The survivor

In March, 1943, a rusty cargo ship of erratic pedigree was torpedoed and sunk off the Azores on her way back to Germany from the Far East. The survivors naturally assumed that they had fallen victim to an allied submarine, but they were wrong.U-boat commander Hans-Joachim Schwantke had had an unlucky war and was desperate to open his score. Assuming, on scant evidence, that the Doggerbank was an allied ship he sent her to the bottom and then turned away from the survivors, in all probability by now aware that he had made a tragic mistake and anxious to escape from the evidence. But the evidence remained, in the shape of just one man. Of the 365 men on board, alone of those who survived the sinking and managed to reach a life raft or dinghy only Fritz Kuert was to survive to tell his tale.Thanks to Hans Herlin's research, and the translating skills of John Brownjohn, the amazing story of Kuert's journey across the Atlantic, of his rescue and his vain struggle to establish the truth has at last been told.