Ministry of Defence. There, Topp was promoted to Flottillenadmiral (flotilla admiral) on 15 November 1965. On 1 October 1966, Topp was named deputy Inspector of the Navy and at the same time became the chief of the Führungsstab der Marine in the Federal Ministry of Defence. In this role, Topp was promoted to Konteradmiral (counter admiral) on 21 December 1966. Topp held this position until 30 September 1969. He then continued to serve with Inspector of the Navy until his retirement on 31 December 1969. For his service with the Bundesmarine, Topp was awarded the Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany () on 19 September 1969. In 1968, Topp had been considered as head of the Plans and Policy department with the Allied Forces Northern Europe in Kolsås, Norway which at the time was headed by the German Konteradmiral Heinrich Erdmann. The Supreme Allied Commander Europe, US General Lyman Lemnitzer, had originally approved this nomination. In order to not unnecessarily stress the German-Norwegian relationship, Topp had sunk four Norwegian vessels in World War II, Lemnitzer later decided against Topp and appointed Konteradmiral Friedrich Guggenberger, instead. After retiring from the Bundesmarine, for a few years Topp was a technical advisor to the German shipyard HDW AG. His service as a NATO advisor was loosely portrayed (as "Commodore Wolfgang Schrepke") in the 1965 movie The Bedford Incident. His memoirs The Odyssey of a U-Boat Commander: The Recollections of Erich Topp was published in 1992. When Topp was asked in 1996 by publisher/historian Theodore P. Savas to contribute a Foreword for a collection of essays on German U-boat commanders, he instead submitted a contribution about his close friend Engelbert Endrass, who was lost with his crew and boat off Gibraltar in late December 1941. Topp had privately penned the piece about their friendship on his next patrol to the East Coast of America, but had never submitted it for publication. The essay was translated from German and footnoted by Dr. Eric Rust, and appeared as the opening chapter in Silent Hunters: German U-boat Commanders of World War II (1997, 2003, 2005). Savas also recruited Topp to serve as the technical adviser for the 2001 submarine simulation computer game Silent Hunter II, and a series of interviews with him appears in the game. He was interviewed on World War II submarine operations for the Nova (TV series)