The Battle of the Atlantic

How the Allies Won the War

By: Jonathan Dimbleby

Narrated by: Jonathan Dimbleby

Length: 20 hrs and 43 mins

Publisher's summary

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of The Battle of the Atlantic, written and read by Jonathan Dimbleby.

The Battle of the Atlantic was - though often overlooked - crucial to victory in the Second World War. If the German U-boats had prevailed, the maritime artery across the Atlantic would have been severed. Mass hunger would have consumed Britain, and the Allied armies would have been prevented from joining in the invasion of Europe. There would have been no D-Day.

Through fascinating contemporary diaries and letters from the leaders and from the sailors on all sides, Jonathan Dimbleby creates a thrilling narrative that uniquely places the campaign in the context of the entire Second World War.

Challenging conventional wisdom on the use of intelligence and on Churchill's bombing campaign, The Battle of the Atlantic tells the epic story of the decisions that led to victory and the horror and humanity of life on those perilous seas.

©2015 Jonathan Dimbleby (P)2015 Penguin Audio

Informative and engaging with some shortcommings

On a whole I found it good. The first-hand accounts from both sides are especially nice,
But I was rather disappointed that there was no mention of the Western Approaches Tactical Unit and the war games they played.

A Pleasure

engaging and informative, keeps track of the conflict at sea and the human and military technical aspect, but remembers to place it against the political and strategic background. some production issues ( noises that could have easily been cut out), but solid narration otherwise.

Strategic Overview

This book provides a very good insight to the grand strategic factors impacting the Battle of the Atlantic. For comparable insight to the operational and tactical factors, Black May by Michael Gammon is hard to beat. This provides the best available overview (in my opinion) of perhaps the single most important allied initiative to winning the Battle of the Atlantic - operational research and its intelligent application. It also illustrates the critical importance of coherent doctrine, training, and tactical level leadership. Mr Dimbleby only touches lightly on these topics. This may be nit picking but I think the Battle of the Barents Sea in which Capt Sherbrooke won the VC deserves a more comprehensive treatment than it receives in this book. This does not detract from an excellent overall study, however.

Superb!

For non-fiction subject matter, this is as close to an enthralling page-turner as you can get. For someone who approached the book with what I thought was a fair amount of knowledge about WW2, I was staggered by how little I knew about this dreadful theatre of battle. Dimbleby’s delivery was superb, made all the more convincing by the occasional slips in narration that added an element of humanity to a very tragic human subject.

The way he approaches both sides of the story with respect and compassion is powerful and important. There were no real winners and no real losers - just terrible losses on both sides - the outcome of which teetered on a knife’s edge until technology and common sense came to the rescue of the allies.

A magnificent book dealing with a great but terrible conflict. Thank you Mr Dimbleby.

Excellent book on the hard fought Battle of the Atlantic.

Very well written, read and detailed book on the Battle of the Atlantic, a story to which I have a very profound and personal connection as my father served as midshipman in HMS Suffolk during the Battle of the Denmark Strait amongst other actions.

I can fully recommend this title to anyone who has even just the slightest curiosity for naval warfare.

Worst history read I have ever tried to read

I was unable to separate useful information from the narrative as it simply appears to be a vindictive attack on Winston Churchill, from barely a subject is left untarnished by unnecessary attacks on Churchills character or decision making. I bought this book to better understand the Battle of the Atlantic not to read about Churchills personality flaws and his errors of judgement in all parts of the war. I was unable to get more than half way through the book before discontinuing through distaste and disappointment. I am not a Churchill aficionado but as stated found this book distasteful.
Having said that the narrator was excellent.