From Baird Maritime
The Golden Horseshoe was the good-luck symbol mounted on the conning tower of 'U-99', the U-Boat so successfully commanded by Otto Kretschmer.
Kretschmer was probably the ideal U-Boat commander. Certainly, his boss, Admiral Karl Doenitz described him as such in his reports. He was quiet, reserved and calm but also aggressive and innovative.
He developed the very effective tactic of attacking on the surface and then withdrawing submerged. This served him well and ensured a substantial score of sinkings for the first two and a half years of World War Two.
Unfortunately, however, he came up against another great hero of the Battle of the Atlantic in Commander Donald McIntyre, CO of the British destroyer HMS 'Walker' in early 1941. Kretschmer then spent six years as a prisoner-of-war in Canada.
Given the record of his compatriots Kretschmer was lucky to have survived the war. We readers are fortunate that he co-operated closely with the author of this excellent history. We are even more fortunate that it has recently been re-published.
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