Sunday, March 4, 2012

New addition to the library

Cruiser: The Life and Loss of HMAS Perth and Her Crew, by Mike Carlton.

Aside from the works by Ronald McKie (Proud Echo, The Survivors), I've found very little that focus on the experience of the Perth during the Java Sea campaign. And McKie's works tend to only focus on the Perth somewhat during and after her experience fighting alongside the USS Houston against hopeless odds in the Sunda Strait.  Cruiser deals with Perth's entire war career. Damn good ship.

Curiously, I've identified no books that focus on the career of the cruiser HMS Exeter.  Her last commander, Oliver Loudon Gordon, wrote Fight It Out, which apparently dealt with her combat record, in 1957, but the book is now out of print and almost impossible to acquire.  Considering the incredible record of the Exeter -- helping to cause the sinking the German "pocket battleship" Admiral Graf Spee off the Rio de La Plata, fighting in two battles in the Java Sea, the second against hopeless odds -- I find this to be an amazing oversight.

1 comment:

  1. http://www.amazon.co.uk/fight-out-oliver-l-gordon/dp/B001KRVF9W


    Not cheap, though.

    ReplyDelete