The Gates Of Hell (1960) By Ewart Brookes
 
 An account of the horrors of the Arctic convoys to Murmansk during World War II.
 
 Foreword by Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fraser of North Cape. The German's failure entirely to stop the convoys led ultimately to Hitler having one of his celebrated brainstorms; and the German pocket-battleships and heavy cruisers (which had been a constant threat throughout) were relegated to the status of floating barracks, or were decommissioned. To tell the complete story of the Arctic convoys would require several volumes. Each convoy in itself was an epic in the truest sense of the world, an epic both glorious and tragic. Within self-imposed limits I have tried in the following pages to paint a picture on a wide canvas. I have limned in the first tentative sailings across the roof of the world, and then the later sailings when the convoys had, quite literally, to be fought through fire and blood - to the end when they sailed almost arrogantly, dragging their coat-tails across the noses of the Germans. Throughout this narrative it becomes apparent that the long-distance planners, seated around broad tables a couple of thousand miles away, obviously thought they knew better than the man on the spot. And the men in the ships suffered because of this assumption; because of it they had to die, some of them unnecessarily. 
 
Hard Cover With Dust Jacket
144 pages
In Good Condition