Killing Ground

Spring 1942 finds the Western Ocean at its most dangerous. Lieutenant-Commander David Howard commands HMS Gladiator from the bridge, and his instructions leave no room for leniency. The Western Approaches, where Royal Navy escorts guarded merchant convoys against U-boats and fierce Atlantic weather, was for many sailors a full-scale war. Survivors who came through it spoke of it as the killing ground.

Gladiator was not a legendary warship. She was a worn, overworked destroyer, and the men who served aboard her were ordinary sailors doing a hard job. The novel follows them as they struggle to stay alive in a conflict that seems to have no rules.

Douglas Reeman drew on his own service in the Royal Navy during the Second World War to write this naval story of the Battle of the Atlantic.