J.E. MacDonnell

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J.E. MacDonnell's Latest Book

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  • Bibliography:
    31 Books
  • First Book:
    June 1979
  • Latest Book:
    December 2024
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Book List in Order: 31 titles

  • Full Fathom Five

  • Mission Hopeless

  • 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 Jap cruiser’s bridge. Snelling’s eye caught the flicker of tumbling numbers on t...

  • 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...

  • Battle Ensign

    H. M. A. S. Scimitar was ordered to join the American Fleet, but it soon became clear that the Americans didn’t have much time for the Aussie battleship. Even when Scimitar’s commander, Bruce Sainsbury V.C., reported that a secret Japanes...

  • Enemy in Sight

    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 ...

  • Command

    In recognition of his bravery in piloting a midget submarine into a harbour thick with the Japanese, and sending one of 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 pr...

  • 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’ pi...

  • The Weak Link

    Lieutenant-Commander 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 fe...



  • 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 Pet...

  • 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...

  • 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...

  • Frogman!

    Petty Officer Clive Gellatly was a former boxer who had been in the Royal Australian 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 s...

  • 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. ...

  • 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 educati...

  • The Secret Weapon

    Royal Australian Navy 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 ve...

  • 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 the destroyer Sabre knew their lives depe...

  • 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, stare...

  • The Surgeon

    Lieutenant Geoffrey Landis 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 wel...



  • 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...

  • 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, ...

  • 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 Hainin...

  • 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 subm...

  • 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 R...

  • 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 offic...

  • 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...

  • Find and Destroy

    The order was Find and destroy! Out there was an enemy convoy as big as either man had seen—a mass of heavy ships, all heavily loaded, heading towards the Indies. And here they were, a crippled submarine, as good as six miles away, and with lit...

  • 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 mo...

  • 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.”...



  • 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 mi...

  • Fleet Destroyer

    J.E. Macdonnell writes of the Navy life he knows with a vivid and convincing pen.Fleet Destroyer was written during the time the Eastern Fleet took to steam from its base in Ceylon, lambast Surabaya, and steam back again. Few people know there is a f...

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

J.E. MacDonnell has published 31 books.

The next book by J.E. MacDonnell, Fleet Destroyer, will be published in December 2024.

The first book by J.E. MacDonnell, Full Fathom Five, was published in June 1979.

No. J.E. MacDonnell does not write books in series.
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