I received a digital ARC of this in exchange for a fair and honest review.

This came along at a fortuitous time for me as I was just squaring up to write a WW2 U-boat story and needed research materials.

It gives a low-level view of every class of submarine from every navy involved in the war, with excellent technical diagrams, archive photographs, interesting details and snippets that give glimpses into the lives (and deaths) of the men who served aboard these vessels.

I read the whole thing in one sitting. A worthy read for anybody interested in the subject, or world war 2 generally.

Dipping into this, I found a book that offered little in the way of surprises. I've no real military interest but I will pay attention to what Amber Books offers for the specialist, and this seems to be a further fine example. Starting with the Nazi U-Boats we go through everything that counted as a submarine throughout WW2, with the usual detailed imagery, period photography, databanks, and mini-essays for every type, that can be one page long, or very interrupted in the case of the Type VIIC and the copious illustrations needed for those.

It really isn't for the layman like me to pick apart the text and say this is wrong or this is too brief (or the reverse), but I can judge the presentation and apparent usefulness of this. And I think it's fine, although it can be really annoying when the layout has the bulk of the boats with the prow at the right of the page but some sailing a-port. Those VIICs were of most interest to me, courtesy Das Boot, and two of the bleeders can't really be compared as they're sailing in opposite directions. Box-outs on things such as the torpedo tech and the sonar/radar developments of the time add to things, and I think this is grand as an entry-level study. It surely is a precis only to the expert who has a book or ten on each and every marque, but neither is it a flippant browse for the mildly curious, instead for someone firmly in between. That said, a photo of a German U-Boat in the Thames, and the word of the manned torpedo of Japan would make this eye-opening for many.