The Fighting Commodores: The Convoy Commanders in the Second World War

So much has been written about the great land campaigns of the Second World War that it is easy to forget, if indeed many people today are even aware of the fact, that the nearest Great Britain came to defeat had nothing whatsoever to do with either the British Army or the Royal Air Force. The country was simply on the verge of running out of supplies. The task of seeing that the merchant ships which carried the vital supplies reached their destinations fell largely on the shoulders of the Convoy Commanders, who were mostly senior but retired Naval officers who had volunteered to return to duty and it is their story which Alan Burn, who sailed on many such convoys, tells in this book.