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Strike from the Sea
Hutchinson, 1978
Straits of Borneo, 1941 ... Soufrière. The beast. She was the largest submarine in the world, an undersea cruiser with twin turret guns, her own spotter plane, and forty 'fish' in her tubes. She was French, but in 1941 Hitler's legions held Paris. Ainslie's men were the hand-picked best of the Royal Navy and de Gaulle's Free French, shuddering through the straits of Borneo, steaming for the lagoon where Soufrière lay hidden. Their job: seize her.
A Ship Must Die
Hutchinson, 1979
January, 1944 ... When the British light cruiser Andromeda arrives at Williamstown naval dockyard to be handed over to the Royal Australian Navy, she is already a legend - having earned her young captain, Richard Blake, the Victoria Cross in her last victory against overwhelming odds in the Mediterranean. Blake has grown to love Andromeda and has few regrets when he is unexpectedly told to retain his command with a British and Australian ship's company. At this crucial time of the war, with the Allies advancing on almost every front, comes the startling news that a heavily armed German commerce raider is at large in the vast sea area of the Indian Ocean, stalking supply ships and destroying any vessel reckless enough to sail unescorted. As the toll of lives and ships mounts, Blake, his experience and reputation matched against those of an equally skilful enemy, is ordered to seek out and destroy the raider - the ship which must die.
Torpedo Run
Hutchinson, 1981
Black Sea, 1943 ... The Russians were fighting a desperate battle to regain control. But their one real weakness was on the water: whatever they did, the Germans did it better, and the daring hit-and-run tactics of the E-boats plagued them. At last the British agreed to send them a small flotilla of motor torpedo boats under the command of John Devane. Devane had been in the Navy since the outbreak of war. More than a veteran, he was a survivor - and the two rarely went together in the savage war of MTBs. Given command at short notice, Devane soon learned that, even against the vast and raging background of the Eastern Front, war could still be a personal duel between individuals.
Badge of Glory
Hutchinson, 1982
Africa, 1850 ... This is the first book in the Blackwood saga. It has been more than forty years after slaveholding and slave trading became illegal for British subjects. With slavery still flourishing, Captain Philip Blackwood and his Royal Marines have received orders to sail to West Africa on a dangerous mission - against incredible odds, he and his charges must eliminate the strongholds of slavery in this treacherous territory. When Captain Blackwood rejoins his ship, HMS Audacious, it is peacetime, and although sometimes engaged in small overseas campaigns, the world's mightiest navy has settled into a routine of tradition and ceremonial. With the coming of the steam age many younger officers are pressing for change and modernisation, whereas their superiors for the most part see coal-fired ships as a challenge to their own power. Captain Blackwood soon discovers there is more to leading his men than holding firm in the line of battle. Love, hate, ambition, and envy are forces with which he must contend. In the heat of Africa, and later in the bitter Crimean War, these obstacles become an even greater threat than the enemy to the success of the campaigns.
The First to Land
Hutchinson, 1984
China, 1900 ... This is the second book in the Blackwood saga. Captain David Blackwood, at twenty-seven, is already a hero of the Royal Marines Light Infantry and holds England's highest award for valour, the Victoria Cross. Nevertheless, he has yet to discover the ultimate in passion, courage, or fear. These he will experience in the bloody battles of the Boxer Rebellion. Blackwood's detachment is among the first to meet the fanatically cruel Chinese, roused to a frenzy of hatred for the "foreign devils" by their Empress Dowager. During one of the initial clashes between the British and the Chinese, the Marines rescue a German countess from whom Blackwood will learn some of life's less violent lessons. The detachment is ordered to escort her on a treacherous journey up the narrow Hoshun River under heavy fire. Blackwood arrives at his destination only to find that it has been burned and looted, and he is forced to turn back. Even the harrowing return trip pales, however, beside the task he faces on reaching Tientsin - to command a handful of men against wave after wave of suicidal attacks.
The Volunteers
Hutchinson, 1985
Sicily, 1943 ... They were the men and women of the Royal Navy's Special Operations units. Carrying out lightning raids on hostile coasts, they became a navy within a navy - each hand-picked for their individual skills, and all of them courageous. Against the mighty backdrop of World War II they performed their small but deadly operations - living often beyond hope, sometimes beyond mercy. This is the dramatic story of a handful of such people ...
The Iron Pirate
Hutchinson, 1986
Summer, 1944 ... She had preyed for years on the defenseless merchant marine of every nation passing through the Baltic, a cruel outlaw scourge, flying the broken cross instead of a skull and bones. Now the Nazi heavy cruiser Prinz Luitpold is herself on the run - and fighting for her life in a desperate race across the vast killing ground of the Atlantic. Captain Dieter Hechler is forced to withdraw from the waters he dominated for years - under heavy fire. Whipped by gale-force winds and a fierce barrage of armor-piercing shells, the once-proud Prinz cannot escape unscarred. The target of underwater assassins, air assault, and a relentless pursuit by a vengeful Allied fleet, Hechler has given up on victory. His only hope is to survive.
In Danger's Hour
Hutchinson, 1988
Mediterranean, 1943 ... The Rob Roy. A tiny machine, just 230 feet from stem to stern. In peacetime she would have trawled for cod. Now her catch is deadlier by far. Lieutenant-Commander Ian Ransome is a veteran of the treacherous front line of naval combat. For three years, he's swept the explosive curtains of Nazi mines that shrouds the British Isles. Now, under sealed orders in the battle-tossed waters of the Mediterranean, he and his jack-tired crew face one final test of their courage and seamanship under fire. Their secret mission: to spearhead the Allies' desperate invasion of Italy.
The White Guns
Hutchinson, 1989
Kiel Harbour, 1945 ... The war in Europe is at an end. But for Lieutenant Vere Marriott and the men of MGB 801, moored amid a nightmare of devastation, it is an uneasy, unsettled peace. New assignments ashore and afloat mean fresh tensions and conflicting emotions. For some, glory now takes second place to profit. For others, revenge at last seems within their grasp. No one is shooting at Marriott now. But dangers come thick and fast - from confrontation with the Russians to his feelings for Fräulein Geghin. There is more to victory than survival.
Killing Ground
William Heinemann, 1992
Western Ocean, 1942 ... From the bridge of HMS Gladiator, Lieutenant-Commander David Howard's orders were chillingly clear. There could be no mercy. To the men who fought to protect the vital, threatened Merchant Navy convoys in the Western Approaches, the Battle of the Atlantic was a full-scale war. A relentless, savage war against an ever-present enemy and a violent sea - in an arena known only to its embittered survivors as the killing ground. HMS Gladiator was part of that war. An ordinary, hard-worked destroyer and her company of men. Fighting for survival in a war with no rules.
The Horizon
William Heinemann, 1993
1914-1918 ... This is the third book in the Blackwood saga. For three generations, members of the Blackwood family served the Royal Marines with distinction. With the outbreak of World War I, at last comes Jonathan Blackwood's turn to carry the family name into battle. But as the young marines embark for the Dardanelles, and a new kind of warfare, it dawns on them that the days of scarlet coats and an unchanging tradition of honour and glory have gone forever. First in Gallipoli, and two years later at Flanders, comes their horrifying initiation into a wholesale slaughter for which no training could ever have prepared them. Caught up in the savagery of a conflict beyond any officer's control, Blackwood's future rests on the 'horizon' - the dark lip of the trench which was the last fateful sight for so many.
Sunset
William Heinemann, 1994
Hong Kong, 1941 ... To the residents and defence forces of the Crown Colony of Hong Kong, the war in Europe remains remote. Even the massive build-up of Japanese forces on the Chinese border cannot dent their carefree optimism. Yet one man suspects the truth. Lieutenant-Commander Esmond Brooke, captain of HMS Serpent and a veteran of the cruel Atlantic, sees all too clearly the folly and incompetence of Hong Kong's colonial administration. To Brooke, attack by Japan seems inevitable. But, in war, there will always be some who attempt the impossible, even in the face of death. This is the story of one ship in her company who refuse to accept the anguish of defeat and surrender to a merciless enemy.
A Dawn Like Thunder
William Heinemann, 1996
Burmese Coast, 1944 ... After four years, the tide of war is turning in North Africa and Europe. The conflict in Southeast Asia, however, has reached new heights of savagery, and Operation Monsun poses a sinister threat to the hope of allied victory. The Special Operations mission off the Burmese coast requires volunteers. Men with nothing to live for, or men with everything to lose. Men like Lieutenant James Ross, awarded the Victoria Cross for his work in underwater sabotage, or the desperate amateur Charles Villiers, heir to a fortune now controlled by the Japanese. The two-man torpedo - the chariot - is the ultimate weapon in a high-risk war. Cast loose into the shadows before an eastern dawn, the heroes or madmen who guide it will strike terror into the heart of an invulnerable enemy, or pay the ultimate price for failure.
Battlecruiser
William Heinemann, 1997
January 1943 ... Of all her class, HMS Reliant and one other have survived. Reliant has the reputation of a lucky ship but when Captain Guy Sherbrooke joins her he knows he could be her last captain. As Britain prepares to invade occupied Europe, Reliant will be thrown head first into the conflagration. All those who sail in her know that there can be no half measures: only death or glory awaits HMS Reliant.
Dust on the Sea
William Heinemann, 1999
1943 ... This is the fourth book in the Blackwood saga. Captain Mike Blackwood, Royal Marine Commando, is a survivor. Young, toughened, and tried in the hellish crucible of Burma, he labours, sometimes faltering, beneath the weight of tradition, the glorious heritage of his family, and the burden of his own self-doubt. For him, the horizon is not the lip of the trench seen by men of the Corps in the previous war, but the ramp of a landing craft smashing down into the sea, and the fire of the enemy on a Sicilian beach. Here, tradition is not enough, and Mike Blackwood must find within himself qualities of leadership which will inspire those Royal Marines who are once again the first to land, and among the first to die.
For Valour
William Heinemann, 2000
North Atlantic ... Commander Graham Martineau has been awarded the Victoria Cross for pressing home an attack against impossible odds. Few survived the action, and the crimson ribbon remains a haunting symbol of the sacrifice of ship and men. Now, as captain of the crack tribal class destroyer HMS Hakka, Martineau must once again call from ordinary seamen the ultimate in courage, and prepare to defend to the death the vital convoys in the North Atlantic carrying sustenance for survival to Russia. There is no hiding place in these bitter Arctic seas, where a pitiless enemy awaits a final rendezvous.
Twelve Seconds to Live
William Heinemann, 2002
Second World War ... The mine is an impartial killer and a lethal challenge to any volunteer in the Special Counter- measures of the Royal Navy. They are brave, lonely men with something to prove or nothing left to lose. Lieutenant-Commander David Masters, haunted by a split-second glimpse of the mine that destroyed his first and only command, His Majesty's Submarine Tornado, now defuses 'the beast' on land and teaches the same deadly science to others who too often die in the attempt. Lieutenant Chris Foley, minelaying off an enemy coast in ML366, rolls on an ineasy sea with a release bracket sheared and a lie mine jammed, and hears the menacing growl of approaching E-boats. And Sub-Lieutenant Michael Lincoln, hailed as a hero, dreads exposure as a coward even more than the unexpected booby-trap, or the gentle whirr of the activated fuse marking the last twelve seconds of his life.
Knife Edge
William Heinemann, 2004
January 1970, and the final chapter in the Blackwood history appears to have closed with the murder in Cyprus of Lieutenant-Colonel Mike Blackwood, and the subsequent sale of the ancestral home. Disillusioned and grieving for his distinguished father, Lieutenant Ross Blackwood believes there is no future for him in the Corps. The Royal Marines have been reduced in strength, and their role in a modern world, after so splendid a tradition, diminished to policing and paperwork.
But Ross remains a Blackwood and a Royal Marine, and the loyalty and dedication of a Blackwood to the Corps sustain him from vicious guerrilla warfare in Malaysia through the moral and political minefields of Northern Ireland, where one man's terrorist is another's patriot, to the South Atlantic, and a conflict as bloody as it is unpredictable.
And he learns, as every Blackwood has before him, that jungle or moor, insurrection or invasion, mere courage is not enough. Survival and victory balance on the knife edge of destiny.
The Glory Boys
William Heinemann, 2008
They are called The Glory Boys by those who regard their exploits with envy or contempt. Bob Kearton is one of them. Already a veteran and survivor of the close action in the English Channel and North Sea, in January of 1943, he is ordered to the Mediterranean and beleagured Malta, a mere sixty miles from occupied Sicily. Unexpectedly promoted to lieutenant-commander, he is given charge of a newly formed, and as yet incomplete, flotilla of motor torpedo boats. The tide of defeat is thought to be turning, the enemy no longer advancing along the North African coast with Egypt and India as final objectives, and Kearton’s is a new war of stealth, subterfuge, and daring, in which the Glory Boys are only too expendable.
