ALAN GALLOP is an author, journalist and public relations consultant. His books include Buffalo Bill's British Wild West (2001), Children of the Dark (2002), Mr Stanley I Presume (2004), Time Flies: Heathrow at 60 (2005), Subsmash (2007), The Martians are Coming! The True Story of Orson Welles' 1938 Panic Broadcast (2011). He lives in Middlesex.|• Unique insight into the design, construction and operation of the feared World War 2 German Type VIIC U-boat • Includes detailed photographs inside the last preserved Type VIIC boat and original technical drawings of the boat's construction and its operation • U-995 is the centrepiece at the German Naval Memorial at Laboe near Kiel, Germany|An insight into the design, construction and operation of the feared World War 2 German Type VIIC U-boat. The German Type VIIC U-boat, scourge of Allied shipping convoys during the Second World War, was the workhorse of the German U-boat force. With some 568 Type VIIs in use between 1940 and 1945 it was a potent fighting vessel that could hunt for long periods in the far reaches of the western and southern Atlantic. Centrepiece of the Haynes U-boat Manual is the sole surviving example of a Type VIIC U-boat, U-995, which is on display at the German Naval Memorial near Kiel in northern Germany.