reinforced strongly by the encouragement of Professor Andrew Lambert, Laughton Professor of Naval History in the Department of War Studies at King’s College. With the NMM, I set about obtaining a version that could be edited, so that it is accessible to a contemporary readership without in any way changing the facts or judgements expressed by my father.
“This version of my father’s draft book is hereby published for everyone to enjoy and learn from. I am indebted to Professor Marc Milner for his advice and comments in his Afterword covering contributions to the history of the war against Allied shipping (1939–45) since the early 1980s when my father wrote his book.”
Also by Sir Peter Gretton:
