Flag 4: The Battle of Coastal Forces in the Mediterranean 1939-45

‘Flag 4’ is the signal for 'attack with torpedoes'. In this authoritative and thrilling account of the actions of British motor torpedo boats in the Mediterranean during World War II, Dudley Pope uses eyewitness accounts of those who fought the many battles.

Through assaults on enemy coastal convoys and clandestine operations, including operating with Special Boat Squadron units, the smallest ships in the navy helped keep the Mediterranean Sea open during the darker period of the war, and played a significant role in supporting various resistance movements and the eventual allied victories in North Africa and Southern Europe.

The Author: Dudley Bernard Egerton Pope was born in 1925 into an ancient Cornish seafaring family. He joined the Merchant Navy at the age of sixteen and spent much of his early life at sea. He was torpedoed during the Second World War and resulting spinal injuries plagued him for the rest of his life.

Towards the end of the war Pope turned to journalism, becoming the Naval and Defence Correspondent for the 'London Evening News'. At this time he also researched naval history and in time became an authority on the Napoleonic era and Nelson's exploits, resulting in several well received volumes, especially on the Battles of Copenhagen and Trafalgar.

Encouraged by Hornblower creator CS Forester, he also began writing fiction using his own experiences in the Navy and his extensive historical research as a basis. In 1965, he wrote 'Ramage', the first of his highly successful series of novels following the exploits of the heroic 'Lord Nicholas Ramage' during the Napoleonic Wars. Another renowned series is centred on 'Ned Yorke', a buccaneer in the seventeenth century Caribbean and then with a descendant following the 'Yorke' family naval tradition when involved in realistic secret operations during the Second World War.

Dudley Pope lived aboard boats whenever possible, along with his wife and daughter, and this was where he wrote the majority of his novels. Most of his adult life was spent in the Caribbean and in addition to using the locale for fictional settings he also wrote authoritatively on naval history of the region, including a biography of the buccaneer Sir Henry Morgan. He died in 1997 aged seventy one.