Q-Ships Versus U-Boats

In a desperate attempt to counteract the deadly onslaught of U-boats in the Atlantic, President Franklin D. Roosevelt initiated a secret project in 1942 that called for the use of decoys disguised as merchant ships. These heavily armed warships were referred to as Q-ships, and very little information about them has been recorded over the past fifty years.

Now a U.S. naval officer who served in one of the mystery ships, a decoy-configured freighter by the name of USS Asterion, lifts the shroud of secrecy that has surrounded the mission for so long. His book examines for the first time the origins and operations of Project I.Q, as the secret plan was known.

Described as the most self-destructive operation undertaken by the U.S. Navy in World War II, the project had very limited success. The only surviving officer of a Q-ship to chronicle details of the project, Kenneth Beyer draws on his personal experiences as well as information uncovered during years of research in U.S., British, and German records and interviews with participants on both sides.