HMNZS ACHILLES by Jack Harker

This is a second-hand copy of the book HMNZS Achilles by Jack Harker. 

Condition: This is a used book in very good condition. The dustjacket has very light shelf-wear and Sun fading to the book spine - see photos.

Publisher: Collins
Year: 1981
ISBN: 0002169614
Format: Hardback with dustjacket
Pages: 264
Condition: Used (Very Good)

ACHILLES, 7200-ton light cruiser. In brief, her record runs: launched on the Mersey, 1932. In 1936 the Admiralty handed her over to New Zealand’s Navy Board. In 1939, with EXETER and AJAX, she was in at the death of GRAF SPREE. She played a distinguished part in the crucial operations at Guadalcanal, 1943.

An internal explosion while refitting at Portsmouth prevented her from participating in the 1944 Normandy landings, but in 1945 she was back in the Pacific to fight in the terminal actions of the war against Japan.

But, as author Jack Harker says, ‘Achilles was the men who served in her’. As one of those men he chronicles her service with the RNZN: peacetime training and Islands cruising; the endless tedium of escort duties and of fruitless hunting for elusive German commerce- raiders; grim drama at the River Plate; early actions in the Pacific war, and the closing months of that unequalled naval conflict.