Derek Waller's interest in the fate of the remaining vessels of the German Navy began in the early 1950s as a schoolboy hobby, leading to the publication of a short article about the surviving U-boats in 1970. Then, after a full career in the Royal Air Force, he picked up the topic again as a retirement project in 2010, since when he has written many articles about the U-boats which survived the war. He lives in West Sussex in the United Kingdom.