Eugene Esmonde VC, DSO

This well illustrated biography of Esmonde - the best to date - inevitably concentrates on the Bismarck and Channel Dash actions. A valuable complement to Robertson's 'Channel Dash' (1958); the attack comprised six Swordfish torpedo bombers, each with a crew of three, versus the battlecruisers SCHARNHORST and GNEISENAU and the heavy cruiser PRINZ EUGEN. Impossibly outgunned, the six old aircraft nevertheless pressed home their attack, during which all six machines were destroyed. Of the eighteen crewmen involved only five survived. Law, 0756; Mulholland & Jordan B87.