Without Wings

About the Book

Launched in 1938, and measuring over a quarter of a kilometre in length, the aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin was the largest ship ever built by Nazi Germany. She was to operate the most modern carrier aircraft in the western world, and as such was feared by Great Britain's Royal Navy.

Planned as one of four carriers, the premature start to World War II ensured that the others never materialised, leaving the Graf Zeppelin as Germany's sole aircraft carrier. Afloat and 85 per cent complete as the war began, a combination of steel and manpower shortages, conspired to have the necessary work needed to complete her suspended.

Moved to the waters of occupied Poland as protection from Allied bomber attacks, she languished there for a number of years before the strategic importance of such a ship was recognised and work on her once again began under direct orders from Adolf Hitler.

Considered a greater threat to British sea power than Germany's massive twin battleships Bismarck and Tirpitz, many in the Royal Navy had concerns that Britain's powerful but largely aging surface fleet was ill prepared to cope with the German carrier. Surviving an attack by the RAF, she would eventually meet her end after receiving multiple bomb and torpedo hits in an orchestrated attack by Soviet ships and aircraft. Once on the seabed, she lay largely forgotten in post war Europe until the discovery of her wreck in June 2006, lying deep in the Baltic Sea.

Drawing on previously unpublished documentation taken from numerous eyewitness accounts, this narrative tracks the incredible tale of Germany's sole aircraft carrier. A leviathan that could have altered the outcome of World War II, perhaps even making Germany the victor long before America had entered into the war.

About the Author

A scuba diver since the age of fourteen, Stephen Burke's interest in the history that lies beneath the waves has never waned. Having dived the World War I German fleet at Scapa Flow, and many other wrecks around our coast both military and merchant, a description in a naval encyclopaedia of the German aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin grasped his imagination. Recounting (incorrectly) how she was believed to have sunk after hitting a mine in the Gulf of Finland, the few lines dedicated to the carrier on that single page of the encyclopaedia were enough to ensure several years of research would ensue.

Whilst amassing the information necessary to help locate and then dive the wrecked carrier, Graf Zeppelin's intriguing story slowly revealed itself until it became apparent that this book had almost written itself! Committing this information to a form suitable for publishing whilst at the same time trying to organise an expedition to search the area in the Baltic where Graf Zeppelin was believed to lie was a time consuming task, one made much easier in June of 2006 when a Polish oil research vessel stumbled across her wreck lying in over 80 metres of water.

With the wreck of Hitler's aircraft carrier having been located, Steve's focus switched to the completion of this book, ensuring its completion in time for this, the sixtieth anniversary of Graf Zeppelin's loss.

Read now, for the first time the complete story of Hitler's aircraft carrier.