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added losses suffered by Royal Navy and Army Royal Regiment of Maritime Artillery gunners who served aboard most merchant vessels and were colloquially called D.E.M.S. ratings, after Defensively Equipped Merchant Ships.
    Henke’s U-boat was a Type IXC
Atlantikboot,
an improved version of two earlier submarine models, IXB and IXA, which had been built in the late 1930s and 1940 to specifications close to those of a World War I boat, U—81. The IX series had been envisioned originally as command and control boats, in which tactical group (“pack”) leaders could direct operations at sea (an idea abandoned in late 1940); also as reconnaissance and mine-laying boats; and, finally, as long-range high-seas attack boats. In the last capacity, Types IXB and IXC boats had conducted immensely successful torpedo operations against Allied shipping as far distant as the United States East Coast, the Caribbean Basin, and the coast of West Africa.
    Because of their large displacement (1,120 tons, surfaced) and wide, flat upper deck, the Type IX boats received the sobriquet
Seekuh
(sea cow), after aquatic herbivorous mammals like the manatee. The IXC was 76.8 meters (254 feet) in length—about 21 feet longer than today’s Boeing jumbo jet 747–400—and 6.8 meters (22¼, ft.) across the beam. Surfaced keel depth was 4.7 meters (15½. ft.). Its fuel bunkers, or tanks, had a capacity of 208 tons, allowing for a surface, as against submerged, range of 11,000 nautical miles at an economy speed of 12 knots. (The prior Type IXB, a series produced in fewer numbers, had a smaller fuel capacity by 43 tons and a surface range of 8,700 nautical miles.) Propelled on the surface by two 2,200-horsepower diesel engines (ninecylinder, four-cycle, supercharged, salt water-cooled) manufactured by Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Nürnberg AG (MAN), the IXC was capable of 18.3 knots maximum speed (one knot was one nautical mile per hour, about 1.15 statute miles per hour); and it was on the surface,which surprises many modern readers, that U-boats of this period did most of their travel and fighting: The submerged attack by periscope was an exception rather than the rule. In truth, because it could not operate continually under water, the 1943 U-boat was a submersible rather than a genuine submarine. It launched its torpedoes in the manner of a motor torpedo boat, and dived only to avoid enemy ships and planes, to find relief from rough weather, or to make an occasional submerged attack in daylight. Submerged, it could make 7.3 knots maximum (except that in U-515’s case, top speed tested out at 7.46), which greatly reduced its maneuverability and effectiveness, particularly in convoy battles. 5
    Underwater propulsion was provided by twin electric dynamotors
(E-Maschinen),
manufactured by Siemens-Schuckertwerke AG, each rated at 500 horsepower. Power was supplied by sixty tons of storage battery arrays distributed under the interior deck plates. Even at economy speed of four knots, a submerged boat would exhaust its battery power after 64 nautical miles (one nautical mile was about 1.15 statute miles). By clutching a diesel to a dynamotor, which served as a generator, the batteries could be recharged, but that lengthy procedure required that the boat surface. Another kind of power transfer was supplied by compressed air, the product of either diesel-driven Junkers air compressors or an electric compressor that the crew employed for blowing water from the ballast, or diving, tanks when the boat surfaced; for starting the diesels; and for launching torpedoes from their tubes. Like the storage batteries, the compressed air tanks were “topped up” each time the boat surfaced.
    In exterior appearance the IXC had the general form of any other boat or ship. It presented a sharp-edged stem at the bow, a rounded hull, a flat upper deck bisected by a superstructure, in this case a conning tower, and a stern. The outer steel casing visible to the eye, which also