From Simon Read, author of stirring works of military history, the action-packed story of the Allies' brutal naval engagements and daring harbor raids to destroy the backbone of Hitler's surface fleet.

The sea had become a mass grave by 1941 as Hitler's four capital warships-Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Tirpitz, and Bismarck, the largest warship on the ocean-roamed the wind-swept waves, threatening the Allied war effort and sending thousands of men to the icy depths of the North Atlantic. Bristling with guns and steeled in heavy armor, these reapers of the sea could outrun and outgun any battleship in the Allied arsenal. The deadly menace kept Winston Churchill awake at night; he deemed them "targets of supreme consequence."

The campaign against Hitler's surface fleet would continue into the dying days of World War II and involve everything from massive warships engaged in bloody, fire-drenched battle to daring...