NAVAL WARFARE COMES TO LIFE FROM
written by an ex-RAN commissioned gunnery officer.
"Australia's greatest novelist of the sea" ... J.E. MACDONNELL

28: EAGLES OVER TARANTO

She was a Fleet carrier; her name was Eagle. She was the latest and largest of her class, outfitted with fighters and torpedo bombers.

Until now Alexandria had been free of air-raids and bombardment. But on that black night of 19 December, in seven minutes, 31,000-tons of disciplined steel had resolved into a broken and unbuoyant mass going down into the cold and lightless deeps of the Mediterranean.
Angry and frustrated, torpedo bomber Bishop exclaimed: "A few hours' work and the whole strategic position in the Med has swung right over their way."
"What do you suggest?" Haining, Seafire fighter leader asked.
Bishop's terse reply came at once: "Taranto — the main naval base of the Italian Royal Navy, and opposite number to Alexandria."
If they could hit Taranto hard, they could prevent embattled Malta being starved of food and ammunition, ensure absolute British naval supremacy in the Eastern Mediterranean and exact revenge for the loss of English battleships Valiant, Queen Elizabeth, and Barham.
But could they and how would they?

Published November 01, 2024. Recommended Price: £2.50

27: THE BLIND EYE

"Your ship is to carry out the trial of a new secret weapon, Bentley ... the success of which makes future submarine kills certain. Your own speed is of the essence ... less than thirty knots and the Wind Rode could be destroyed."

"Trouble is," Bentley said, "a merchantman's been torpedoed with the victorious Jap submarine perhaps lurking to complete the kill."

Randall was puzzled. "Submarines haven't been sighted so far west before, and then there's the large formation of enemy aircraft spotted dead ahead ... how could the Japs travel so far without refuelling?"
Bentley dismissed immediately his own suggestion that they were shore based. "Obviously, there must be carrier out there ... it's too far from the Nicobars or Sabang."

Irrespective of where it was, Bentley knew he had to destroy that refuelling point, do it completely, and with all the speed Wind Rode could muster to avoid destroying itself in the process...

Published October 01, 2024. Recommended Price: £2.50

26: ESCORT SHIP

Bentley's first sight when Wind Rode broke clear was not for the cruisers, but the destroyers. His task was difficult enough as it was. But the destroyers could make it even tougher if they decided to join in.

Spitting the oily taste from his mouth he swung his glasses. No—there they were, still milling about the torpedoed flagship. Wasted. But maybe the Japanese admiral did not think so. Bentley had to concede his point of view. He was in a crippled ship, there could quite easily be enemy submarines about. And to handle the three midgets he still had two great cruisers.

Bentley's decision to continue fighting was possibly the simplest he had ever made in all his life. It would be true to claim that the decision had been made for him, centuries before.

Never in the memory of living man, nor for a long time further back than that, had a British warship surrendered to, or run from, an enemy.

Published September 01, 2024. Recommended Price: £2.50

25: FIND AND DESTROY

The order buzzed in Palethorpe's brain as he leaned over the map, working quickly with dividers and pencil along the latitude scale.

"I knew it!' he said savagely. 'If that blasted bearing isn't fixed soon, the enemy'll be clear long before we get into position.'

Out there was an enemy convoy as big as either has seen ... a mass of heavy ships, all heavily loaded, headed towards the Indies. And here they were, a crippled submarine, a good six miles away, with no hope of carrying out their mission.

When Renshaw spoke, his bitterness was intense:

"We find all right but do we destroy?"

Published August 01, 2024. Recommended Price: £2.50

24: CONVOY

Fletcher staggered to the edge of the bridge.

In front of their careering bow the freighter that had been loaded with ammunition had dissolved under the torpedo's persuasion into a sky-flung wall of black smoke.
He heard Brinkworth's order to straighten her up and he knew that the captain was taking the only course left open to him in that packed mass of ships — he was driving her straight down between the lines towards the rear of the convoy.
He knew, too, what they could expect once they broke clear of the rear of the convoy, once they were free of those protecting hulls on either side. The deadly pack was closing in on its prey ...

Published July 01, 2024. Recommended Price: £2.50

23: THE CHALLENGE

"Stand-by torpedo attack!" the order rapped out.
Not more than half a mile away, bulking huge at that close range, came the enemy cruiser.
"Port thirty," he snapped down the voice pipe, and over his shoulder at the torpedo officer ordered: "Fire when your sights come on!"
Torps was crouched over his pronged sight. His voice came crisp and clear: "Fire one, fire two, fire three, fire four ..."
"Midships!" the captain roared.
The wheel came off her, and at once she heaved up from her acute lean. Then Pelican's ancient guns snapped their challenge at the grey monster racing alongside them.
And, clear in the silence between broadsides, a sharp buzzing from the engine-room voice pipe. Pilot answered it and Dutchy Holland heard the chief's voice from where he stood.
"Bridge. That bloody bearing's gone. I've got to shut down on the starb'd engine."
Pilot stared at Holland and the captain raised his hand in acknowledgement. He did not speak: he could not speak. There was nothing to say.

Published June 01, 2024. Recommended Price: £2.50

22: THE COXSWAIN

As the Guadalcanal campaign got underway, the new coxswain of the Australian fleet destroyer Wind Rode found himself faced with a twin challenge — to sort out the bad apples who had come aboard as replacements for men lost in a recent action … and to somehow found his way back to the man he had been before being sunk a couple of years earlier.

That time he had almost drowned in a cabin that filled frighteningly fast with seawater. Something in him had changed, he'd lost his pride in himself and the Senior Service for whom he served. And a coxswain like that is no use to anyone.

So Commander Peter Bentley made up his mind to throw the 'Swain a metaphorical lifeline … even if he had to take on the entire Japanese Navy to do it!

Published May 01, 2024. Recommended Price: £2.50

21: THE RECOMMEND

"Stand-by depth charge attack!'

Termagant's men had seen action before. They knew how her quarterdeck could spew out the crushing canisters of high-explosive amatol, and they felt a rising certainty that this particular Japanese submarine was due shortly for a violent and conclusive death.

The order from the bridge was all they needed to relax their vigilance a little and to savour in its place the grim and pleasurable certainty that the ship was about to kill.

So that none of them was prepared for the next startling evidence of the progress of the hunt.

Published April 01, 2024. Recommended Price: £2.50

20: THE BROOD OF THE EAGLE

The three Seafires were diving and zooming, banking and diving again at the gun-positions.

But the big Barracudas, coming in on a set line, made easy targets. A stream of tracer bit into the body of the left-hand bomber of the third flight and Haining felt his guts tighten as its nose dipped.

He did not see the third lot of torpedoes strike and as he came around again he could see the dam clearly enough, and he saw it was still intact.

It was then the first doubts slid into his brain and charged him with failure. He had assumed twelve torpedoes would smash that concrete into a water-pouring cleavage.

He had assumed ... now it looked as if he could be hellishly wrong ...

Published March 01, 2024. Recommended Price: £2.50

19: THE CAPTAIN

Everything was ready.

It would take only seconds now for A-turret to go into action.

He lifted himself up and one of the cordite numbers, a young able-seaman, said:
"Ah ... is Dart back yet, sir?"

Gerard sank back quietly on the seat. So they knew. Not the full circumstances, but they were aware that he had sent the destroyer off on her rescue mission.

Of course they would know, he told himself — news travels like a breath of wind in a ship ... especially the sort of news that concerns an officer confined to his cabin.

Published February 01, 2024. Recommended Price: £2.50

18: THE GUNNER

This was the time.

This was the ultimate test.

This was what they had trained for, sweating and cursing the boiling sun; sensing, but not sure, that their drill would be used in ship-to-ship combat.

And now, with the enemy destroyers almost dead ahead, Lasenby knew with a savage, convincing pride that this gun crew of his would load and fire and keep loading and firing as long as they had ammunition.

Published January 01, 2024. Recommended Price: £2.50

17: THE SURGEON

He was a skilled young surgeon, assured, confident in his own competence and in hospital procedure.

But aboard destroyer Wind Rode he had to conform to strict Navy discipline; and his surroundings were a far cry from a well-equipped hospital.

How would he handle a sickbay full of major casualties ... working with suicide bombers howling down, the ship jumping and knocked sideways under fire, the guns blasting their heads off?

The testing time was soon to come for Surgeon-Lieutenant Geoffrey Landis.

Published December 01, 2023. Recommended Price: £2.50

16: DIVE! DIVE! DIVE!

They were in the minefield now.

Every instant the men inside, listening, waited for a projection on the hull to catch on a wire and drag the root's explosive bulb down.

In the control-room, Grayson, his breath coming in fast shallow gasps, stared at the depth gauge: seventy ... eighty ... ninety-five!

Published November 01, 2023. Recommended Price: £2.50

15: TARGET BATTLESHIP

It was as if something were driving Commander Valance to get right in where the shot and shell were thickest … driving him above and beyond the call of duty.

And whether they liked it or not, the men in Sabre knew their lives depended on his judgement ...

Published October 01, 2023. Recommended Price: £2.50

14: THE SECRET WEAPON

Commander Bentley knew this was the time for nothing but concentrated attack.

This was no exercise, no leisure manoeuvre by which Wind Rode could show her competence. They were up against a desperate enemy submarine, a vehicle armed with explosive teeth and claws - the destructive potential of which they could not gauge.

A terrifying secret weapon!

Published September 01, 2023. Recommended Price: £2.50

13: NIGHT ENCOUNTER

When his ship was laid up for repairs, two-fisted petty-officer William Walker volunteered for a spell with the Light Coastal Forces, working alongside a crew full of Brits in a lightning-fast Motor Torpedo Boat.

He knew it was going to be an education, but he never dreamed he would eventually find himself caught up in a deadly attack on Cherbourg Harbour.

A flotilla of E-boats and destroyers, hidden in the fog, gave Walker a further chance to use his own special expertise in fighting the enemy. But nobody expected him to come out of the conflict changed as he did ... in more ways than one.

Published August 01, 2023. Recommended Price: £2.50

12: KILLER SHIP!

It was a remarkable invention ... a camera that could to take one brief, flash-lit shot of the night sea and discover with amazing clarity exactly what might be lurking out there in the darkness.

But when the equipment was trialled aboard H. M. S. Wind Rode, it set in motion a chain of events that could only end in death. For there was a German submarine out there in the deeps, on its way to mine Jomard Pass and effectively cripple Allied shipping for the foreseeable future. Furthermore, its commander was a fanatical Nazi totally dedicated to his job.

But Peter Bentley was equally dedicated ... dedicated to stopping the German from succeeding in his mission ... and that's when the deadly battle of wits began between destroyer and submarine really started.

Published July 01, 2023. Recommended Price: £2.50

11: FROGMAN!

Petty Officer Clive Gellatly was a former boxer who had been in the Navy for about ten years.

But he was champing at the bit for more athletic duty. So when a request came through to join a suicide squad of frogmen, he was quick to sign up. He was taken to a remote oceanside base where he trained with another four men for several months and along the way the five of them coalesced into a strong, capable fighting unit.

Then came their first big mission: to destroy a powerful radar station smack in the middle of a Japanese-held island!

Published June 01, 2023. Recommended Price: £2.50

10: COFFIN ISLAND

No foreign Government knew anything about the Satsuma ... not even Germany.

Neither could the Germans possibly imagine that the Japanese had built such a monster ... a battleship weighing 50,000 tons, almost a thousand feet long, mounting nine 18-inch guns that could rip the guts out of any enemy flotilla she came across.

But when rumours began to reach the Allies about an indescribably large warship that was undergoing repairs in the harbour of remote Coffin Island, Lieutenant-Commander Peter Bentley and the crew of Wind Rode were dispatched to take a closer look. Wind Rode was hopelessly outclassed by the Satsuma but that wasn't going to stop Bentley from risking everything to send the larger vessel to the bottom of the sea!

Published May 01, 2023. Recommended Price: £2.50

09: MUTINY!

The captain was furious. "I warn you, if you want to name this ship The Bounty, I shall be Captain Bligh!"

His right hand punched forward in vehement emphasis. The crew stared at him in deep and attentive silence.

The voice then came from the middle of the pack: high, thin, disguised, rendered more effective in the tense quiet by the tone of laughter. "Yeah, and we'll cut you adrift!"

The tension among the crew was hard, menacing. Wind Rode was perilously close to mutiny.

Published April 01, 2023. Recommended Price: £2.50

08: PRESUMED SUNK

Following the hammering she'd taken from a Japanese convoy - as told in The Weak Link - H.M.A.S. Wind Rode was sent to Perth for repairs.

But as it turned out, the top brass decided that Wind Rode had run her course and Lieutenant Commander Peter Bentley was given orders to sail her to Sydney, where she would be broken up and decommissioned.

It was as if the old girl knew her fate, because on the voyage everything that could go wrong did go wrong. It was crazy, Bentley knew, but it was as if Wind Rode was doing all she could to delay the inevitable. And when her engines finally gave out in the middle of an area crawling with Japanese submarines and destroyers, he realized that she had chosen her watery grave, and that Wind Rode intended to go down fighting.

Published March 01, 2023. Recommended Price: £2.50

07: THE WEAK LINK

Bentley was crouched behind his binnacle.

His stare was fixed with unblinking intensity on the stem of the leading cruiser. Both big ships were racing at them side by side—even if they had had time to swerve apart in the few seconds which had elapsed since Wind Rode had burst from the smoke, it is doubtful if they would have bothered; who would expect a lone destroyer to close the range of three cruisers and a destroyer flotilla?

The same terrible instinct of judgment which stood behind him in the boxing ring told Bentley in advance what the cruiser would do. His rangefinder eyes balanced its speed and direction, his right hand flicked up above his head, he whipped his hand down and his voice rang out in the ominous silence: "Fire!"

Published February 01, 2023. Recommended Price: £2.50

06: ALARM — E-BOATS!

Bentley looked toward the shore. Beyond the dunes lay Rommel's headquarters—and it would be heavily-guarded.

He was not concerned with the guard around the immediate precincts of the headquarters—that would be the commandos' pigeon, and one they were specially trained to creep up on and pluck.

But what did concern him was that the Germans would have a sufficiency of 88 millimetre high-velocity guns, the famous anti-tank weapon of the Africa Corps. Their range was well over half a mile. They could fire armour-piercing shell, and in parts Wind Rode's thin skin was not as tough as a tank's.

He would have to wait close inshore for the commandos, for they would need to be taken off swiftly once the balloon went up. And if the German guns ranged on him, his ship would make a beautiful target, waiting out there off the beach.

Published January 01, 2023. Recommended Price: £2.50

01: STAND BY TO RAM!

Scimitar — a new ship with a green crew — was already at 25 knots and in the ridged sea she could take no more. Her nose was pointing straight at the Japanese cruiser's bridge. Snelling's eye caught the flicker of tumbling numbers on the range-repeat dial. Five thousand yards. God, why hadn't the Jap opened fire? Five thousand yards! He couldn't miss. And then the Japanese cruiser opened up, and a storm of high-explosive burst all about them.

Then the captain looked at his first mate, and the first mate would never forget the sight of his captain for as long as he lived. With his left hand clutched round his throat, red as though he had hauled it, dripping, from a tin of red paint, he bent over the voice-pipe and ordered, "Full ahead together." Then he turned to them and spoke as if he tasted every word.
"Stand-by to ram!"

Published August 01, 2022. Recommended Price: £2.50

02: TARGET UNIDENTIFIED

The charges went over, and some evil fate exploded them right outside the forward engine-room; the possible weak spot. An engine-room artificer stood before his huge bank of wheels: behind him, the force of the hammering explosions burst a rivet from her side. The steel particle flew across the engine-room with the force of a bullet.

But it wasn't the rivet that hit him. Outside that tiny hole the deep ocean was thrusting against the hull, clamping round it with a pressure of hundreds of tons per square inch. As the rivet exploded into the room, it was followed by a thin, horizontal jet of water; a jet under such enormous force that it was solid, like a thin, steel rapier. The jet struck the artificer in the neck, a trifle behind his left ear. Before he knew what had hit him, the jet bore into his head like a gimlet, smashing the lower part of his brain, careering round inside the bony cranium of his skull with ten times the damaging effect of a bullet. He fell backward, and in a twinkling the water-jet gouged his left eye from its socket in the dead face.

Published September 01, 2022. Recommended Price: £2.50

03: BATTLE ENSIGN

H. M. S. Scimitar was ordered to join the American Fleet, but it soon became clear that the Americans didn't have much time for the Australian battleship. Even when Scimitar's commander, Bruce Sainsbury V.C., reported that a secret Japanese airstrip was operating somewhere in the area, the warning was dismissed.

Then the Japanese Navy hit the fleet, and hit it hard.

Sainsbury volunteered to comb the ocean for the island airstrip, and promised to destroy it when he found it. If anyone could pull off such a dangerous mission, it was the Scimitar's crew. But there was a weak link that might just turn a potential victory into a terrible defeat. Because one of Scimitar's officers was a glory-hunter. Worse than that, he was also a coward …


Published October 01, 2022. Recommended Price: £2.50

04: ENEMY IN SIGHT

Peter Bentley had three weeks to learn to handle the midget submarine ... three weeks to accomplish the secret and deadly mission that could be the turning point of the whole war./BR> "That boat back there is a complete submarine - in miniature. About fifty feet long, including propeller, rudder and hydroplanes. That reduces your living space to something nearer thirty-five feet. You have no torpedo tubes, no armaments. You're not meant to be found or to fight a battle. From now on you're a sneaker. Inoffensive - until you release your side cargoes. Each one of those holds four tons of amatol explosive and a time clock. You drop those under that Jap cruiser's bottom and then run for your life."

Published November 01, 2022. Recommended Price: £2.50

05: COMMAND

In recognition of his bravery in piloting a midget submarine into a harbour thick with the Japanese, and sending one their largest battleships to the bottom of the sea, Peter Bentley was given command of H M A S Wind Rode. It should have been a proud moment for the young lieutenant-commander; but Wind Rode was a sorry-looking destroyer. Everything about her had been allowed to slide.

Peter had his work cut out for him, bringing her up to the standards he'd grown used to aboard his old ship, the Scimitar. And it was a job he couldn't do alone.

His old commander, Bruce Sainsbury V.C., recognized this and acted at once. He sent Bentley a new Number One, Bob Randall. And of course the one and only Hooky Walker as his buffer. With their support, Bentley was going to bring Wind Rode up to scratch, or the merciless enemy was going to send them down to Davy Jones' locker ...

Published December 01, 2022. Recommended Price: £2.50