McCutchan, Philip Convoy South

This installment in the series is set circa 1942/1943 and finds Kemp in charge of a fast convoy – chiefly former passenger liners crammed with Australian troops – sailing from Sydney, Australia to Hampton Roads, Va. by way of South Africa. Along the way the convoy encounters a German surface raider as well as the usual quotient of rough weather. In a highly improbable plot twist, Kemp’s flagship (the fictitious tanker COVERDALE) is taken over in mid-Atlantic by the crew of a Nazi U-boat bent on locating a top secret dispatch that Kemp is carrying to America. McCutchan portrays his Germans in stock World War 2 fashion (i.e., they are sadistic, brutal and unintelligent), so it should come as no surprise to find that Kemp and his men of his ship prevail and his ship (and convoy) safely make port in America.