Hi all, Richard Sheffield here, I wrote the book that you have been talking about,
40 Greatest WW2 Submarine War Patrols (
http://www.pdfz.com/submarine_war_patrols.html). You seemed curious so I thought I'd give you a little background
I wrote two books about ww2 submarine simulation games back the late 80's, when MicroProse's Silent Service was all the rage. At the time I could find very little that had been published about actual tactics and strategies used by the U.S. captains during the war. So I traveled up to D.C. to the Naval History Museum and a week reading through the actual, hand-typed patrol reports to try and figure out what they were thinking and doing. Plotting approaches, range, speed, angle, everything. Once I had a good idea of the basics, I came home and tried them in the simulation and they worked like gangbusters. So that was basically the first book. Mostly about tactics and strategy. I had permission from the O'Kane family to republish a chapter from his book, as well as permission to use some text and photos from Roscoe's
Submarine Operations book. That one sold OK, and the readers wanted more. So I bought 50 microfilm reels of patrol reports from the Navy, and based on those, I picked the most impressive and exciting reports and explained them in layman's terms.
The books went out of print for years but every now and then I'd get a request for them. So last year I combined the two books, took out all the game-related info, and other's content, and republished them as sort of a primer on ww2 submarine tactics and descriptions of how those tactics were used during the most impressive war patrols.
So nothing fishy here, or under the table. I'm not republishing anyone else's material. Just 250 pages of stories and tactics (like how the Silversides wound up back in Pearl Harbor after her patrol "with a torpedo with warhead attached dangling from a bow tube, a fuel leak, an air leak, an explosion in the generator, and Cream of Wheat® in the main induction." I had fun putting it together so I hope it's fun to read. Glad to answer questions if you have them
