The Tin Armada: Satherley Whitehand

For Peter Neal, whose story this novel tells, the Dieppe raid was the culmination of years of training as an A.B. at the experimental stations of Combined Ops. Service life was not romantic; the stomach-wracking tank-landing craft was designed only to land tanks and the invasion beaches were bloody rather than glamorous. The crew of an L.C.T. were a race apart - not for them the comfort of the big ships of the Royal Navy or the pleasure of foreign ports. They worked and found their fun in hideaways around Britain's coast until they gathered for the assault.. Their training was tough and their living conditions below decks abominable but they had a real pride in creating a new branch of the Navy. For Neal, the close comradeship and easy discipline were compensation enough for continual discomfort and his first sea-going draft provided him with a shattering experience of what an L.C.T could do in really bad weather. His first taste of action came on escort duty in an East Coast convoy, followed by three months of hazardous patrols on the Dover run. But these were merely a baptism preceding the vital operations for which he had so long been training.