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U-Boat Hunters by Robert M Grant The Tin Openers by Kendall McDonald
U-Boat Hunters by Robert M Grant The Tin Openers by Kendall McDonald
Less than a century has passed since Professor Haldane, assisted by Lt Damant's experimental dives in open water, formulated the stage decompression tables that would bring diving out of the dark ages. Largely unrecognised is that they found an almost immediate application during World War One, which provides the background for the two books reviewed here.
Highly authoritative and well-referenced, Robert M Grant's U-Boat Hunters offers an excellent introduction, followed by a series of cameos that easily slip us into territory usually reserved for naval historians. It presents the underwater war based on the problems Britain faced from German U-boats, based across the Channel and often equipped to lay mines.
Many were lost in British waters and located as quickly as possible in the hope of recovering the latest enemy equipment, code-books and minefield charts.
In the early war years there was recovery work on wrecked Zeppelins and U-boats, seemingly under different commands. Then, in 1917, after Lt-Cmdr Damant as he now was had salvaged gold from the torpedoed Laurentic, he and his team switched to U-boat investigation.
We follow them around the country, diving to identify new wrecks and trying to get inside those of interest. Forward hatches sometimes allowed access, but conning tower hatches were too small and explosives often had to be used.
Even where a hull was split, the divers still had to negotiate jagged metal and drag their air-hoses past bodies and equipment, often in very low or zero visibility. And this dangerous work was often carried out amid live torpedoes and mines.
Yet Damant and his team were reprimanded for spending too much time trying to locate wrecks and never received the credit they deserved.
U-Boat Hunters, which carries an excellent listing of U-boat wrecks and their locations, does have two minor drawbacks.
One is the odd clipped statement, highlighting the book's origins in public records. Grant also queries divers being able to work in 45m, apparently unaware that Haldane's work had led the Admiralty to put a 62m limit on deep-diving operations, in line with Damant's world-record dive.
Amazingly, nothing was officially published about these divers' achievements until a newspaper highlighted the exploits of Diver EC (Dusty) Miller, MBE, DSC in 1926. While U-Boat Hunters questions his stories, I at least am sold on them, as his diving logs form the basis of a smaller book, The Tin Openers by Kendall McDonald.
Miller, who had trained as a diver before the war, placed Damant in charge of his first descent onto a U-boat wreck in 1915.
After this we are treated to hands-on stories about the problems and dangers he and his team faced while getting into a sardine can.
True to style, the author also provides a secondary storyline based on events during the war, together with locations of the wrecks as dive sites. U-Boat Hunters is authoritative but divers will instantly relate to The Tin Openers, packed as it is with information for any potential wreck-hunter.
These two books complement each other and offer a tribute of sorts, to both the British divers and the German U-boat crews. Brave men all, whose war, the first with a significant underwater involvement, should never be forgotten by divers.
Peter Dick
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U-Boat Hunters by Robert M Grant (Periscope Publishing, ISBN 1904381154). Softback, 178pp, £14.99
The Tin Openers by Kendall McDonald (Historic Military Press, ISBN 1901313190). Softback, 32pp, £3.49
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