Heil UA

Would "heil uber alles" make any grammatical sense? Wild guess....

That could fit in the context I've encountered... but it is written "Heil UA!" as a spoken quote and on at least the one occasion appears to be addressed to an individual not a group. Here are the two instances I've found:

The sub's captain has just come aboard and received report from his 1st officer that the ship is in order and ready for departure to which he responds:

"Thanks. Heil UA!"

--------------------------

Later as the sub is pulling out to see one of the captain's old shipmates is on the dock:

'... he stretches both hands in the air... and roars across the brackish water, "Heil UA!" And again, "Heil UA!"'

I have a few suspicions most are silly like "U Ass" (Herr Adolf) I'm not sure if UA is meant to be a word, or pronounced seperately "U" "A" or if it has been translated from the German and might be an English abbreviation of a German phrase just to screw me up...

Such an obnoxious riddle, I know it's simple... At least it isn't stopping me from enjoying the book.

The context (Das Boat) makes me think it refers to the U-Boat itself, or maybe the U-Boat fleet as a whole:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_submarine_U-A

There is some merit here... this is a fictionalized story about what I suspect is a largely true experience as the story is about a war correspondant who goes on a tour of duty on a u-boat and it was written by a war correspondant who went on a tour of duty on a u-boat... (sort of like Sam Fuller's 'the Big Red One'.. not real life, but brimming in truth nonetheless)

However, the U-A was a type IX and the sub refered to in the text is a type VII... could be he used the name despite the different classification, but I would expect that the author would have clarified this at some point, even for a German audience... maybe I haven't gotten there yet...

Good search btw... Thanks

And Chris wins the prize...

The reference to UA in the book is refering to the call letters of the fictional boat in the book, not the real UA, which it appears was in service in the "foreign" u-boat service (one of the distinctions between the real and fictional boats).

It took me almost 150 pages to find another usage, this time it is clearly being used to identify the boat in a radio transmission.

FYI, upon re-reading the intro I can confirm that this story is based on the factual experiences of the author and sailors he interviewed during the war on various tours of duty compiled into a single fictional tour.