Joe,

A Kriegstagebuch is a war diary. And certainly Spindler didn't have access to U 139's KTB when writing Handelskrieg V.

Robert Grant's presumption that U 139's KTB ended up in French hands is questionable. A KTB is not the same thing as a log -- and U-boats also kept logs.

The KTBs from a number of other boats on patrol very late in the war are missing as well. Oliver Lörscher has, however, been able to find most of these boats' logs at Freiburg, and we've been able to attribute out the previous unattributed late war sinkings as a result.

The British were also able to attribute the sinking of HMS ITCHEN to UC 44 based upon logs they recovered from UC 44 sank on her own mine.

I think it is more likely that the document the French ended up with are U 139's logs, as a copy seems to have stayed on board.

MPL