For most people submarine war means the Battle of the Atlantic, but the Pacific war waged between the US and Japan was also a major struggle, which Peter Padfield treats thoroughly and well. It was fought with considerable ruthlessness on both sides - on at least one occasion, a US submarine commander who had sunk a Japanese troopship methodically machine gunned and shelled the lifeboats of survivors, apparently without official reprimand (Japanese behaviour was, of course, even, more barbarous). In the Atlantic, the lifelines between America and Europe were almost severed by the early U boat campaign, but radar, Asdic and Allied air power eventually reduced the German submarines to little more than mass steel coffins. An excellent account of a war which had little glamour, but immense long term effects.
