Frank decided to devote his retirement to achieving recognition for Australian sailors whose acts of bravery during the war had not been adequately acknowledged.

 

He returned to Germany to examine the young Australian, Lieutenant Henty Henty-Creer, in the midget submarine attack on the German battleship Tirpitz in a Norwegian fiord in 1943. Henty-Creer commanded one of the three midget submarines which attacked the Tirpitz. All three commanding officers were recommended for the Victoria Cross. Two of them, both English, were taken prisoner and awarded the VC. Henty-Creer escaped but his submarine was never found. The Admiralty withheld his VC and it has never been awarded. Frank's book about the attack and the injustice to Henty-Creer was published in London and Australia.

 

Frank wrote his third book “Corvettes - Little Ships for Big Men” to honour those who served in the 56 Royal Australian Navy corvettes during World War II. He felt that while tribute had quite rightly been paid to the larger and more glamorous ships like cruisers, frigates and destroyers, the hard-working little corvettes had been largely ignored. His book described the feats of corvettes in all theatres of war from the Atlantic to Tokyo Bay, and has been widely acclaimed in naval circles.

 

His next book, “HMAS Armidale, the Ship that Had to Die” revealed the heroism of Ordinary Seaman Teddy Sheean, who kept his gun firing even after his ship, the corvette, HMAS Armidale, had gone down. The book also focused on the heroism of Lieutenant Commander Robert Rankin, captain of the sloop HMAS Yarra, who tackled three Japanese cruisers and two destroyers in a vain attempt to save his convoy. Both deserved the Victoria Cross, but Sheean was only mentioned in despatches and Rankin did not even get that.

 

Through the RAN Corvettes Association, Frank worked tirelessly for belated VCs for these two heroes, appealing first to the Minister for Veterans' Affairs, then the Minister for Defence, the Prime Minister and eventually the Queen, but without success.

 

The other heroes Frank eulogised were not humans, but ships - corvettes. He pointed out that whereas the glamour ships - cruisers, destroyers, frigates and sloops - were quite rightly celebrated, corvettes were ignored, yet they were to the Navy what jeeps were to the army and DC3s to the Air Force. “They did everything, everywhere”, he wrote,” and they did it with dash and grit. The only thing they did not do was stay long in harbour.”

 

In his book,” Little Ships for Big Men", he honoured both the ships and the crews. “We had to make the most outrageous demands on the ships,” he said, “ but they responded to every call and never let us down. The crews were as heroic as the ships. They never flinched".

 

Frank's last book was "The Dark Betrayal", a novel featuring corvettes in both the Atlantic and Pacific, based largely on Frank's own experiences as a naval officer and as a journalist covering post-war events, such as the rise of McCarthyism in the United States and relations of major Allied firms trading with the enemy during the war.

 

Frank was the author of

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• HMAS Armidale Lives On (Kingfisher Press, 2005)

• The Dark Betrayal

• Corvettes : little ships for big men 

• The Mystery of X-5 

• HMAS Armidale : the ship that had to die (Kingfisher Press, 1990)

• Hearts of Oak 1945

• Tales of the sea  1943