McCutchan, Philip Cameron's Troop Lift.

This action-packed tale is set circa 1942/1943 with McCutchan continuing character Donald Cameron, now in command of the British destroyer H.M.S. CAITHNESS, being deployed from Trincomalee, Ceylon to the Indian Ocean's Bay of Bengal on a reconnaissance mission to gauge Japanese naval strength in the region. After enduring a wild Indian Ocean typhoon (vividly described by McCutchan), the CAITHNESS rescues a Japanese merchant seaman from a half-swamped lifeboat and learns that a Japanese convoy is heading north to Japanese-occupied Burma from Malaya. Despite his prisoner's refusal to disclose military secrets, Cameron discovers that one of the merchant ships in the convoy is actually transporting British Prisoners of War to Burma, where the men will be used as slave labor in building military roads and rail infrastructure. Acting solo, Cameron and his CAITHNESS track down the convoy, engage in battle, sink several enemy naval vessels and ultimately rescue over 1100 former British troops from the holds of the Japanese merchant ship YOKOSUKA MARU. They then fight their way back to Trincomalee, sinking three pursuing Japanese destroyers in the process. McCutchan's tale seems to have been inspired in part by the real life rescue of British POWs who were being held on the German vessel ALTMARK off the coast of Norway by H.M.S. COSSACK early in the War.