destroyer

Editor Ian Hawkins has drawn together numerous stories from those men who served on the B- and C-Class destroyers, weaving them seamlessly together using excerpts from books, news articles, speeches and his own authoritative notes. Accounts are arranged in chronological order and cover the mundanity of patrol, the strain of convoy escort, the heat of battle and loss of ships and lives. Among the more celebrated events, the accounts describe the evacuation of Dunkirk and Boulogne, the engagement of Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and Prince Eugen and D-Day itself, as seen through the eyes of lieutenant commanders, captains, engineers, signalmen, telegraphists, surgeons and crewmen. In some cases the Editor has often found eye witnesses to describe episodes from differing viewpoints and the result is a solid work that not only fills a gap in the recorded history of the War, but can also be used as an overall view of it.