Fleet Destroyer — J.E. MacDonnell

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 flotilla of Australian destroyers, manned and officered by Australians, serving with Admiral Mountbatten’s Eastern Battle Fleet. This is the story of a thousand men of the Royal Australian Navy, men who have fought from Murmansk to Moresby, and most places in between, and who, positioned between Jap-occupied East Indies and the land of their birth, are even now seeking the main obstacle to their return there—the Japanese Fleet.… a vivid impression of life in an Australian destroyer. FLEET DESTROYER is a worthy addition to Australian naval literature. – Melbourne Herald … his books is more than a mere record of events. Most of us who can guide a pen have it in us to make such a record. McDonnell goes beyond that. His sensitivity makes him an interpreter. His vivid touch gives life an colour to his writing, – Hermon Gill, former Lieutenant-Commander, R.A.N.V.R., Official War Historian … the book has a directness which Bacon himself might have envied … – Sydney journal