Pacific Interlude / Sloan Wilson 157 p.

Lt. Sylvester Grant of the U.S. Coast Guard is sent in 1944 to the Pacific as a skipper of a gasoline tanker, the Y-18 (a.k.a. the Lucky Eighteen). Facing Japanese bombers, suicide pilots, and the aging, dilapidated Lucky Eighteen itself, Grant works feverishly to keep gasoline flowing to the front as well keep the crew safe. The real story is how personnel labor under extremely dangerous conditions to keep the war effort going. This gives an account of a rarely seen view of war and a new appreciation for tanker personnel who live minute by minute with the fact that one stray spark may cause the tanker to erupt like a volcano.