Résultats de "Douglas Reeman" dans Toutes les catégories

There will be days when you wonder at and question some of the risks you had to take, the sacrifices you were forced to offer in the face of death. In 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.

In November 1941, Lt Ralph Trewin, DSC arrives at Singapore as second-in-command of HMS Porcupine. To the shell-shocked Trewin, the gun boat and her five elderly consorts symbolise the ignorance and blind optimism he finds in Singapore.

HMS Wagtail is a river gunboat, a ship seemingly at the end of her unusual life, lying in a Hong Kong dockyard awaiting her last summons to the breakers' yard. Commander Justin Rolfe is also seemingly at the end of his useful naval life, an embittered man, brooding and angry from a court-martial verdict. Then the offshore island of Santu is threatened with invasion from the Chinese mainland.

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.

February 1943. As the balance of the war slowly shifts in Britain's favour, Lieutenant-Commander Steven Marshall brings his battle-scarred submarine into home port. Captain and crew are exhausted after 14 months' continuous service, but for most there can be no thought of leave. If the enemy collapse in North Africa is to be exploited, every experienced man will be needed. Marshall must return to the Mediterranean, but this time to a very different kind of war.

From the author of The First to Land, a novel set during World War II. They called them the Scrapyard Flotilla. After a quarter of a century of service, the eight destroyers had seen all kinds of action. Now they were to be used in raids to open the way for the invasion of Occupied Europe.

HMS Temeraire: latest and most advanced of Britain's nuclear submarines. When Temraire's trials are cut short and she is ordered to the Far East to reinforce the fleet against a threat from Red China, her captain, David Jermain, knows that this is no routine exercise in flag-waving. And once in Asian waters, he and his submarine find themselves involved in a hidden, undeclared conflict beneath the sea.

Twenty-five years ago HMS Terrapin was part of a crack hunter/killer group in the Battle of the Atlantic. Now she is working out her last commission in the Gulf of Thailand. To Lieutenant-Commander Standish, the frigate seems to mark the end of his hopes of a career in the navy. Then a new captain arrives, a man driven by an old-fashioned, almost obsessive patriotism. And under his stubborn leadership, Standish and the crew discover a long-forgotten unity of purpose.

The year: 1943. Now there was to be no more retreat for Britain and her Allies. At last the war was to be carried into enemy territory. And from captured bases and makeshift harbours in North Africa, the Royal Navy's Special Force was to be the probe and the spearhead of the advance. To this unorthodox war came the corvette H. M. S. Thistle and her commanding officer, John Crispin.

Indo-China 1941, and cruising somewhere off Saigon is the world’s largest, most dangerous submarine, the French Soufriere. The British navy must capture and use her in the defence of Singapore before she is used against them. For Commander Robert Ainslie it is the supreme challenge of his career.

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 handpicked 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 Volunteers.

December 1917. Germany opens the final, bitter round of the war with a new and deadly weapon in the struggle for the seas - the Vulcan sails from Kiel Harbour. To all appearances she is a harmless merchant vessel. But her peaceful lines conceal a merciless firepower; guns, mines and torpedoes that can be brought into play instantly. The Vulcan is a commerce raider and her mission is to bring chaos to the seaways.

The old submarine-chaser USS Hibiscus, re-fitting in a Hong Kong dockyard before being handed over to the Nationalist Chinese, is suddenly ordered to the desolate island group of Payenhau. For Captain Mark Gunnar - driven by the memory of his torture at the hands of the Viet Cong guerrillas - the new command is a chance to even the score against a ruthless, unrelenting enemy. But Payenhau is very different from his expectations....

With his own boat, the motor yacht Sea Fox, former naval officer Philip Vivian had hoped to earn a living free from the petty restrictions of everyday life, close to the sea he loved. Now, however, his dream is threatened by financial difficulties. So when a profitable, if legally dubious, proposition is put to him by an old naval comrade in arms, Vivian is willing to listen. But what starts out as a harmless adventure soon turns into something altogether more sinister.

HMS Royston, Coastal Forces Depot Ship, is mother ship to a battered, war-worn bunch of MTBs and MGBs. New on board is Sub-Lieutenant Royce: commissioned for three months, sea experience three months in an Asdic trawler, and aged 20. His commanding officer is Lieutenant Harston, aged 23.

His predecessor has been killed in action 48 hours earlier and is now hardly remembered. The crew are all young - some very young - but all old before their time....

Below a dark and angry sea, men in the submarines of the British Navy prowl. Explosive spherical mines lie silently in wait for their weathered vessels. At any time, the abyssals of the Atlantic can be rocked by the terrifying din of a mine exploding and a boat imploding. Manning these cramped vessels is a fulltime hardship, with myriad risks and sometimes terrifying emergencies.

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, so has few regrets when he is unexpectedly told to retain his command with a British and Australian ship’s company.

The Mediterranean, 1943... The HMS 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. Under sealed orders in the battle-tossed waters of the Mediterranean, he and his jack-tired crew face one final test of their courage....

It is 1943 and Captain Mike Blackwood, Royal Marine Commando, is a survivor. Young, toughened, and tried in the hellish crucible of Burma, he labours beneath the weight of tradition 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.

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.