Extensive coverage is devoted in this volume (issues 53-56) to the German U-Boat bases on the Atlantic coast of France. Built to be 'bomb proof', the immense concrete structures remain some still in use, much as they were when the last of their U-Boats slipped out to sea. Construction methods, the pens, operating procedures and facilities are among the aspects highlighted and the illustrations include scenes of U-Boats' departures and homecomings. Just who was 'The Man who Never Was' — the 'Major William Martin, RM' whos body was procured by British Intelligence and floated ashore from a submarine off Spain to successfully dupe the Germans with the fake documents he bore? Now the enigmatic title of that 1950s' classic tale of the sole wartime deception operation to officially become public knowledge, first revealed in a book and then made into a film, is restated in a major article as 'The Man Who Almost is' for such is the outcome of an exhaustive investigation to put a name to the man without a name. Scene of-the-crime photographs reinforce the impact of an account of the shooting of the man the Dutch had the most reason to hate and fear, the SS Chief in the Netherlands, Hanns Rauter, who was unwittingly left for dead in his car by partisans after an ambush laid to hijack a lorry miscarried, ending his ruthless career but at a tragic cost of 263 persons shot in reprisal. Also covered in this volume are the recovery of wrecked aircraft, the making of the war film Tora! Tora! Tora!, Britain's Victory Parade, explorations of the battlefields outside Warsaw and a Pacific atoll, and the RAF low-level attack on the Gestapo headquarters at Aarhus in Denmark, plus other topics featuring the 'then and now' theme for which After the Battle is distinctive.
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