Aim Straight; A biography of Admiral Sir Percy Scott
London: Hodder and Stoughton Ltd., 1966. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. 317, [1] pages. Illustrations. Figures. Footnotes. Index. DJ has some wear, tears, and soiling. Peter L. N. Padfield (3 April 1932 – 14 March 2022) was a British author, biographer, historian, and journalist who specialized in naval history and in the Second World War period. Padfield trained for a naval career as a Royal Naval Reserve cadet on HMS Worcester. He then became a navigating officer with the P&O shipping company. In 1957 he was accepted as one of the crew of Mayflower II, a replica of the original Mayflower, and sailed in her on her maiden voyage from Plymouth, Devon, to New York City. After New York, he returned to sea in the Pacific, then wrote The Sea is a Magic Carpet, an account of his adventures. In his second book, The Titanic and the Californian, he defended the reputation of Captain Lord, the master of the Californian who since 1912 had been widely blamed for the death of hundreds of passengers on the Titanic. He concluded that in the Board of Trade Inquiry there had been "crazy deductions, distortions, prejudice, and occasional bone-headed obstinacy of witnesses and the court", and the huge success of this enabled him to begin writing books full-time. Next came several works on naval history, including The Great Naval Race, which led to biographies of three leading Nazis, Karl Dönitz, Heinrich Himmler, and Rudolf Hess. In 2003 he won the Mountbatten Maritime Prize for his Maritime Power and the Struggle for Freedom. More