Beyer, Kenneth M. Q-Ships versus U-Boats: America's Secret Project. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1999

ISBN 1-55750-044-4
236 pages

Foreword; Preface; Acknowledgments; Introduction; maps; photos; Notes; Bibliography; Index

Appendices: Ship's Roster, USS Atik/SS Carolyn; Precommissioning Detail, USS Atik (AK101); Ship's Roster, USS Asterion/SS Evelyn; Precommissioning Detail, USS Asterion (AK100)

   In January 1942 the United States Navy initiated a project to secretly convert a pair of tired old commercial cargo ships into heavily-armed Q-ships, or submarine traps, to help defend Allied shipping against the sudden onslaught of German U-boats along the American east coast. The project was so secret that the Q-ships operated almost entirely without support or knowledge of other anti-submarine assets, and one of the decoy ships was nearly attacked by a suspicious Coast Guard vessel and American aircraft. The other was sunk by a U-boat almost as soon as it sailed.
   Although conducted with utmost secrecy during the war, the Q-ship operation has long-since been divulged and described in post-war naval histories including The Battle of the Atlantic by Samuel Eliot Morison, The Tenth Fleet by Ladislas Farago, Operation Drumbeat by Michael Gannon, and Hitler's U-Boat War by Clay Blair.
   The author probably knows more about the Q-ships than anyone else on the planet. As an officer of the original crew of one of them, he was briefed on their planned mission before "volunteering", he participated in the conversion and commissioning process, he sailed aboard the decoy ship on the patrol described in the book, and he has spent years researching all aspects of the "secret" Q-ships in both American and German records.
   It's a disappointment, then, to discover that Beyer's first-hand experience, his research, and his obvious devotion to the Q-ships and their crews -- as well as the U-boats against which they struggled -- result in a jumbled and unfulfilling book.
   The book opens with the first-person account of the author receiving orders in February 1942 in Washington, DC and visiting his family in Brooklyn before arriving at his new assignment in Portsmouth. Beyer then moves to third-person and backtracks to January 1942 when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt suggested to Admiral Ernest J. King that the US Navy should attempt to counter rampaging U-boats along the Atlantic coast with Q-ships. "[King] would have a few merchant ships converted and placed in service until something better was available to send after the U-boats. This was a risky course of action, a dubious scheme, but one he would initiate without delay."
   Beyer then retells the story of the German enigma machines and Allied codebreaking successes as well as the initial attacks on shipping by U-boats in American waters in mid-January 1942. Much of this part of the story is told through the inner thoughts of Admiral King.

   As the admiral continued his transit to Constitution Avenue and Main Navy, his thoughts raced on. Uppermost in his mind was the fact that the enemy had approached near the coastline of the United States. King realized that this had not happened since 1918 when three U-boats attempted to blockade the U.S. East Coast. Although the blockade met with very limited success, King knew that an effective U-boat campaign in U.S. waters with more modern German submarines was possible and, indeed, probable.

   Beyer moves on to discuss Operation Drumbeat, the U-boat campaign feared by King. Meanwhile, Project LQ, King's conversion of two merchantmen into submarine decoys, was underway.

   These two ships, SS Evelyn and SS Carolyn, were built in 1912 by Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company. They were 3,200 tons each, with a speed of ten to eleven knots, and were owned and operated by the A. H. Bull Steamship Company. They could be made available on short notice.

   The Navy moved at an extraordinarily rapid pace to push through Project LQ. The ships were acquired, crewmen designated (although they were accepted only after "volunteering"), operating procedures discussed, and hundreds of administrative details settled in short order. With chapter four Beyer returns to the first person narrative of his arrival in Portsmouth where he saw the ships for the first time and met the other new officers. Conversion from innocuous cargo vessels to heavily-armed Q-ships proceeded at full speed. Armament included four 4-inch 50-caliber guns, depth charges, and machine guns. All the weaponry was hidden behind and under various canvas drapes and easily-removed plywood panels.
   Work was completed on schedule and the Q-ships -- Evelyn becoming USS Asterion and Carolyn becoming USS Atik -- were commissioned on 5 March 1942, less than two months after FDR expressed his desire to Admiral King for decoy ships. After a brief shakedown cruise, both ships sailed from Portsmouth on 23 March to undergo two days of drill to prepare the crews for their deadly missions. Neither Q-ship was expected to survive for more than thirty days.
   Beyer then switches his narrative to third-person to discuss the patrols of Reinhard Hardegen in U-123, Erich Topp in U-552, and Heinrich Schuch in U-105. In particular, he relates how Hardegen moved toward "that illusionary point on the chart called Destiny." Approximately 300 miles off Cape Hatteras, U-123 spotted Atik.

   On 26 March 1942 an unheralded yet notable episode in U.S. naval history occurred. When the obscure and tenuous fragments of recorded data were revealed and analyzed, the irony of the drama began to unfold. Exactly what happened and precisely where it happened are not known, and little has been written about the incident. A chronology of probabilities associated with actual events provides some clues. This narrative is based on what I think could have happened. It is an effort to piece together the known facts and the probable events into a plausible account.

   This is the most jarring section of what is otherwise a non-fiction book. Certain facts about the engagement between Atik and U-123 are known from the Q-ship's basic operating orders, from the log of U-123, and from Hardegen's post-war recollections. Some additional possibilities can be more or less plausibly estimated from other evidence; for example, Beyer speculates, based on its log entries and approximate location, that U-105 might have been in the vicinity and unwittingly torpedoed Atik during the encounter. Certain aspects of the action will never be known, however, because Atik was lost with all hands. Nonetheless, Beyer writes a chapter of historical fiction in which he describes the deeds of Atik's officers and crew, quotes their words and thoughts, and details the heroic death of the skipper. The chapter collapses into a confusing hodgepodge of fact, speculation, and outright imagination.
   The narrative returns without a break to Beyer's first-person account of his experience aboard Asterion as Atik's sister ship searched for U-123 and unsuspectingly crossed paths -- at least hypothetically -- with a U-boat on more than one occasion. At every turn it seemed the Q-ship saw Allied cargo ships exploding in the water, burning on the horizon, or settling beneath the waves, but there was never an opportunity to attack the enemy.
   Steaming south and offering itself as U-boat bait, Asterion was challenged and nearly attacked by other US anti-submarine forces when the disguised vessel insisted on sailing into waters where a U-boat had been spotted. The Q-ship extricated itself from this predicament but soon found itself in the middle of a battle between an American destroyer, Dahlgren, and U-123. Nearly put out of action by its own exertions, the crippled Asterion finally managed a brief and inconclusive "confrontation" with Hardegen's damaged U-boat-- with the Q-ship uncertain of the U-boat's position and the U-boat oblivious to the Q-ship's presence. Both vessels slipped away and any thought of a dramatic climax to the story evaporates.
   Asterion, old and unreliable and barely able to make way, limped into New York for overhaul. Beyer's story essentially ends at this point, although Asterion went on to make six more fruitless patrols "which took her to all corners of the Atlantic Coast, Gulf of Mexico, and the Caribbean Sea in search of U-boats. She witnessed many sinkings but was never offered the opportunity to attack, probably because of her small size. There is no indication that any U-boat ever recognized her as a Q-ship."
   Beyer concludes his book with an analysis of Doenitz's strategy and American anti-submarine counter-measures, then discusses the later exploits of the principal characters of the story. Beyer himself went on to a long career in the Navy and a second career in the Defense industry before retiring and writing this tale.
   His book unfortunately suffers from several shortcomings, notably a lack of focus. Mixed together with uneven results are Beyer's personal recollections of the officers and men of Atik and Asterion, rote recitations of the Navy bureaucracy at work, rehashings of U-boat doctrine and operations, stories about his family, gratuitous criticisms of the shortcomings of Doenitz and his staff for failing to discern what Beyer already knew about Evelyn and Carolyn, humorous anecdotes about his shipmates, the anti-climactic "confrontation" between Asterion and U-123, the author's perception of the traits of officers' wives, extracts from the log of U-123, and the lengthy fictional chapter about the loss of Atik as Beyer imagines it. For all his Navy experience Beyer is unmistakably an amateur when it comes to writing; Q-Ships versus U-Boats might have profited considerably from collaboration with a professional writer.
   With that kind of professional assistance, the little-known story of these unusual ships could have been a first-rate book with broad appeal. As it stands, its appeal is likely to be -- more narrowly and less satisfyingly -- only to those with an interest in this specific topic.
   Available from online booksellers, local bookshops, or directly from Naval Institute Press.
   Thanks to NIP for providing this review copy.