An amateur researcher’s first book details the story of a German submarine that was secretly brought into Bermuda during the Second World War.

The United States Navy captured the U-boat U505 off the West African coast in June 1944 and towed the vessel into the Great Sound.

The submarine remained hidden in Bermuda until the end of the war and most of the prisoners on board were eventually taken to the Camp Ruston prisoner-of-war camp in Louisiana.

U505 was taken to the Portsmouth navy yard in New Hampshire after the war and donated to the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry — it remains one of four German U-boats still in existence from the Second World War.

Derek Waller, retired air commodore with the Royal Air Force, wrote about these and other U-boats that were either surrendered or scuttled by the German navy during the war in his book, The Surrender of the U-Boat Fleet 1945.

Mr Waller gained an interest in German U-boats as a schoolboy in the 1950s and started researching the topic again after retiring from the RAF.

U-boats were deployed in both world wars, and posed a formidable menace to Allied shipping during the Second World War.

The Surrender of the U-Boat Fleet 1945 was published by Seaforth Publishing in May.

A statement said: “This book, which is based on research that began in the mid-1960s, brings together the contents of many articles published by the author in a variety of magazines and journals, including the American Warship International, the Canadian Argonauta and the UK’s World Ship Society’s Warships, as well as the internet site Uboat.net between 2010 and 2023, and it provides a comprehensive record of all the U-boats which surrendered in 1945.”

A book description on sailorshop.co.uk stated: “The level of detail, and the exhaustive research incorporated in this work, makes it both an important new reference book and a fascinating analysis of one of the most significant events of the war’s end, it also leads the reader into the world of postwar submarine development and the tussle between the US and Soviet navies to best exploit the technical advances that originated with the wartime U-boat.”

Mr Waller thanked people from around the world, including Bermudian archaeologist Edward Harris and Andrew Bermingham of the Bermuda Historical Society, for helping him with research.

• The book can be purchased by visitingsailorshop.co.ukandamazon.com