The Germans Who Never Lost; The Story of the Konigsberg

New York, N.Y.: Funk & Wagnalls, 1968. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Hardcover. Very good. [8], 247, [1] pages. Minor cover wear and edge soiling noted. Includes Notes, Acknowledgments, and Index. Also includes chapters on Dar es Salaam; The Eve of War; Commerce Raider; The Return to East Africa; Attack; Counterattack; Blockade; Besieged; Flugzeug!; The Tale of the Hilfschiff-I; The Tale of the Hilfschiff--II; The War of Nerves; Two Plans; The Severn and the Mersey; The Attack; The Last Fight of the Konigsberg; Ashore; Ready for Battle; The War on Land; The Marie; The Battle of the Lakes; The Battle for Dar es Salaam; In the Delta; Captain Looff Goes South; The Ring Closes; and the Last Battle. Edwin Palmer Hoyt (August 5, 1923 - July 29, 2005) was an American writer who specialized in military history. Hoyt served with the Office of War Information during World War II, from 1943 to 1945. In 1945 and 1946, he served as a foreign correspondent for The Denver Post and the United Press, reporting from locations in China, Thailand, Burma, India, the Middle East, Europe, North Africa, and Korea. Hoyt subsequently worked as an ABC broadcaster. Starting in 1958, Hoyt became a full-time writer , and for a few years (1976 to 1980) he served as a part-time lecturer at the University of Hawaii. In the 40 years since his first publication in 1960, he produced nearly 200 published works. While Hoyt wrote about 20 novels (many published under the pseudonyms Christopher Martin and Cabot L. Forbes), the vast majority of his works are biographies and other forms of non-fiction, with a heavy emphasis on World War II military history. K�nigsberg was a German light cruiser that was operated between 1929 and April 1940, including service in World War II. She was the lead vessel of her class and was operated by two German navies, the Reichsmarine and the Kriegsmarine. She had two sister ships, Karlsruhe and K�ln. K�nigsberg was built by the Kriegsmarinewerft in Wilhelmshaven; she was laid down in April 1926, launched in March 1927, and commissioned into the Reichsmarine in April 1929. She was armed with a main battery of nine 15 cm SK C/25 guns in three triple turrets and had a top speed of 32 knots (59 km/h; 37 mph). K�nigsberg served as a training ship for naval cadets throughout the 1930s, and joined the non-intervention patrols during the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s. After the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, she laid defensive minefields in the North Sea and then participated in Operation Weser�bung, the invasion of Norway in April 1940. While attacking Bergen, she was badly damaged by Norwegian coastal artillery, and sunk by British bombers the following day in the harbor. The wreck was eventually raised in 1942 and broken up for scrap the following year. The incredible, little known story of the WW1 German cruiser K�nigsberg, and the German East Africa colony in World War I. Raiding in the waters off the coast of East Africa in 1915, the K�nigsberg's havoc included the sinking an elderly RN warship in port. The British shelled the K�nigsberg to destruction in the Rufiji delta, but the Germans who survived the sinking hauled ten 105mm guns off the wreck of the cruiser, remaining at large and waging a running fight through East Africa against the British for the rest of the war. The Konigsberg, one of Germany's light cruisers which harried Allied commercial shipping during World War I, left port in 1914 for a raiding life around the African coast. A year later, trapped in the Rufiji Delta, Konigsberg was shelled and sunk. But her crew, and their ten 105-mm guns, got ashore. "The Konigsberg is destroyed but not beaten," Captain Max Looff reported. It was the beginning of a three year running fight through East Africa. Hauling their precious guns over impossible terrain, cut off from home bases and supplies, and crippled with disease, Looff and his men acted as guerillas and assault troops, defeating British forces far larger and better supplied than themselves. When the Armistice was announced, only fifteen of Konigsberg's men were left, and one gun. But they had established a modern legend.