Lawrence Paterson

Between September 1941 and May 1944, the Germans sent sixty-two U-boats into the Mediterranean. To get there, the boats had to pass through the Strait of Gibraltar?the British-held entry point, where nearly a third of them were sunk or forced to turn back. Of the submarines that made it into the clear, calm waters of the Mediterranean, not one of them ever made it back into the Atlantic: They were all either sunk in battle or scuttled by their own crews.

Very little has been written about the U-boat war in the Indian Ocean, where almost forty German submarines were assigned to operate from the Malaysian port of Georgetown alongside troops of the occupying Imperial Japanese forces.