Bøker av Douglas Reeman

Memories are short of HMS Royston - they have to be. As mother ship to a battered, war-torn bunch of MTBs she must carry out her vital role whatever the conditions, whatever the risks. Now with only three months' sea-experience behind him, Royce must learn the job the hard way - in the tough school of combat.

With the Allies poised for the invasion of Italy, the Germans hold a vital card: a floating dock, the only one in the Adriatic large enough to take a major warship. Air, surface and conventional submarine attacks are out of the question. Only one team can do the job and still stand a chance of surviving - the crew of HM Midget Submarine XE 51-

Yet even she was needed to protect the vital Atlantic sea lanes. Commander Lindsay, her new captain, had to work desperately to mould the ship's company - raw recruits and old timers - into a fighting force. And better than anyone, Lindsay knew this could be his last command, his last chance...

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...

Douglas Reeman's 30th naval thriller1941To the residents and defence forces of the Crown Colony of Hong Kong, th war in Europe remains remote. Lieutenant-Commander Esmond Brooke, captain of HMS Serpent and a veteran of the cruel Atlantic, sees all too clearly the folly and incometence of Hong Kong's colonial administration.

1899, China. The Mandarins are becoming troublesome again and there are rumors that attacks will soon begin on British trade missions and legations. Captain David Blackwoodof the Royal Marines, received a VC in the bloody battle for Benin, Africa but is now being packed off to this apparent backwater.

It was an age of Empire, an age of contrast, and an age of dramatic change - and one which would determine the destinies of nations as well as of men.

But it is the summer of 1944, and on every front the war is going badly for Germany. When the roder comes to leave the Baltic to attack and destroy eenmy shipping in the Atlantic, Kapitan zur See Dieter Hechler knows that once out in the vast killing ground it will only be a matter of time before the hunter becomes the hunted.

While the politicians haggle over a situation which could hold the seeds of full-scale war, Commander Jermain must keep his faith in himself and in his new ship's potential - even when ordered to take the Temeraire to the edge of a catastrophe.

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. guns, mines and torpedoes that can be brought into play instantly. The Vulcan is a commerce raider. And under crack commander Felix von Steiger her mission is to bring chaos to the seaways.

But to Captain Richard Chesnaye she brings back memories - memories of the First World War when he and the old monitor went through the Gallipoli campaign together. But as the war enters a new phase Chesnaye senses the possibility of a fresh, significant role - for him and the Saracen.

The old submarine-chaser USS Hibiscus, re-fitting in Hong Kong dockyard before being handed over to the Nationalist Chinese, is suddenly ordered to the desolate island group of Payenhau.

November 1941 Lieutenant Ralph Trewin, D S C, arrives at Singapore as second-in-command of the shallow-draught gunboat, H M S Porcupine. Through the misery and despair of this bloody campaign Trewin and his captain are forced to draw on each other's beliefs and weaknesses, and together they weld the gunboat into a symbol of bravery and pride.

For Rudolf Steiger, ace U-boat commander, there is a new sense of urgency. But now, as he takes the U-boat flotilla, Meteor, out into the bitter winter seas, he faces a new and deadly enemy - his own nagging doubts about the outcome of the war. Steiger knows that his destiny may be to court heroic death rather than suffer ignominious defeat.

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.

The Sigli had been just an old passenger launch, but when the Japanese invaded Singapore during World War II everything that could float was pressed into service.

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.

After four years, the tide of war is turning in North Africa and Europe. 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.

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.'Kiel Harbour, 1945 - the war in Europe is at an end.

________________________________The Battlecruiser. In its day, this class of ship was considered one of the great triumphs of the Royal Navy, as swift as a destroyer but packing a deadly firepower equal to any ship afloat.

Commander Graham Martineau was awarded the Victoria Cross for pressing home an attack against impossible odds. Few survived, and crimson ribbon remains a haunting symbol of the sacrifice of ship and men. Now, as captain of the crack Tribal Class destroyer H.M.S.

The mine is an impartial killer, and a lethal challenge to any volunteer in the Special Countermeasures of the Royal Navy during the naval battles of the Second World War.

For three generations, members of the Blackwood family served the Royal Marines with distinction. 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.

It is 1943, and Captain Mike Blackwood, Royal Marine Commando, is a survivor. 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.

The Volunteers were the men and women of the Royal Navy's Special Operations units, carrying out lightning raids on hostile coasts. Each was hand-picked for their individual skills, and all of them were courageous. This is the story of a small group of such people.

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. Given command t 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.

Out in the wastes of the Indian Ocean, British ships are sinking. The cause: a German armed raider, disguised to deceive unwary merchantmen. In Williamstown, Australia, HMS Andromeda awaits transfer to the Australian navy. After years together in bloody combat with the Nazis, the cruiser's crew will disperse to fight in other ships, in other seas.

INDO-CHINA 1941Cruising somewhere off Saigon is the world's largest and most dangerous submarine - the French Soufriere. He must take the foreign submarine and use her against the enemy in the defence of Singapore .