Tom Clancy sometimes reads these newsgroups and will respond to some questions and will sometimes post to clarify some points in the various discussions. His participation is at his discretion and is obviously limited by his various other activities. His postings have been informative, interesting, polite and fun. The readers of these newsgroups value and enjoy his participation and appreciate whatever time he can give.

Following pages are selected quotations from the alt.books.tom-clancy newsgroup. I chose the posts that Mr. Clancy made which were opinion and explanatory in orientation. He has posted many more messages but they were not all overly significant. Many of these are very similar to editorial pieces or are history lessons, in essence. He had posted 685 times to the newsgroups through November 7, 2004.

Subject: Re: How does TC plan his books?

Date: 1994-09-05 15:26:33 PST
English teachers in high school tell students that every word in a book or poem is there for a specific reason. When I started writing I realized they were right. I don't do random things. Even when I do not consciously know it, everything has a reason. If you think that is surprising to you, you guys ought to see it from my side.

TC
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Subject: Re: Playboy interview of Clancy

Date: 1994-09-07 05:11:22 PST
That Playboy interview was conducted more professionally than any interview I have ever had. However odd that may sound, the interviewer and his staff were wonderfully thorough. I was in no way embarrassed by being in Playboy (I mean, Jimmy Carter was there, too, right?), and a careful reading of the text will show that I predicted (this was done in 1987) that Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev was for-real. Re-read it and see for yourself.

The Questions:

1. You put a lot of yourself in your characters, and it is safe to assume that Jack has a lot of me in him.

2. I disagree strongly with this one. My villains are tough SOBs. In Red Storn Rising General Alekseyev is a sufficiently good pro that a Russian flag officer (who got the book during START negotiations in 1986) said he was an ideal Russian general (I am very popular in the Russian military; go figure). In Patriot Games the FBI acknowledges that the Irish terrorists are the worl'd best (the Bureau really does say that). The Soviet antagonists in Cardinal are very clever KGB guys (ask our counter-intelligence people and they will tell you that KGB is the class of the world); and Colonel Bondarenko at the "Bright Star" complex fends off a savage guerilla attack. In CPD, Felix Cortez is my best-ever villain--I had a lot of fun with that guy; my personal Iago. In Sum the baddies were smart and dedicated. In Without Remorse they were for the most part criminals; who are, after all, criminals. Smart people who want to steal go to law school, as Mario Puzo tells us. And in the new one, the bad guys are also pretty smart. But Ryan is smarter. Of course.

3. Well, Jack went to Boston College, a pretty good school. Clark never attended college at all. Ding is metriculating at George Mason. Jonesy probably returned to CalTech for his PhD. U. Texas shows up. I regret not having used Slippery Rock in Pennsylvania. Maybe I'll change that, since two of my FBI friends graduated from the rock.

I hope that clarifies a few things.

TC
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Subject: Ryan and Knighthood

Date: 1994-09-08 00:58:30 PST
The U.S. Constitution prohibits nobel orders. But the Brits love to give them out. It is an institutional way for their culture to recognize and reward outstanding public service. This probably would not work in our culture, but the idea is not entirely without merit. Other countries have similar procedures, by the way. The British ones are merely those most familiar to Americans.

Generals Dwight David Eisenhower, Omat Bradley, George Patton, and probably others were installed in the Most Noble Order of the Bath. (Exactly what this meant originally--handing the King his rubber ducky?—I do not know, but it seems to be one of the oldest and most honorable orders.) Ike later became president. Other recent recipients of this order were Cap Weinberger and Ronald Reagan. A problem?

Actually not. For cosmetic purposes, the awards made to Americans are technically considered honorary, and this is made clear in "Patriot Games." The appellation "Sir John" is only made by friends in private or by enemies who stress the irony of it. For American purposes, it has no legal standing.

TC
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Subject: Women Main Characters

Date: 1994-09-08 02:53:19 PST
I will never do a female main character. Why? It think it would be an impertinence. I am not, have never been, and am unlikely ever to become a woman. I have been married long enough to know that it is difficult for men and women to understand one another, one class being from Mars, and the other from Venus; or whatever other explanation one might pick. Perhaps God, in His wisdom, merely has a great sense of humor.

But male and female writers tend to portray the other sex not necessarily as real but as *perceived*, which is not quite the same thing. The reason we get away with that is that it's clear that we all write from a gender-specific perspective. To branch out, as it were, is a trap I do not wish to fall into. I doubt that I could do it well, and as Marko Aleksandrovich Ramius says in "Hunt," "It is a wise man who knows his limitations."

On the other hand, I try to depict my female characters fairly. Cathy Ryan, it turns out, is accidentally based on a real doc at Hopkins, the daughter of a world-famous surgeon, and herself the world authority in her area of specialty. (This is quite a joke at Johns Hopkins, it turns out--and was quite a joke on me when I met her!) A brilliant clinical physician, and a dazzling research scientist. Also better-looking than Anne Archer. Guys, everything said in this paragraph is true. Fiction simply cannot keep up with reality.

I get hammered for having bad-guy female characters (not many, but I pay for every one). I cite the words of Godfrey Cambridge, a black comedian and actor from the 1960s: "We won't be equal on the screen until a black actor can play a villain." (Which he did in an "I, Spy" episode.) Liz Elliot was a nasty person, but she was handled by another lady--in a way that no man would dare to do.

TC
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Subject: Re: Navy downsizing per TC

Date: 1994-09-08 20:26:01 PST
As myself a devotee of J. S. Bach rather than Elvis, and of "I, Claudius" rather than "Dallas," permit me to observe that cultural imperialism is at best a misnomer, and at worst yet another case of thet favorite activity of the American political left--self-hatred. If American "art" spreads aboard (my books sell rather well over there, by the way) it is because people free choose to support it, not because nasty imperialist American impose it on others.

I visited England for the first time immediately after the Libyan bombing mission. I asked virtually everyone I met for an opinion, and the replies were uniformly as follows: "Do it right the next time. If you're going to bomb the bahstahd [the Brits give that word such dignity!], finish the job." Which struck me as entirely sensible, and which is why the French did not allow us to overfly their country." Brits DO complain about the seemingly absurd barriers we place at out borders, but the truth of the matter is that any American who's reentered our country can testify that the federal agencies involved treat everyone poorly. I was astounded how easy it was to enter U.K. at Heathrow.

By the way, if people dislike our government so much, why do so many line up to become citizens.

Humorous note, the Chief Yeoman Warder of H. M. Tower of London used to be a guy named Denis Harding. The uniforms they wear are marked E II R (meaning Elizabeth II, Queen). When President Ronald Reagan was at the Tower in 1983 or so, and Denis was taking him around, President Ron asked what it meant. Denis' reply: "Elect Reagan Twice!"

TC
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Subject: Re: Clancy is unrealisitic.

Date: 1994-09-10 08:10:07 PST
about weapons and reliability. Clancy replied as follows:

I've dealt with a lot of this. In Red Storm Rising I down-rated everything between 50% and 75% from contractor specs. During Desert Storm weapons in nearly every case exceeded those same specifications, and it go to the point that the anti-defense media took to using single failures of systems (e.g., a smart bomb that missed a power station by 50 meters) as a negative example. On the other side of that coin, a General friend who was a corps commander over there lost a total of 49 troops in combat operations and over drinks wonders quietly what he did wrong. This speaks well for my friend.

The plain truth is that American combat systems performed astoundingly well in Desert Storm (note, a very different physical environment from the Central Europe mission for which they were designed--tanks HATE sand, for example; most machines do; Patriot was NOT designed to shoot misiles down). My books actually down-rate expected weapons performance; this is most easily found in air-to-air missile hits. Check the numbers.

TC
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Subject: Re: Titan II Explosion (was:Continuing Threat from the USSR/CIS

Date: 1994-09-10 08:25:10 PST
on Nuclear warheads and safety. Clancy replies as follows:

Most US weapons have gadgets called PALs (permissable action links). These are HIGHLY sophisticated little beasts that are part of the arming sequence, and are also anti-tamper devices. How good are they? Well, in the 1970s we **GAVE** PALs to the Russians because we wanted to be certain that their weapons were as safe as ours. How do they work? That's is closely guarded informaton. A chap in the system once observed that anyone who attempts to dismantel a US warhead without official permission had better be very smart and very lucky. I have personal knowledge that a professional magician of some note has a "Q" clearance, which is for nuclear material. He didn't tell me why he had it, but then I figured it out. He's part of the B-team that checks on the effectiveness of such systems.

Giving PAL technology to the Sovs back in the 1970s was one of the most intelligent things our country has ever done. I guess somebody had a bad day.

One more tidbit. Sometime in the late 1960s a routine maintenance check showed that "organic material" (probably chemical explosives) in a SLBM warhead had deteriorated, and that as a result an entire class of warheads was unreliable--i.e., would not detonate. For some time more than half our missile-sub fleet was carrying duds, a problem that required literally years to fix. The parameters of the problem are interesting: do you recall all your boats, pop the covers, pull the buses, and strip all the RVs? Nah, then the Russians would take note and find out. Or do you let the boats sail as though nothing were amiss? We opted for Plan B.

TC
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Subject: Re: DoH Problems?

Date: 1994-09-13 07:37:14 PST
Responding to Mike Person's critique.

What you say has validity. While it is not unknown for operations to be run directly out of the White House, in this case it was just a matter of clarity and de-complexity. You have to keep your characters down to a managable number. No novel can portray the complexity of real events with total fidelity. We'd cut down every pine tree in the country, and then the Sierra Club would put a contract out on all writers.

:)

TC
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Subject: Treatment of Friendly Nations

Date: 1994-09-14 02:01:24 PST
On the debate about using UK air bases to bomb Libya.

Very simple principle: You treat allies like allies, not like vassals. It's a difference between how we treated our friends as opposed to how the USSR treated its. It worked out better for us.

TC
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Subject: Re: Detail Mistakes

Date: 1994-09-19 02:47:13 PST
Responding to comments of carrier speed.

USS Enterprise was our first nuclear-powered flattop. Since up until that point carriers generally had eight (8) boilers, it was decided to give her eight (8) pressurised light-water reactors. The ship's total horsepower is classified--I figure 350-400,000 SHP is a fairly good number--but the following comes from a former ChEng (chief engineer) on another carrier:

One Enterprise skipper decided to see how fast the ship would go. (NOTE: Big-E since trials had had the reputation of a ship that routinely outruns her escorts; that got her killed in one PacFlt exercise I know about—the simulated enemy ship was an old destroyer with torpedos aboard.) When they reached 41% total theoretical power, a safety casing was blown off of one of the HP turbines! Enterprise is, therefore, probably the most grossly over-powered ship ever built. The nuclear cruisers made to escort her are also capable of 40+ knots, depending on the propellers bolted onto the tailshafts. Propellers can be optimized for speed or for noise-reduction. The former are called speed-screws.

The tactical advantage of speed is more than just outrunning a torpedo (which is important; the geometry of hitting a fast-moving ship with a fish is rather like what you get firing a missile at an aircraft, which is rather baroque stuff). By moving rapidly you can evade satellites (which move on predictable flight-paths; something the Navy regularly practices) and also force prowling submarine to move very rapidly to reach a launch point for missiles or torpedos. If you make a sub move quickly, you force him to become unstealthy--do remember that SOSUS has the oceans of the world wired like a pinball machine. Most discussion on the effectiveness of subs as carrier-killers blithely assumes that they will be in the right place and get off a launch. Examination of WW2 operations (e.g. "The Hunt for the Wounded Bear," efforts to intercept the Japanese carrier Shokaku which was returning home after battle damage in the Coral Sea) shows that the hard part is getting close enough for a shot. Despite excellent signals intelligence, upwards of six (6) subs failed to get a shot off, though all spotted the carrier. The principle still holds. Submarines are stealthy when they go slowly. When they go to max speed, they become noisy. A fast-moving carrier battlegroup would, therefore, force submarines to maneuver for intercepts; the noise generated would probably be detected by SOSUS, allowing prosecution by land- and sea-based ASW aircraft.

The "operational art" of carrier operations is a lot more complex than people realize. The carrier is still queen of the sea, and likely to remain so. Submarines are her deadliest enemy, but the tactical balance is a lot closer than some commentators would have you believe.

TC
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Subject: Re: Flash unit in Debt of Honor

Date: 1994-10-04 05:50:33 PST
Clancy replies as follows:

The light is real. I've used it. The gadget has a very well machine reflector and at a range on one mile throws a beam about 44 feet across. It's powerful as hell and has to be UV shielded to prevent permanent harm to the victim. his light might well be the ideal home-defense weapon since it incapacitates without doing lethal damage.

The inventors told me that it incapacitates, and I called Johns Hopkins Medical School to find out why this would be so. I talked to the head of the Wilmer Ophthomological Institute, who handed me off to a neuro-opthomologist (I didn't know there was such a sub-specialty), who confirmed that a light of that power would have the effect of overloading the trigeminal (sp?) nerve, just as I wrote it.

I wasn't kidding, guys.

TC
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Subject: Re: "Final Countdown"

Date: 1994-10-25 06:37:04 PST
Clancy responds:

The first semi-conductor was the germanium rectifier, developed around
1920, and used in radios for over a generation before its importance was fully realized. The guy who invented the transistor remarked later that it amazed him that the rectifier principle wasn't picked up sooner.

Also on the issue of technology transfer transfer from NIMITZ (WHY did I EVER start this line of "reasoning"?), consider first of all that the ship will have a comprehensive medical library (fantastic implications for the 1940 world), and a fairly decent general-use library in which will be all manner of information. Finally, the one thing you guys have NOT considered (rather amazingly, given the character of this rather bright group) is in the 6,000-man crew. How many of those people will have all manner of useful knowledge that can be transferred at once to any one of hundreds of fields?

A final comment. Don't ever assume that people today are smarter than people of another time simply because they know more. Intelligence is the ability to process and act upon information. Given access to the information we have today, a 1940s physician, engineer, research scientist would take off in a matter of weeks. As Einstein put it, we see so far today because we stand on the shoulders of giants. Given a data-ladder, those giants of old would have done quite well, thanks.

TC
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Subject: Re: Third World War

Date: 1994-10-25 07:01:55 PST
ClANCY RESPONDS TO THE HACKETT REFERENCES:

"The Third World War" was in some ways the inspiration for "Red Storm Rising," mainly because Sir John handled the naval aspects of the war poorly. Larry Bond and I thought we could do better, and so we gave it a whack.

This is not to be taken as a knock on Sir John Hackett. He's a truly extraordinary gent. A soldier of great distinction. Left the British Army over a question of integrity and principle to become Professor of the Classics at London University (I have to say it--only a Brit could do that!). Wrote a couple of very interesting and thoughtful books that had a hell of an influence on NATO policy. I've never met the guy. My friend Harry Coyle has, and reports that he's everything one could expect and more. I'd love to hoist a beer with this guy.

TC
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Subject: Re: DoH - Loose Ends?

Date: 1994-10-25 07:02:31 PST
Clancy corrects:

The "Patriot Games" MS [manuscript] was completed on 12/31/86.

I did some work on PG earlier. Similar work was done on "Without Remorse" back to 1971, and "The Sum of All Fears" back around 1978. My books have been published in order of their completion.

TC
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Subject: Re: Battleship Protection, Additional

Date: 1994-10-25 07:13:42 PST
Bismarck vs Hood, Clancy responds:

The precise cause of HMS Hood's demise remains open to debate. One theory that makes sense in context is that the ship actually died as a secondary result of fire. An early hit started a fire in what was called a UP (unrotating projectiles) mount. These were anti-aircraft rockets--an idea that didn't work. The fire was supposed to have communicated downward to the UP magazine or through another opening into a main- or secondary-battery magazine. This is plausible since the Royal Navy has a history of poor damage-control prodecures and training; also since such events are decidedly not uncommon in naval history. The poor performance of Bismarck's shells against Prince of Wales is well documented. Hood, moreover, was a 1918 (or so) design with poor protection against plunging fire, and, by the way, primitive fire-isolation protection.

In fairness to the RN, the USN learned this lesson the hard war as well. USS Lexington and Wasp were lost mainly to fire (as opposed to battle damage per se) both at times when the loss of a carrier was not something our Navy could afford; as a result of which the USN has been truly fanatical about damage-control and fire-fighting ever since, viz., the survival of the FFG-7-class frigates STARK and ROBERTS in the Persian Gulf; both ships took damage which ought to have been fatal; ROBERTS had her keel snapped. This is one more area in with the United States Navy is the world leader.

TC
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Subject: Re: Violence and Clancy's books

Date: 1994-10-25 07:35:41 PST
Clancy responds to posts on violence:

For those who wonder if art promoted violence, I suggest a review of the fairy tales and songs we all heard from our parents as tykes.

Rock-a-Bye Baby. Abused and neglected child sustains a fatal fall from his treetop sleping quarters, small body further crushed by falling cradle. Parents successfully prosecuted for child-endangerment.

Hansel and Gretel murder ugly female recluse in a particularly grisly manner--possibly Hitler's inspiration for his vile deeds?

Little Red Riding Hood--more false anti-wolf propaganda, probably sponsored by cattle and sheep lobbies.

Blaming the arts for the violence in our society is about as sensible as blaming doctors for cancer.

TC
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Subject: Re: Patriot Games; factual error re PSF

Date: 1994-10-25 07:52:43 PST
Clancy speaks on the Provisional Wing of the Irish Republican Army.

The PIRA always has been a Marxist organization. To call it Catholic is something which I take as a serious insult. The same feelings are shared by the Catholic Church in Ireland. Moreover, the PIRA is cordially detested by the government of the Republic of Ireland. Why? Because the PIRA's historic stance is that it also has the right and duty to overthrow that government as well.

This has changed somewhat over the years.

The PIRA and its "Protestant" counterpart, the UVF, have mutated into what are essentially organized-crime networks. They raise money by the old protection racket and by shadow-sponsored drinking clubs. Interestingly, the PIRA and UVF members have trained side-by-side at the same terrorist camps in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon, where they get along just fine. They also get along fine in prison. On the streets of Ulster it's a somewhat different story, but that, as Puzo says, is "just business." The PIRA and UVF have for years shared intelligence information on police operations. This, people, is hard information from highly reliable sources.

I admit this sounds quite bizarre, but that's reality for you.

The PIRA is composed of roughly 500 members. 50 of those are shooters. The rest are spear-carriers of one sort or another. They're superbly organized along cellular lines (a system invented by the old Bolsheviks) and are highly motivated. The FBI calls the PIRA the best terrorists in the world. The FBI--which, remember, is still a largely Irish-Catholic enclave within the US Government--utterly detests the PIRA, and has been almost totally successful in crushing its operations over here.

This is not to say anything nice about British rule in Ireland. Clearly the Brits ought to leave, and should have done so a long time ago--a view shared universally in the British military, by the way. But there's a rule of life which we often overlook. Just because one guy is a bad guy doesn't necessarily mean that the other guy is a good guy. The Iran-Iraq war is a good example of that.

It may be that peace is breaking out. God knows it's taken long enough. The reason: It's an indirect result of the end of the Cold War. The USSR is gone and no longer supplies arms to Syria, Libya, etc. for political influence. (It's for cash now, and that, too, is just business.) Those countries are becoming increasingly isolated and as a consequence have started closing out support for terrorist groups (viz, Syria sold Carlos Ilych Ramirez out as a friendly gesture to France and the US). Ronald Reagan strokes again. Historians are going to have a lot of fun, 50 years from now, hammering people who trash the best (well, most effective) President of our time.

TC
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Subject: Re: 9mm -vs- .45 ACP

Date: 1994-10-29 07:25:09 PST
Clancy responds:

European countries went to small-caliber, high-velocity rounds in the late 19th Century mainly for colonial wars in which small numbers of professional soldiers fought large numbers of poorly armed "savages" (people who wanted to be left alone in their own countries, that is). The newer smokeless-power weapons (Lee Medford .303 as a case in point) could engage targets up to 1,100 meters away (check the gradations on the sights of such weapons), something a .450 Martini-Henry was singularly unable to do. Humanitarian considerations were not a factor.

The Federal Hydra-Shok ammunition penetrates well due to an empirical pecularity of the bullet design which was not considered by the designer--a design accident--which makes the bullet form-stable in a human target (i.e., it doesn't tumble). You want a full penetration and exit because the victim bleeds faster that way. This, in any case, is the conclusion drawn by a three-year FBI study in bullet effectiveness.

TC
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Subject: Re: general ?

Date: 1994-11-06 18:47:34 PST
Clancy responds on the relationship between "Clear and Present Danger" and "Without Remorse."

WR was the first book on which I did serious work, back in 1971. Like several other such projects, it went to the back burner, but never went away.

(I need to add that my books have been published in order of their COMPLETION, but not necessarily their INCEPTION.)

I *knew* I'd be doing WR someday, and as something of a personal conceit (in the archaic meaning of the term) I nearly had Kelly/Clark and Oreza bump heads in CPD--but not quite. CPD therefore both sets WR up in a manner of speaking, and anticipates something that happens in "Debt of Honor."

You see, in fiction the author wurfelt ja, to borrow a phrase from
Einstein.

TC
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Subject: Re: Another Debt of Honor Question

Date: 1994-11-13 06:50:13 PST
Clancy responds on White House security:

Total safety is possible only in the grave. Consider the following
possibilities:

1. The President hops into Marine Corps One for a weekend at Camp David. A terrorist is on the roof of a buiding 4 blocks away with Stinger (it may be old, but it's still the best man-portable SAM in the world) or the Swedish one that's laser-guided (an awkward weapon, but very difficult to spoof). In that case, the President has a problem.

2. Terrorists hit a National Guard armory, steal a mortar, mate it to the British "Merlin" guided round, then wait for an arrival ceremony on the south lawn. You laser-designate from any of numerous perches, and again, the President is toast. This one's easy to do.

3. You buy a P-51 fighter aircraft on the open market (they go about $300,000 now, I understand), equip it with six M-2 .50 machineguns, wait for the Pres to lift off from (or enter final approach to) Andrews in his VC-25A (B-747), and hose him at low speed. The President is a red smear in Prince George's County, Maryland. The hard part here is to stage the intercept by loitering at low altitude; hard, but a long way from impossible. The 747 is ultimately faster, but can't accelerate all that well, and its defensive systems are not designed to deal with this threat.

4. The well known scenario: airplane kamikazes into the White House. Virtually impossible to stop. Surface-to-air missiles have MINIMUM engagement ranges, because the missile when in boost phase is not tracking the target, and has to settle down on course first. The inbound aircraft would have a great chance of entering the "dead" bubble before being positively identified as an intruder.

Sorry, guys, but that's just how things are.

TC
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Subject: Re: Jack Ryan History

Date: 1994-11-15 06:42:32 PST
Clancy delivers the FINAL and DEFINITIVE word on John Patrick Ryan's
education.

1. Son of a police lieutenant, and graduate of Loyola High School, Towson, MD, Jack attended Boston College, graduating with a B.S. (or B.A., I never decided) in Economics (strong minor in History) and a commision as a Second Lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps (via NROTC), and while waiting for the Corps to assign him somewhere, passed the CPA exam.

2. After finishing the Basic Officers' Course at Quantico, VA, he deployed to a line unit as a platoon commander. Soon thereafter as part of the Atlantic Fleet Fleet Marine Force (FMF), he was gravely injured in a helicopter crash on the island of Crete. The Navy surgeons at Bethesda Naval Medical Center did an incomplete job of fixing his back.

3. This occasioned a lengthy recovery process (he was nearly addicted to narcotics as a result) after which, complete with a permanent disability, he left the USMC, pasing his stock-broker's exam and taking a position with the Baltimore office of Merrill-Lynch.

4. Jack did so well there (also investing his own money and making about $6M) that a senior VP of the firm, Joe Muller, came to Baltimore to have dinner with Jack, with the objective of inviting Jack to the NYC headquarters. Also present was Joe's daughter, Caroline Muller, then a senior medical student at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Jack and Caroline (nickname Cathy) immediately fell in love. Along the way, while having dinner with his fiance, Jack had his back blow up. Cathy took him directly to Hopkins, where the Professor of Neurosurgery fixed his back in relatively short order. Jack subsequently went nuts persuading the government to terminate his disability checks.

5. Having made all the money he wanted, Jack left the firm, enrolling at Georgetown University for his doctorate courses in history. Jack did a brief stint at the (then) Georgetown University Center for Strategic and International Studies, then accepted a teaching position at the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, MD.

6. Father Tim Riley, S.J., dropped Jack's name on a CIA contact, resulting in a brief consulting job at Langley, where he wrote a white paper called "Agents and Agencies," and also invented the Canary Trap, both of which came to the attention of Admiral James Greer, DDI/CIA.

7. The rest is history.

TC
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Subject: Re: Clark in Without Remorse

Date: 1994-11-19 06:25:03 PST
Clancy responds on the issue of Clark's physical dimensions:

If you read "No Name on the Bullet," the biography of Audie Murphy, the author cites a case in which Murphy, driving along a freeway, saw three thugs terrorizing a woman. He stopped the car and walked over, armed with a riding crop. All three thugs were considerably larger than Murphy, and armed with weapons of their own. Sixty minutes later, all three were in a local hospital, in one case for a lengthy stay. It ain't the size of the dog in the fight. It's the size of the fight in the dog.

In more tactical terms, it's a question of experience and determination. Few people are able to deal with a direct attack. The average fight (and for that matter the TV or movie fight) is characterized by a lot of talk and posturing. A professional in this line of work--which is to say a SEAL or other snake-eater--will not give his adversary any prep time at all, a huge tactical advantage. (Viz. Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump taking on one of Jenny's enemies.) Clark does not give his targets any chance to respond.

He doesn't have to be Schwartznegger.

TC
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Subject: Re: To TC: Pres. Morally Right to Kill Terrorists

Date: 1995-01-12 06:19:27 PST
Clancy on violence.

The taking of life is something to be avoided if at all possible. Life is a precious commodity, after all, a fact I've had reinforced in my own mind by touring pediatric-oncology wards.

Hypothetical: someone is trying to harm your family, and the police, for whatever reason, do not respond--what do you do?

Well, the rules of this society, so far as I know, do not require de facto suicide; more than once a jury as told a person who has killed, "Go forth and sin no more." That is the simplicity and elegance of the jury system.

Ordinary people rule on both the facts and the law, rather than "professionals" who don't want the unwashed playing in their playground. The real reason democracy works, guys, is that the regular guy is pretty smart and sensible.

TC
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Subject: Re: Violence and International Relations

Date: 1995-01-12 06:31:39 PST
Clancy on the victor of the War of 1812.

Clausewitz says that wars are fought for one of two reasons: to overthrow one's enemy, or to make the enemy accede to one's will. By that measure, we won the War of 1812.

1. Britain recognized the United States as a no-foolin' country.

2. They stopped kidnapping American seamen.

3. The RN and USN established a respectful relationship that continues to this day.

4. UK became the silent partner in the Monroe Doctrine.

Looks pretty clear to me.

TC
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Subject: Re: RSR WWIII

Date: 1995-02-04 06:38:08 PST
Clancy remarks on WW3 and the nuclear issue.

The French had what some call a "drop-dead line." That means a line somewhere in Germany which, if the Russian crossed it, would trigger a French nuclear strike. Maybe the river Rhein, maybe a meter east of the French border. That fact is widely known--just the location was sensitive. That is also why the French were committed to NATO.

The Russians for their part anticipated the offensive use of nukes. We have SEEN their warplans for heading west, and interviewed the guys who drew them up. Moreover, NATO strategy was NOT to sit passively on the west side of the border and play passive defense. NATO plans involved a counter-strike from Southern Germany towards Berlin. A casual look at the correlaton of forces (a Russian term, and a useful one) leads one to believe that such a plan might actually have worked.

TC
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Subject: Re: Creeping Heinleinism

Date: 1995-02-04 06:50:26 PST
Clancy remarks on "Without Remorse."

That was the novel I wanted to write that year, and I'm rather pleased
with how it came out. I make an effort when I write to avoid duplication
of previous work, giving every novel a new twist and focus. WR was an exploration of a human mind and character, and an illustration of how individuals really do affect history. The book was dark, and deliberately so--that was a dark time for our country. It was also a commentary on the abuse of women, and how men respond to is. ("Men" do not abuse women. Lesser creatures might, but they are not men.) But mainly I wanted to explore John Kelly's character, an honorable man who takes action in accordance with his own code. He's a very interesting character to play with.

Anyway, for those who were disappointed with the novel--sorry about that. I do not want to be trapped into doing the same formula (I HATE that word!). The book was supposed to be a departure. And I think it came out pretty well.

"Practice."

TC

p.s. Mike Crichton invented the techno-thriller with "The Andromeda Strain."
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Subject: Re: TC...whats up with OP-C

Date: 1995-02-17 05:12:08 PST
Clancy on the origin of Op Center.

This is public information. Steve Pieczenik MD and I were at my home waiting for a friend to appear for a business meeting when I started talking about a moribund TV project I'd worked on mainly as a joke. Steve, it turned out, had a similar project behind him, and it turned out that his project and mine both had an element which the other lacked. So, we blended the ideas into what was actually his title "Op Center," and approached Brandon Tartikoff to work with us on it.

The result will air in late February.

TC
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Subject: Re: Tommy, I knew him when

Date: 1996/01/03
Giwer, clever as always, provokes a final reply.

1. I will let other answer the question about my responses to posts in the group.

2. The first draft of "The Hunt for Red October" was completed on the evening of Sunday, February 27, 1983, and delivered to the Naval Institute the next day. There were additional drafts (the only time I've done more than one draft of anything) which had to be completely re-done, since the first draft was done with an IBM Selectric typewriter (stone tablets!) while all others were done on an Apple //e (64K RAM - WOW!). Publication happened in October, 1984. Why did it take that long? The Naval Institute Press is small and timid - or was then. I have no idea what it's like now.

3. The dispute between myself and the Naval Institute Press took place in 1987-8, settling in October of the latter year. The terms of the settlement disallow me from discussing the matter in public, which, I think, is too bad. I'd love to do so. (The Institute has since terminated two senior employees, Thomas Epley and James Sutton, for cause.) The reader is free, however, to examine hardcover copies of the book prior to then and since, and to check out the copyright notice in both, since copyright is under law a matter of public record.

4. 1,200 clients made my business large enough to earn a very decent living. I did both commercial and personal insurance. I was a fire and casualty agent (homeowners, auto, etc.). I did very little life insurance. In fact I had more life coverage on horses (called "Livestock Mortality Insurance") than on people because I found life insurance morbid ("Hey, you're going to die! You'd better buy this!") I was particularly good at "wet" marine - boat yards, etc.

5. The name of the business was something I never changed. Insurance agencies tend to retain their original names in perpetuity. Besides, within a year of publishing I had a $3,000,000 three-book contract (Red Storm Rising, Patriot Games, and The Cardinal of the Kremlin) which actually grew into four books (Clear and Present Danger) as a result of the USNIP dispute. In other words, I didn't need the insurance business any longer. My license has long since lapsed. The insurance agency is still there.

6. Pen name. Curiously, Giwer is not the first to claim that my name is nom de plume. Sorry, pal, but I was born Thomas Leo Clancy, Jr. My father, Thomas L., Sr., died last March, and as a result I find comments on my name to be distasteful.

7. People I met. Looking up the technical data for THFRO was a piece of cake. My main numerical data source was the original version of the war game "Harpoon." Larry Bond is a good friend, and godfather to my son. I also had the insurance coverage for a lot of nucs who work the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Reactor Plant for Baltimore Gas & Electric Company. Sailors tell sea stories (which is what Giwer is doing, of course; except that his is ficticious) (old Navy joke: What is the difference between a sea story and a fairy tale? Answer: A fairy tale begins, "Once upon a time ..." while a sea story begins, "No sh*t, I was really there...") Since Red October access to people has become far easier, but my technical research is done almost exclusively in printed media of one sort or another.

8. The final comment, the one with quotes around it, something about a ceramic disk. I have no idea what he's talking about. Probably he doesn't either.

9. The only other Tom Clancy I know of (outside my family, that is) was the singer/actor (Clancy Brothers, Tom Clancy, Liam Clancy, and Paddy Clancy, plus Tommy Makem) who died back in the 1980s.

Mr. Giwer, if it makes you feel bigger to claim credit for some of the things I've done, well, that bespeaks a problem with you. Be a pal, and knock it off.

TC
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Subject: Re: Libel (was Re: Tommy, I knew him when)

Date: 1996/01/04
I currently drive a Power Mac 8100/100AV, and use Word 6.0.1.

I was there in D.C. when the first Mac was unveiled. I bought a "Fat Mac " (512k RAM - WOW!) later that year, upgraded it later to Mac Plus, then upgraded in 1989 to IIx, then to Quadra 950, and most recently to the 8100.

Never ask what sort if computer a guy drives. If he's a Mac user, he'll tell you. If he's not, why embarrass him?

TC
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Subject: Re: Debt of Honor question (was: Re: Horsepower and Jane's Fighting Ships)

Date: 1996/01/15
Clancy on repairing carriers:

Yes, in fact you have to cut gweat big holey-thingees through five or more decks, lift out all the broken parts, lower the new ones in, and weld the gweat big holey-thingees back shut. I don't know if a C-5B can carry the turbines and reduction gears, but, of course, they'd have to be removed from the donar ships, in a procedure involving torching even more gweat big....

Guys, a little more respect for the difficulties of engineering. These engine components are in the very bottom of the ship. Shafts can be loaded in from aft (I asked; no jokes on what it looks like, okay?), but the turbines, casings, and reduction gears would be a monster job.

TC
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Subject: Re: PBS Gulf Special, Gen Franks,& AC

Date: 1996/01/20
Clancy remarks on his friend, General Fred Franks:

I need to start by saying that Fred is a pal. A former baseball player (the Yankees tried to recruit him out of West Point), who lost a leg in Vietnam, I ambushed him at my ballpark by having him do batting practice, complete with Orioles uniform, and for an elderly one-legged gent, he still has a stroke. The batting coach later came up and said, "Hey, you've done this before, haven't you?" Fred is also very, very bright, very thoughtful, and as thoroughly professional as anyone you could wish to meet.

Fred Franks and 7 Corps:

First of all, he destroyed everything he touched. Nothing the Iraqis had survived contact with him. He went through them like a harvesting machine in a Kansas wheatfield.

Second, he was maneuvering a huge force, 1st Armored Division, 2nd Armored Division, 1st Infantry Division (Mech.) (which was an armored division in all but name), 1st Cavalry Division, 1st U.K. Armored Division, 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment (corps screening force), plus corps assets which included three artillery brigades (i.e., an artillery divison), and the logistical units. This totalled to something like 50,000 motor vehicles ranging from M1A1 tanks to HMMWVs moving in time and space in a planned and orderly way. The sheer administrative complexity of the task merely of maneuvering such a force gives pause. Amateur strategists simply do not grasp the difficulty of moving such units, much less keeping them supplied.

Third, his part of the operation was moved up in time without warning.

Fourth, as "slowly" as he was supposedly going, 7 Corps twice outran its supply train and had to stop to refuel (i.e., it was going far faster than planned). In other words, it was not possible for 7 Corps to advance any more rapidly than it did, because a tank out of gas (actually #4 diesel) can't be pushed.

Fifth, by maintaining pace and tempo, Fred husbanded the energy of his troopers. Human factors like this are so fundamental that everyone ignores them. People are not machines. They need to sleep and eat occasionally in order to function. As a result of this, when decisive contact was made, 7 Corps was a solid line of steel, operated by alert soldiers, not a spread-out mob of exhausted men and women.

Sixth, the failure completely to annihilate the Republican Guards happened because Washington terminated operations about twelve hours too soon (this is not my judgment, but rather what several senior commanders told me). That decision was political, not military. But strategy, remember, is a political exercise. Correct or not, it was beyond the purview of the field commanders

Finally, Schwarzkopf was not always fully aware of battlefield developments due to problems of communications (yes, even today that happens), and his perceived need to remain back in Saudi as theater commander. (This is not a critique. He had a lot on his plate.)

On the basis of my conversations with a number of senior commanders, and a friend or two elsewhere, I do not think it likely that any general could have performed as well as General Franks. One step farther: Were my son to be exposed to combat, I'd want Fred somewhere in his chain of command. Fred is not a screamer, is not given to histrionics, and is probably a little uncomfortable in front of TV cameras. He's also a consummate professional soldier who lost a leg at the rank of major, who stayed on to collect four stars, and who accomplished every mission set before him. I think (I know) that most officers who studied this campaign would concur in this assessment.

TC
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Subject: Re: Debt of Honor question

Date: 1996/01/28
Clancy on reconsats and ships:

The funny thing about this is that satellites don't spot the ships. They spot the wakes made by the ships. The same is true of observers in aircraft. I once proposed to a DesRon commander that when a satellite was expected overhead, just gow DIW (dead in the water) to evade detection. He agreed that it would work, but added that no ship commander would willing go DIW in a combat situation.

Satellites, however, can be spoofed. In the early-to-mid 1980s a CVBG deployed from Norfolk to the Med and evaded contact by a Soviet satellite so successfully that the Russians launched a new bird, thinking that the one in orbit was malfunctioning. Similarly, on more than one occasion during NATO exercises a CVBG appeared in the Norwegian Sea by surprise.
The ocean is a big place. There are lots (thousands!) of ships at sea all the time, and only 15 of them can possibly be USN carriers.

TC
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Subject: Re: DOH and Clinton's Address (SPOILER)

Date: 1996/01/28
Clancy on the issue of Traumatic Succession:

As you might imagine, back in the bad old days, when there was a country called the USSR, one nightmare scenario was a nuke contemporaneous in space-time with a Joint Session. A depressed-trajectory launch from a Soviet boomer was one option (i.e. a ballistic launch from a submerged missile submarine in which the missile takes a low-angle flight path, and would, therefore, burn practically all the way in, reducing warning time to 120 seconds or less; effectively zero-time since the people in the loop have to discern what's happening and communicate it up the line, at every stage of which people would blink and say, "ARE YOU SURE?" Human factors are human factors; people are not machines), though I've always thought a truck was a more reliable delivery vehicle.

In either case, the idea was that a decapitating strike would prevent America from retaliating, creating a circumstance in which a nuclear war COULD be won, and rather quickly at that.

As early as the 1960s SecDef McNamara said that there was a way to prevent this from happening, that America could respond to every possible contingency. Later leaks posed the likelihood that somewhere there was somebody who, under extraordinary circumstances, had the command authority to launch a retaliatory strike. Probably a very senior NIO (National Intelligence Officer; this is a selected group of experienced people one of whom is always in the Presidential party to give advice in the event of something unexpected) in a secure location who would have communicated with CINCSAC, thus complying with the two-man rule. This makes sense, is simple and logical in context, and would doubtless have been communicated to the Soviets. (I mean, in the 1970s we GAVE our existing PAL technology to the Russians, because we wanted their warheads to be as safe as ours. The nuclear side of the business was generally handled in an intelligent way by both sides.)

Having a cabinet member absent from such occasions is a longstanding policy. In that contingency, the NIO has effectively the same authority in any case. I mean, is the SecAgriculture going to nay-say a career spook (and CINCSAC) during a national-security emergency? Probably not.

On the issue of the 747 crunching into the Capitol Building, well, I came up with this idea in 1968. I didn't write it until much later for several reasons. In May or so of 1988 I gave a speech at Andrews AFB, and afterwards had drinks with a USAF two-star whose job was continental air defense. I laid the concept out to him (in its original form, the event was to take place at a change-of-administration/inaugural event because there is a brief period of time in which the chain of command literally does not exist in a constitutional sense). The general's eyes got a little wide as I walked through the scenario. Finished, I observed that there was probably a contingency plan for this possibility, and that, of course, he couldn't tell me about it. Then came the surprise. "Mr. Clancy," the general replied, "you're correct. If there were such a plan, I could not discuss it with you. But since there is *not* such a plan, I can tell you that to the best of my knowledge nobody has ever considered this. But, I promise you that Monday morning [it was a Saturday night] my staff will be taking a look at it." At that point I figured that I was free to write the scenario out someday.

I have subsequently learned that there is still no contingency plan for this eventuality. (The rules of classification are curious. They can't tell you what they do, but they can in almost every circumstance tell you things they don't do. "No, we don't do that" can tell one a lot, and since people in uniform are pathologically honest, they usually lie poorly.)

The proximity of three major airports withing flight-seconds of downtown Washington conspire to make the task devilishly hard under the best possible circumstances, but while the Republic of Korea maintains a constant CAP of four (4) F-16 fighter aircraft over Seoul, no such patrol exists over D.C. at any time, this despite the fact that the D.C. Air National Guard is a fighter outfit.

On the other hand, one can take paranoia a little too far.

TC
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Subject: Re: Without Remorse??

Date: 1996/01/28
Clancy on the publication of THFRO:

1. I finished the MS on Sunday, February 27, 1983.

2. The next day I was in the Annapolis area for business (insurance) and dropped it off with Marty Callaghan, who then was an editor with USNI Proceedings.

3. Marty gave it to Deborah Guberti, the Acquisitions and Rights Editor, now remarried, a mom, and a budding literary agent. Lovely, bright, charming lady she is.

4. There followed four (4) weeks of hell. Waiting for an editor to pass judgment on your work is not very easy.

5. Well, Debbie read it and liked it, though she didn't tell me just how enthusiastic she was for my work. I'd done the original MS on a typewriter (stone tablets), and on 4/12/83 got myself an Apple //e, and started transcribing the whole MS to computer form (10 of the old 141k floppies, back when they really flopped). This is the only time I've done a rewrite. Mainly it's boring. There were no substantive changes, though the quote from Shelley's "Ozimandius" was added along the way, and I rather liked that.

6. Come September, Debbie got others to read the evolving MS. USNIP had never done a novel. I happened to walk in the door at the right time. Another writer (a guy who does non-fiction) had a submission in, and told me that he was going to be their first novel. Oops. In November of 83, they signed me up for the princely advance of $5,000 (I talked them up from $3k), and by the following March we were in edition. My line-editor was Connie Buchanan, a willowy wisp of a gal who graduated Princeton and then was a Marshall Scholar to Oxford. It was also *her* first novel, and looking back, I think the book was better before editing than after, but Connie remains a friend.

7. The publication cycle was unusually long because USNIP was very conservative about the whole process. They nearly let the book die. On 12/1/84 the Director of marketing, Jim Sutton, told me that it would soon be time to tally sales and do remainders. By that time we'd rung up 20,000 hard-cover sales, which for a first novel isn't half bad.

8. Lightning struck after Christmas when President Reagan got the book under his tree, read it, and talked it up around the White House. Contemporaneously, the book sneaked onto the PW list, and I got to do GMA with David Hartman.

In short, I was pretty (make that astoundingly) lucky despite all the amateurish behavior by my publisher.

TC
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Subject: Re: What are Patriot missiles for?

Date: 1996/01/28
Clancy on Patriots and Scuds:

This is more than anything else an exercise in illogic.

The Scud is not a militarily useful weapon of war unless is delivered an unconventional warhead (i.e., nuclear, biological, or chemical) because it isn't accurate enough to hit a bridge, factory, or a specific point target of any sort.

On the other hand, as the Germans discovered in 1917-18 with their Paris Gun, dropping a few random rounds without warning into a populated area does cause temporary panic. The civilians ultimately get over it, if they have raid warning to find their safety holes (e.g., Britain, Germany, and Vietnam) in which to ride things out, and also to realize that you have a better chance of dying in an auto accident. That takes a few days or weeks.

For Iraq, lofting their Scuds was an exercise in psychology and politics. In striking Israel, Hussein hoped to force Israel into taking action. As a practical matter, however, what would/could the IAF have done over and above risking mid-air collision with US and Allied aircraft? We were already pounding Iraqi targets, and the relative few F-16s the Israelis might have surged into Iraq would in all likelihood dropped bombs on targets already destroyed, PLUS risking interception by Allied CAP who would have read their IFF transponders as "unknown." In combat an unknown is an enemy. Fox One on the bandit. Oops!

Would Israel have really waded in? I suspect that while their politicians might have ordered a strike, the professionals of the IAF would have found either a reason not to, or would have fragged missions calculated for home-town newspapers rather than for real military effect.

But, okay, Israel demands a juicy target or two, then what? More than one Saudi official said, "Fine, Hussein is trying to KILL MY SUBJECTS. Let Israel kill all the Iraqis they want." I think it would have relegated itself to a minor sideshow, a little face-saving, and it fades out.

What actually happened? We deployed Patriot to Israel. Probably they did a little good, but remember that the mission was not unlike what happens when you intercept an aircraft carrying bombs. You can kill the aircraft for fair, but the BOMBS still fall SOMEWHERE. We probably got a few skin-skin warhead kills, but breaking up the missile (law of gravity, guys) still means that the parts fall somewhere, and since the missile didn't have useful accuracy, the net military effect is about zero. Back to square one. That's the best the Scud could do anyway.

ON THE OTHER HAND, the Israelis could show their citizens that they were fighting back and hitting Scuds, and therefore had a face-saving reason for NOT interfering with the Allied air campaign.

Patriot is a SAM re-configured (the software anyway) to intercept missiles. Had the Scuds been better missiles (i.e. not breaking up at apogee, and accidentally presenting multiple targets), probably Patriot would have done better. What we in fact learned was that a SAM can hit missiles with better code, that these systems are smarter than the designers originally thought. But the argument over whether or not Patriot was an effective Scud-killer misses the point. This entire adventure was about politics, not technology, and the result was entirely acceptable all around.

War more than anything else is an exercise in psychology, not arms.

TC
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Subject: Re: .22 LR

Date: 1996/02/09
Clancy returns to one of his favorite subjects, guns:

A 400-yard .22LR shot is about as likely as my getting a hole-in-one on a long Par-4.

A high-quality .22 rifle is usable certainly to about 100 yards, maybe to 150 or so. Beyond that, forget it. The bullet is only about 40 grains, and isn't going all that fast. The light weight and poor shape do not make for very good aerodynamics, and the relatively low velocity means you have to plot a rainbow. Remember, the flight path of a bullet is a degenerating perabola, and at increasing ranges your range computation has to be more and more exact, else the round will fall short.

However, Sako, the Finnish arms company, makes subsonic 7.62 NATO cartridges - I've shot them. These can only be for the purpose of sniper use, and for easy suppression. In fact, the rifle I shot them through was a fully suppressed M14. She was a real sweetie. I was hitting my target out to about 150 yards, and the sound of the impact was louder than the sound of the shot. Of course, the "can" (suppressor) was about the size of my forearm.

Police sniper rifles (using the FBI Hostage Rescue Team as a model) are optimized for 200 yards or so. As a practical matter, that's as far as you want to be in a hostage situation. This may surprise the reader, as a trained sniper with a properly set-up rifle can hit a dime at that range (not me; a half-dollar in my case, on a good day), but again human factors crop up. If the bad guy has a shield (i.e., hostage) things get rather tense, and it isn't quite the same as shooting at paper targets. A police sniper tries to produce instant incapacitation (death), else you lose a hostage, and even a perfect shot into the brain-stem does not *always* produce this. A military sniper will settle for a hit of any sort - if the target dies the next day, fine. These are two very different tactical environments.

The .22 is good at close range. For "close" read <10 yards, and that distance is generous. The *only* reliable kill with any firearm is into the brain, and the head isn't all that large a target. Get close enough and a knitting needle is quite lethal, but the farther away you are, the more power your weapon must have, and the harder it is to suppress the noise. Conversely, the closer you get to your target, the harder it is to avoid counter-detection, and the difficulty increases non-linearly. So, I had Kelly using a .22 (the bang-stick was just for fun), and engaging his targets at <5 yards after careful approach maneuvers.

But a .22 at 400 yards? Maybe a .22/250 Remington varmint cartridge, but that's a high-powered round with a muzzle blast three feet long. Even the famous Remington .222, an almost magical cartridge for accuracy out to 200 yards stops performing much past 250.

TC
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Subject: Re: F-117N (?)

Date: 1996/02/10
Clancy on the navalized F-117:

I got briefed ion on this a few years ago. Lockheed proposed this aircraft about two years ago. It's the basic -117 design with some modifications and improvements - a new wing, for example, and air-to-air capability also, if memory serves.

The Navy should fall on its institutional sword for opting out of the Black Jet project in the early 1980s. They had that chance, but since the Shaba had not been "invented here," they instead went after what became the (dead) A-12. If we have -117Ns on the carriers, then "the boats" would be gold-plated assets, as they would give the President the ability to put bombs on target 30 minutes after lifting the phone. The A-12 was designed as a SIOP platform, evidently because the Navy wanted to play Nukes 'R Us with SAC. They ended up with a mini-B-2 whose flight characteristics even in simulator were not acceptable for carrier operations.

The United States Navy has an institutional genius for screwing up. Maybe that comes from being the world's #1 navy. I suppose the same thing happened to the Royal Navy around the turn of the century, at which time it lost the technological lead to the German and American navies, never to regain it. But there is no excuse at all for the failure of the Navy's leadership to demand of itself the same excellence it demands of its petty officers and lieutenants. The disease is called complacency, and it is most often found in people who prefer management to leadership, and who therefore school their officers in conservatism rather than risk-taking. CDR Holloway Frost, one of the Navy's brightest lights in the inter-war period, wrote that of all the failings a uniformed officer can commit, the worst is the unwillingness to accept risk.

We have today the world's largest and most powerful navy, whose newest aircraft, the F/A-18, design dates back to the early 1970s (around the time the current crop of pilots was being born), which screwed up the IOWA investigation (as a result of which we retired the battleships, very useful platforms, especially to impress 3rd World despots), which *lied* about the VINCENNES incident, and whose command leadership cravenly ran away from the Tailhook Fiasco and left junior officers holding the bag. If there's any part of the military which desperately needs shaking up, it's the Navy.

Once upon a time I published an essay in the Washington Post pointing out that the Royal Navy has a better system for educating its officers, especially its submarine officers. It came out on Christmas Day, on which I happened to be ill with the flu, and missed most of Christmas because of it. The next day (I was slightly ambulatory by then), I got a call from, Admiral Bruce DeMars, OP-02 then, and later Director of Naval Reactors (the "Rickover Chair" in the Corporate Navy). The Admiral was explosively displeased with my essay.

"We have *nothing* to learn from any other navy," he told me, after saying the Brits didn't know crap about driving submarines or running their (nuclear) plants.

"Admiral," I replied, trying to be reasonable, "even if that's true, it's a stupid thing to say or think, and you know it."

"You've done your country a disservice," he went on.

"So what are you going to do," I fired back, finally angry myself, "take my dolphins back?"

I haven't heard from him since. I have not been aboard an American nuclear submarine since, either.

It's good to be the best, and we are. It's bad to think too much about being the best, but I regret to say that we do a lot of that. The first major adverse result of that fact is what's become of Navy carrier aviation, for the first time in my memory, a second-class air force, technologically behind the USAF, and unlikely to catch up - which is to say, I see nothing in the pipeline to make that happen.

TC
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Subject: Re: 8 questions about HfRO

Date: 1996/02/11
Clancy on all this folderol ober "Red October"

Once upon a time I read that someone asked George Bernard Shaw about his view on having his works taught in school. Shaw was not the least bit pleased, saying that he would never countenance having students forced to read his work; that he preferred for people to read them voluntarily.

I think Mr. Shaw was right. Wow, do I *ever* think Mr. Shaw was right. I hate the thought of people treating my books as I (I will shame-facedly admit) treated the rubbish I was forced to read in college.

TEACHERS OF THE WORLD: PLEASE, *PLEASE*, DO NOT REQUIRE THAT YOUR STUDENTS READ MY BOOKS.

TC
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Subject: Re: War !!! Sweden vs. Finland

Date: 1996/02/11
Clancy on Finland vs. Sweden.

It's amazing that they can speak at all. Finnish, I was surprised to learn from a Jesuit friend at Georgetown University, is an "Indo-Altaic" language whose closest linguistic neighbor is Hungarian, and whose next-closest neighbor is Mongolian.

(How did that happen? You got me, guys)

By the same token, the Finns have got to be the gutsiest people in the world.

Sorry I goofed on the vodka, guys. I don't drink the stuff myself.

TC
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Subject: Re: Skunkworks?

Date: 1996/02/15
Clancy on "Skunkworks"

This book is truly excellent, and I will add that I am the proud owner of a (very rare) Skunkworks ballcap. Only insiders know what the hat denotes because it is, of course, stealthy.

I also have a nice photo of the Black Jet autographed by Ben Rich: "This is Lockheed's Fribee from Dreamland." A cool guy, and, along with Kelly Johnson, one of the truly great engineers of this century.

TC
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Subject: Re: Question to Mr Clancy regarding THE CARDINAL OF THE KREMLIN

Date: 1996/02/18
Clancy remarks on tracking USN boomers:

This is more a question of definition than anything else. The Soviet navy often parked SSNs off boomer bases with the objective of tracking them on the way out. It was impossible to prevent this (freedom of the seas and all that), and similarly impossible in restricted waters to prevent the lurking Soviet sub from detecting the outbound boomer.

Okay, technically, then, USN boomers were not infrequently detected in this way, outbound from Holy Loch, Charleston, etc. What did we do about it?

It became semi-standard practice for an SSN to head out with the boomer. The job of the SSN was to "sanitize" the area. This could merely mean looking around to see if an unfriendly SSN were about. It could also mean interposing herself between the Russian and the boomer, even to the point of "shouldering off" (a gentle way of saying - "ramming") the Soviet sub.

Typically, the American boomer would then sprint off at relatively high speed, making noise but forcing Ivan to do the same, and in the process losing sonar performance due to flow noise. The boomer would then go ultra-quiet, often floating on a thermocline layer (tricky to do, but possible) while Ivan went charging around blind, eventually to lose interest in the exercise.

It is believed that no USN boomer was ever tracked in her patrol area. The Royal Navy says the same thing. This opinion comes from the fact that tapes of the sonars were invariably examined after the end of the cruise.
In the case of the USN, even the fleet-operations people didn't know where the boomers were. Assigned patrol areas were about twice the size of the state of South Carolina - and the areas also moved around over time – and the boomers only had to stay in the areas assigned, creeping along at 5 knots. It's also worth mentioning that the SSBN probably had the best torpedo departments in the submarine force, since shooting was their method of self-defense, and practicing to shoot was one of their few recreational activities.

Every SSN skipper I know uses the same term for the Ohio class SSBN. They call them "black holes." There are jokes about it: If you find a piece of ocean with no background noise, that's the Ohio; Ohios don't radiate noise, they suck it in from the rest of the ocean; etc. I've yet to meet a SSN driver, American or British who even believes that tracking an Ohio is possible, absent an incompetent skipper or crew on the boomer.

Is it possible that a really good Russian skipper got lucky? Maybe. Maybe unusual environmental conditions could allow this to happen. ASW is a very complex game, and I do not claim to know all the twists and turns. But such a happening would be singularly unusual. The SSBN force is as secure as anything we can construct.

TC
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Subject: Re: Submarines

Date: 1996/02/18
Clancy rfemarks on the new-flight Akula.

Why, oh Lord, why is it that whenever the Russians come up with something halfway new, we go into a collective panic. The MiG-25 was the world's most formidable interceptor (but required the entire state of Wyoming to reverse direction, by which time it was out of fuel). The T-80 main battle tank was equal to the M1, etc., etc.

I have had hands-on Soviet tanks, APCs, artillery pieces (they're pretty good at that), fighter aircraft, and top-of-the-line warships. The quality of construction in every case is not to be believed, like the difference between a Cadillac and a Jugo. I have yet to see a single Soviet product which has anything like the manufacturing quality of ANY counterpart American product.

Akula is about level with a 637, when traveling at 5 knots. At high speed, like for transiting, it's a very different ballgame.

Beyond that, the quietest submarine hardware is USELESS without a well drilled crew, and the Russian navy has never had the quality of troops that the USN and RN have.

On the other hand, if the Navy screams loudly enough, maybe Congress will waste more money on Seawolf.

TC
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Subject: Re: Gun in Broken Arrow

Date: 1996/02/24
Clancy deposes briefly on Hollywood and weapons:

Once upon a time the son of a famous director, working with his dad on (never mind which high-budget boffo action flick), called me for some weapons advice.

He wanted to know what military weapon it was that exploded in one (1) direction only. He thought it would be cool and exciting for such a weapon to be on a Lazy Susan on a table between Good Guy and Bad Guy, and turned back and forth, determining whom would be killed.

I spent about ten minutes explaining Newton's Third Law: "Yes, but..." "Yes, but..." Yes, but..." until he finally got it through his head that explosions are radial events.

From Hollywood we know that when struck with a bullet, people FLY anywhere from five to ten feet, and frequently fall instantly and silently (and conveniently) dead from a hit delivered from the hip, in the dark, from a Walther PPK (in .32ACP) at a range of 20 yards, when in fact .32ACP is best suited to small rodents, few pistols can be properly aimed in the dark at anything beyond 10 yards (yes, tritium sights do help), and the human body is a hearty organism that tries very hard not to die under any and all circumstances (and we've already covered Newton).

The scary part of this is that real people sitting in a jury box at a criminal trial are affected by this rubbish.

Think about THAT, people.

TC
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Subject: Re: Cellulose encased bomb

Date: 1996/02/24
Clancy remarks on the Hush-A-Bomb:

I made that one up.

I learned later that stealty bombs were looked at, but the problem was combining stealth and ballistic stability. The problem was never solved, and the project was cancelled.

In fact, the Hush-A-Bomb was a very elaborate technical joke aimed at people in the Stealth community. The weapon would certainly have worked as employed IN CPD, but would have little military utility.

TC
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Subject: Re: That Movie (was Re: NEST Teams)

Date: 1996/02/24
Clancy on "Special Bulletin"

This was one of the shows which appeared in the 1980s as the culmination of the American anti-military, anti-nuke, and especially anti-Reagan movement. "The Day After," "Countdown to Looking Glass," and "Amerika" were others. Shows (and books, like "War Day," almost ad infinitum) like this were left-wing in political orientation, though some were reasonably well done, and besides, we do have a 1st Amendment, don't we? (Oops, that offended my linguistic critic, didn't it?) I got a little tired of them myself. I mean, why is it that America was always the threat to world peace?

They were also, in the main, laughable from a technical point of view, though often dramatically presentable, much like the recent movie, "Crimson Tide." (A dog urinating on a missile tube in a USN nuke? Navy ships are so clean as to make hospitals look sloppy. The captain's cabin so far away from the attack center? Try the very next compartment forward. An Akula locating and firing upon an Ohio? I've yet to meet a 688 skipper who even claims to have a chance to track an Ohio. Even my Brit SSN friends say it's impossible, and they *love* to tell you how brilliant they are. [In fairness, some are brilliant.])

Of course, as a Reagan supporter, I can now look back on all this with a wry smile. The real threat to the world was always the USSR and its stringers, now, happily, defunct. If nothing else, Ronald Reagan liberated the world from those dreadful low-budget post-nuclear-war movies, for which he might well be considered for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

In any case, SOP for dealing with a terrorist nuke, if all else fails, is to put one or more shaped charges on it and light them off. The blast front of these things is upwards of 10,000 m/s, and it is hoped that the speed will defeat any anti-tamper devices.

TC
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Subject: Re: State Names

Date: 1996/03/08
Clancy remarks on English English:

I've always liked the way they say BAHstard. They give the word such...dignity.

TC
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Subject: Re: Taiwan please go real time

Date: 1996/03/10
Clancy observes again:

1. I'd be interested to see if the PRC has fighter aircraft able to jump the strait and conduct operations over Taiwan for an extended period of time. East-Bloc aircraft, remember, are notorious for their "short legs." There's also the problem for them of possible defection. Again the German-British confrontation in 1940-41 presents itself as a model. I'd bet my money on the ROC AF. Interior lines, better aircraft, and very high motivation.

2. The PRC has nuclear weapons. Theoretically, I suppose, those weapons could be used. But for the PRC to do that would make their nation a global pariah. The economic consequences are incalculable. And who is to say that the ROC does not have nuclear weapons, too? That's one possibility I would not overlook. We all know that South Africa developed nukes. Israel did. Both of those countries are technologically behind the ROC. Perhaps, even, the ROC collaborated with the other two...?

3. The PRC builds a navy in a "crash program." Well, let's see. America, between 1941 and 1944, accomplished this feat, aided by the British. But both America and Britain had large existing navies to use as a foundation for the crews, and in both cases the entire national economies of both nations were fully geared up for war, a colossally expensive redirection of national priorities. The un-likelihood of this eventuality, I think, may be gauged by the fact that the People's Liberation Army is its own little industrial empire (as Himmler's SS was), making everything from main-battle tanks to teddy bears.

This whole affair is a political exercise, not a military one. The ROC wins the game by ignoring the blustering mainlanders. It's yet another demonstration of how poorly despotic rulers understand the citizens of a liberally ruled country.

TC
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Subject: PRC-ROC Faceoff, Endgame

Date: 1996/03/15
It looks as though this is going to settle out. The PRC, it is reported
today, is ending the Shoot-Ex, and though other variations of the exercise will continue for a while, the potential for a missile's getting lost and hurting someone is over.

On the whole, this has been a showcase of how sea-power is exercised, and President Clinton, ably advised, it would seem, by CINCPAC, has performed well. He did particularly well in keeping it off the front page. Relations with major powers are best handled quietly.

Now we can ask what this was all about.

Was the PRC trying to affect the elections process in the ROC?

If so, the experiment was heavy-handed to say the least. Citizens in democratic countries, when threatened in this way generally tell the threat-maker to have carnal knowledge of himself. It is plausible that the gerontocracy running the PRC really thought that the ROC citizenry could be cowed. Those Politburo members (there still is a Politburo to write about, thank God) could well be seen as prisoners of their own ideology, and therefore subject to making errors which to others appear incomprehensibly dumb. There are none so blind as those who *will* not see.

On the other hand, as I've remarked earlier, this move was not exactly calculated to make the folks in Hong Kong feel good about their immediate future. Hong Kong will be a jewel for the PRC, the sort of thing which, if they have the good sense to leave it alone, will generate immense hard-currency assets for a country which needs those assets. On the other hand, Communists are not the slickest people in the world when it comes to economic savvy, and they are also control-freaks. They are, in short, people highly skilled at ruining a sunny day. Possibilities: 1, they never thought about the reaction in Hong Kong (unlikely); 2, they didn't care about the reaction in Hong Kong (possible); 3, they wanted to let Hong Kong know that they could play rough (also possible, bue even more stupid than [2]).

In "Red Storm Rising" I have one character tell another, "There ain't no rule that says the world has to make sense." If world leaders were all that smart, there would be no wars.

Was the entire exercise aimed at something else?

In 1982 Argentina seized the Falklands Islands essentially as a diversion from that nation's economic problems, Bread & Circuses, 20th Century style. Focusing on an external enemy is historically justified as a means of reducing internal turmoil. Are there internal problems which we don't know about? No communist government is ever truly stable.

Is Chairman Deng dead, and might this have been a play to establish the new political order in China? Our government doesn't seem to know if he's alive or not. Nor are we clear on successors, though the most likely candidate is reportedly 82, a senior PLA general, and not overly entranced with the west. News at 11.

Was this some sort of precursor move in the Spratly Islands? These rocks, sitting off the coast of Vietnam, appear to sit atop a huge quantity of oil, a find on the order of Iraq's reserves, and something worth fighting for. China, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Brunei all claim a piece. The rocks are just that - rocks - and far enough from any shore as to become an interesting question in international law. China, which is a good ways away from the Spratlys, has tried to exert a serious claim.

Or did somebody just throw a temper-tantrum?

The next indicator, I've been told, is at the Olympics. If the ROC president decides to come to Atlanta with his team, the PRC will tell us that giving him entry into our country will be viewed in Beijing as an unfriendly act. My own view on that are simple. We should tell the PRC to have carnal knowledge of itself. I think it sets a bad precedent for another country to tell the United States of America whom she may or may not admit, especially if that country is running a trade surplus with us AND selling arms to people who ought not to have them. The PRC seems to think it's important enough to thumb its nose at at. I never have liked that.

Wild-card indicator. There are quiet reports of cannibalism in North Korea. Two years ago the PRK cut rations to its army (communist armies are never all that well fed, and for a country like that one, you'd think it the last thing they'd want to do), and it would seem that the situation has not improved.

Would be nice if East Asia were more stable, wouldn't it?

TC
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Subject: Re: The Ultimate Suppressor

Date: 1996/03/24
Clancy remarks on the original "supergun."

Surprisingly little has been written about this gadget. It gets minor mention in "The Dam Busters," a book about the special RAF squadron that initially busted dams, and later dropped a very large (~10,000kg) bomb appropriately called "Earthquake" from modified Lancaster four-engine bombers (also ~6,000kg bombs called "Tallboys," a barage of which ruined the entire day of the German battleship TIRPITZ).

One such mission was to use the Earthquakes to take out subterranean enplacements which the book referred to as the V-3. It hardly gets two pages of coverage in the book, but it was enough to get my attention back in the 1960s.

In college I read an article in Analog written by Willy Ley who identified this weapon as the "Tausenfusse" (German for "millipede"), a multi-chamber cannon. The design was ingenious. The idea was to make a really high-velocity weapon from inexpensive materials. The designers achieved this by starting the shell (20cm or so, as I recall) with a relatively weak initial charge, but enough to get it going. As the shell progressed up the barrel, secondary chambers would be ignited electrically by the passage of the shell's copper driving band across contacts built into the barrel.

The gun was configured roughly like this:

BREECH __\__\__\__\__\__\__ MUZZLE

with each \ symbol indicating a secondary chamber, mirror-imaged on both sides, of course. The few photographs I've seen of the contraption look as though some of the parts were fairly ordinary plumbing hardware, which seems hard to believe; I'll leave the requisite calculations to the engineers who look at this post.

The Brits were tipped to this by some good intel, and took the threat very seriously. The Earthquake bomb was designed to penetrate >100 feet of ground before fusing, and the raid destroyed the three (I think) weapons enplacements, along with the construction crews.

When things started heating up vis-a-vis Iraq, particularly when the Brit foundry had those "pipe" segments seized, I coincidentally had lunch with the Israeli defense attache, and when the subject turned to the recent events I speculated what it was all about, sketching the "Millipede" on a napkin. My Israeli friend (he appears in cameo almost by name and quite accurately in physical description in "The Sum of All Fears") was somewhat surprised that I knew of this, enough so that he confirmed to me that, sure enough, the Iraqi super-gun project was along similar but somewhat more advanced lines. Gerald Bull (I forget how to spell the guy's name) was a brilliant ballistician. The one he was building for Hussein would probably have worked. So, who killed him? The Israelis, for threatening their country as a mercenary? Or the Iraqis, after stiffing him on some checks?

TC
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Subject: Re: Question: Anti Torpedo Weapons

Date: 1996/03/26
Clancy remarks:

I've been reading this anti-torpedo commentary for a couple of weeks. The tactical situation is two-sided, interactive, and complex.

A smart skipper with a smart fish will do his utmost to prevent the target from knowing that there's a "torpedo in the water!" which is the term of art for the event. (A friendly [outbound] torpedo is called a "unit," by the way.) As with an infantryman, the best target is one with his back to you. Unfair? Who ever said war had rules?

(Or as the Gunny Irvin remarks in "Without Remorse," "Fair means all my Marines come home alive. Fuck the others, begging your pardon, [Admiral]."

At the original war-rules conference early in this century, Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan, the USN representative, is said to have remarked that the rules worried a whole lot about the sort of bullet you should shoot at a grunt, but didn't think very much about sailors trapped inside a sinking ship. He was offended by that.)

So, what you do for starters is, launch your weapon from the other side of the layer. The attenuates the chance that either the launch-transient or the running "unit" will be detected at all. The torpedo, a Mark 48 ADCAP, for example, will run at relatively slow speed (NOTE: I have been told by equally qualified experts that the -48 is both very loud and very quiet, and, no, I never have figured what to make of that, though the propulsor [not a propeller] is designed to minimize noise; on the other hand, the OTTO-fuel piston engine kicks out a LOT of power, and must therefore make some noise) for a very long way before switching into high-speed mode for the final closure. The weapon is also wire-guided, and, with the ADCAP, programmable. So, you will probably try to get a firing position which will allow you to dogleg the approach, thus not revealing the actual launch vector in addition to playing with the thermocline layer.

The torpedo is a small, high-speed target, both of which factors make an interception difficult. The -48's top speed differs with depth (Why, you ask? Well, a controlling factor is the ability of the OTTO-fueled engine to dump exhaust over the side; the greater the depth, the higher the water pressure, and thus the harder to dump exhaust; the ADCAP reportedly approaches 70 knots [!!!] in shallow water, but is far slower deep down), but so will the radiated noise, and so that is probably a wash. It's a fairly heavy object, but a submarine can't out-run or out-turn it. The ADCAP is also a "brilliant" weapon with a huge imaging sonar on the front end, a major advance over the earlier -48s; so much so that it's tactically useful (if somewhat expensive) to shoot out a -48 and use it as a remote sensor. In other words, this is a killer robot.

Spoofing it is hard. It's been trained to discriminate between decoys and real targets, and, oh, by the way, if the wire is still attached, the submarine can steer the weapon after a fire-controlman reviews the "take" from the ADCAP's own sonar and plays head-games of his own. Getting the picture, are we?

(Oh, yeah, the ORIGINAL Mark 48's sonar was so sensitive that there's a photo of one trying to engage a helicopter. On an early test shot, a helo was tracking the test fish. The fish got a sniff of something overhead, circled like an orca at Sea World, and shot out of the water at the helo. ["The heck with the mackerel, I'm going for the whole schmeer," in the words of Gary Larson.] This got the full attention of the helo driver, and resulted in a "roof" being programmed into the system so that it could not be lured into what is called the "surface capture [field]." There's a similar bottom-capture lockout. The ADCAP is sufficiently brilliant as to figure these out by itself, and was developed because of the problem of Soviet missile submarines which ice-picked themselves against the bottom of ice flows, which was a very difficult target-engagement scenario for some years.)

Okay, how does one defeat a Mark 48-class weapon? Answer, it isn't very easy. In "Sum" I hypothesized rough seas which to a torpedo look like multiple ship hulls because of the repeating and moving water-air interface. In "Debt" I noted that the -48 could not easily engage a stationary target because the early versions took these for decoys. Again, the ADCAP fixed that.

On the other hand, the sonar freqs used by homing torpedoes are discrete. The laws of physics can't be easily bent. The ultrasonic freqs are well identified. The Nixie torpedo decoy is a transponder. When it hears a torpedo sonar, it repeats them, somewhat amplified, to draw the fish in.

Does the Nixie work? Well, it's reported that an American Mark 46 ASW torp dropped on a supposed submarine contact a little too close to HMS INVINCIBLE was decoyed by a Nixie and blew the decoy up, which is probably a lot better than what happened to the helo crew when they got home. The new versions do the same, plus generating a pulsing magnetic field which is supposed to fuse the weapon away from the target. You see, a lot of modern fish have magnetic triggers, in the hope that they will explode right under a ship and break her back. The reason? That's the one place where ANY ship can be killed by a single warhead. If there's a way to protect ships against this hazard, marine architects haven't revealed it.

So, what results is a very complex AI battle. The homing freqs the fish has to use cannot be changed, and the fish is looking for a large object made of ferrous metals. It matters not that the ship is degaused, because now the torpedo itself generates its own magnetic field and fuses when that field is disturbed. So, you try to spoof that, too, by showing it what it wants to see. Pretty clever stuff, really. I wonder who's ahead?

TC
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Subject: Re: Advice on Clive Cussler?

Date: 1996/03/26
Clancy's Advice on Clive Cussler:

Hey, guys, *I* read this gent. I love his audacity and the pure fun of his work. He's a very competent scribe, and a hell of a good guy in real life. "Raise the Titanic" was one of my inspirations for THFRO (I mean, an American novelist who said GOOD and even, dare I say it, ACCURATE things about our armed forces; Cussler did it first), and Clive was gracious enough to give me a blurb when I needed one.

Cussler's one of the Good Guys in my book, and, as I said, *I* read his stuff.

TC
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Subject: Re: ATTN: Everybody: I have a report to do!!

Date: 1996/03/26
Clancy gives biographical information.

Born April 12, 1947, Baltimore, MD (Franklin Square Hospital, to be exact; or that's what mom says).

Not dead yet.

:)

TC
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Subject: Re: Canada and Cuba (was Re: PRC v. Taiwan)

Date: 1996/03/30
Clancy says to Americans unhappy with Canada:

Did any country ever have a better neighbor than America has with Canada? If so, I haven't noticed.

Friends can disagree over issues without losing mutual respect. At least they're supposed to.

Speaking for myself, I cannot fault Clinton for telling some Canadian companies that they can choose between trading with America and trading with Cuba, but they cannot trade with both.

Why? Because Cuba recently murdered some American citizens as a deliberate and entirely unrepended act of state policy. The taking of life is a firebreak of sorts, a line which, when crossed, demands remedial action. Were this not the case, then why have nation-states at all? Canadians, people who share nearly every societal value we have, will probably understand that America cannot forego a response to this act.

But for Americans who have been trashing Canada, let us also remember that when the Iranians seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, the only Americans who got out early were those who sought and got refuge in the Canadian Embassy, and that this happened because the government in Ottawa was willing to take a fairly major chance for friends in need.

Enough acrimony on this one. Canada is a pal, and a damned good one. We have a disagreement here, but it's not terribly important in the great scheme of things, and it ought not to be very hard to resolve as friends.

TC
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Subject: Re: PRC v. Taiwan

Date: 1996/03/31
Clancy returns to the Civil War:

For the North to have objected to slavery on economic ground, there would have had to be an economic advantage to slavery. But there was not. Slaves are inefficient employees in terms of productivity. And why should they be productive? They manifestly were not rewarded for their labor. There is ample contemporary evidence to show that the South was economically indolent, in fact, a feudal society in all but name. (This also explains European sympathy for the South, which had more in common with Victorian Britain than the US as a whole did.) Slavery, as Washington observed, is ultimately more harmful to the owner than the slave.

The North was economically far more healthy than the South, which is why the North had the overwhelming materiel advantage. It was more attractive to immigrants in terms of economic opportunity, which is why the North had more people to send off to battle.

Did Northerners regard black slaves as their equals? Probably not. But they did fight a war to free them. Sorry if they weren't perfect, Mr. Hanks, but that's life.

As for Lincoln's acts during the war. He had a WAR to win, a civil war at that, and it's never a pretty business.

TC
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Subject: Re: Unmask a Fake!

Date: 1996/04/17
I know the Navy has warrant officers. The Bosun on USS WISCONSIN (BB-64) when I was aboard was a warrant. It is, further, a mistake to say that a Navy Chief is simply a higher grade of enlisted man. That is technically correct, but in fact when you become a chief the uniform changes, you move to a different mess, and your status jumps enormously. The Chief is the spiritual heart of the Navy. This is something the USN does very well indeed, and from which our other services might learn, though it is, really, an accidental carryover from the days of sail, when what we now call chiefs were in fact warrant officers-specialists, i.e. bosun, sailmaker, carpenter, sailing master, etc.

TC
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Subject: Re: Exocet v Type 42 in the Falklands

Date: 1996/05/12
Clancy remarks tersely on the shoot-down of H-60s by F-15s:

When I learned to shoot as a member of Troop 624 of the Boy Scouts of America, the one of first things the instructor said (after "every gun is loaded until you prove otherwise!") was, "Never point a gun at anything unless you know what it is and you are willing to kill it." The Eagle pilots failed to identify their targets positively. Under other conditions (e.g., during combat operations, and with additional extenuating circumstances) the shots might have been forgiven, but not, I think, in short-of-war operations.

Very often in life the best thing to do is nothing. (That is, wait and see.) It's often harder and more demanding to do nothing, but there you are.

TC
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Subject: Re: Why didn't they use B-1's against Iceland?

Date: 1996/06/13
Clancy replies to this question:

Because at the time, strange though this may sound, the B-1B Lancer heavy bomber was not certified as safe to drop conventional bombs. I got around to asking about this and learned that you actgually have to check to see if the bombs deploy properly instead of banging into one another, which can be bad for the bomber.

The same guy told me that they had a similar problem with the -117 which Ben Rich fixed, rather cleverly and inexpensively. The fix was a vertical steel panel, transverse to the axis of the aircraft, with base-ball-size holes punched in it. The ins and outs of dirty-hands engineering are fascinating to behold.

TC
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Subject: Clancy and the Media

Date: 1996/06/27
I was ginning up a reply to Mr. Watkins observation on something I am reputed to have said when I was disconnected, losing Mr. Watkins' comments and my reply.

This is something that need clarification.

The quote in question comes from a lengthy article not in Parade Magazine, but in the Washington Post's Sunday magazine. The interview and article were done by a reporter named Carlson in 1993.

At the time, life was fairly busy here. I'd just finished writing "Without Remorse," and more seriously, a member of my immediate family had undergone cancer surgery on April 16, 1993, and had just started chemotherapy at the Johns Hopkins Hospital Oncology Center. I had a few other things on my mind.

I'd been warned ahead of time that Carlson was a reporter with a penchant for giant-slaying, but it is my custom to give everyone a fair shot. He showed up and was flattering as hell. One way to get on a writer's good side is to quote his own work back to him. This he did with great skill. We talked about a lot of things. He asked why I was a little tense. I explained that the family member in question was at Hopkins right then, and we went on. He seemed quite sympathetic.

The quote, which is accurate, technically speaking, was in the following context. American economic policy is largely determined by members of Congress. For the majority of Congress members, their salaries of about $125,000 are the most they have ever made, and in terms of the national economy, that level of income is not demonstrative of great expertise. In metaphor, it's like having a pre-med student do bypass surgery. In any case, the comment is fair in a factual sense and was not meant to be perjorative.

Alas, the presentation of the quotation somewhat left out the qualifiers. It was immediately picked up by Newsweek magazine, and then used by journalist Mark Shields as his "outrage of the week" on CNN's Saturday commentary show. It felt rather as though I'd been hit by a truck running a red light.

Now, considering the fact that my dad was a mailman, I think it unlikely that I would say such a thing as presented either drunk or sober.

I know a few people at the Post. One of them, a rather senior journalist and assistant managing editor, twice apologized to me for the piece, and to the Post's credit, they took the signal step of graciously allowing letters both for and against me to appear in *two* subsequent issues of their Sunday magazine. (This was due, they said, to the volume of letters the article had generated.) I rather suspect my readers have a better feel for my character.

The error, of course, was mine. I was at that time and under those circumstances rather an easy mark for the reporter, but I have too many friends both at the Post and in that profession to judge them all by one aberration. The media is not perfect, but, then, neither am I.

TC
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Subject: Re: DOH (Spoiler) Japanese torpedo's, evasion of.

Date: 1996/07/01
Clancy on ASW torpedoes.

The American Mark 46 and -50 ASW fish are programmed to avoid the surface and thus avoid being spoofed by "surface capture." This precludes them from going within a fixed distance of the surface. Call it 30 feet.

This default is programmable, and can be de-programmed. At that point the "fish" merely looks for a sonar target, something that reflects the waves generated by its ultrasonic sonar transmitter, Sonar waves reflect off the water-air interface (well, okay, there is hull steel in the middle) or any ship. Any surface ship will look pretty much the same as a submarine to the sonar system, and are subject to attack. It ir reported that an American Mark 46 erroneously dropped by a British ASW helo on what was probably a spurious submarine contact off the Falklands in 1982 was spoofed and detonated by HMS Invincible's Nixie decoy. If true, the "fish" was close enough to the surface and to the CVL to be a threat.

TC
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Subject: Re: Jack Ryan Actors

Date: 1996/07/12
Clancy on actors.

I will not get into a discussion of the relative merits of Ford and Baldwin. They are different people with somewhat different talents.

What I will say about Alec Baldwin, however, is that I really admire his professional dedication. We talk every so often, and Alec truly wants to be the best actor he can become. He's utterly dedicated to his business, and he has an intensity about it that commands respect. He's also a hell of a nice guy.

TC
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Subject: Re: DOH Questions

Date: 1996/07/17
Clancy on ship propellers.

I asked about this.

Screws are not interchangable between classes because of differences in hull form and powerplant. Moreover, not all four screws on a carrier are the same. Outboard and inboard screws can have different configuration. This was true on the Iowa-class battlewagons as can be seen in photographs and as commented on by Dulin and Garske in their book, "Battleships."

The only carrier I ever saw in drydock was John Stennis, but I do not know of the screws attached then were service screws or others used for
engineering tests in the graving dock.

Generally speaking, the screws are made in Philadelphia, I think. They are big (for carriers, huge), time-consuming and costly to manufacture, and although the manufacturing process is formulaic, there is also an
empirical aspect to it according to people I've talked to. It's a tricky business. The wrong screw (I experienced this once on QE2, sailing on her in 1987 just after her major overhaul at the Blohm & Voss Yard) can make a ship vibrate like a cocktail shaker, which is both noisy and damaging to onboard systems. (In the case of QE2 the "Grimm Wheels" (a sort of free-rotating auxiliary screw aft of the real ones) were torched off in the King George V dock while we boarded for the return home, which helped somewhat with the awful vibration aft. And she's only a 50,000-ton displacement ship (her registered tonnage is computed differently from the method used on warships, and is volumetric rather than actual displacement weight). Carriers are nearly twice that.

This isn't very helpful, is it? Short version, it's a tricky business because there is an art or empirical end to this.

TC
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Subject: Re: SAS & Gibralter Action

Date: 1996/07/19
Clancy remarks on criticism:

For the record, I welcome it. How else does one learn what one has done wrong. I hate making mistakes (who doesn't?), but I've long since had to concede my fallibility, and criticism helps me to avoid repeating mistakes.

A writer must develop a somewhat-thick skin. My first-ever review was by a guy named Burgess, I think, in Navy Times of all things. He was not terribly kind, commenting among other things that my dialog was on a par with service VD training films. On the other hand, the worthy Mr. Burgess now works for a paper in Sacramento, I've heard, and I--well, I'm doing okay.

In my position you deal with honest criticism (a lot of critics are scrupulously honest, and whether they like me or not, I respect them for it), but since I am now considered "critic-proof" (I'm not sure if that's true or not; I know I cannot survive turning out a bad book, because my fans pay real money for books, whereas critics get them for free), some feel free to attack me for no particular reason aside from increasing their own self-perceived stature. That's unfair in a purely metaphysical sense, but the real world is not subject to metaphysical laws.

Writing is a miserably hard way to earn a living. For one thing, it's lonely. You don't have any exterior help while doing a book. Next, since you are so close to it (the book is resident in your mind 24 hours per day), it's virtually impossible to be objective about it, or to know if it's any good or not. Yes, Virginia, even Tom Clancy has such doubts. All writers do, and we all need to hear from our editors that, yes, Virginia, it's not too bad. I suppose we use up all of our capacious self-confidence in doing the damned things, and then we need help in evaluating them. Good criticism (you can always tell the good from the bad) is yet another objective input, and the idea is that you learn something from it.

TC
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Subject: Re: 747 crash

Date: 1996/07/21
Clancy on "Chicago":

The DC-10 died because it stalled out. When the portside engine separated it cut the hydraulic lines controlling the leading-edge slats. That caused the slats to retract, resulting in a sudden asymmetric loss of lift.

In fact, the flight crew was well aware of the engine loss (rather hard to miss). With the loss of power they did the natural thing--tried to gain altitude. That stalled out the wing, causing the aircraft to roll left and crunch. Had they tried to gain speed and climb "flat" they would have survived, as later demonstrated on simulator, but MD changed the slats to prevent that problem from happening again.

Emmet and Catherine Ryan died, in fact, on a 737 (United flight) that crunched in a snowstorm at Midway in 1972 or so.

TC
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Subject: Re: Pentagon question...

Date: 1996/07/27
When the Pentagon was built, there really were but two (2) military services, the Army and the Navy. The Marine Corps, remember, is a subordinate part of the Navy. The Air Force was then the Army Air Corps (later to become the Army Air Force with de facto independence before the de jure sort). And the Coast Guard was then part of the Department of the Treasury (now part of the Department of Transportation).

I speculate that the five-sided configuration actually results from the fact that were it a hexagon with six (6) sides, one of those monster alien ships, like those in "Independence Day," might think it a bolt, produce a large wrench, and screw it into the ground.

TC
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Subject: Re: Meteor struck TWA Flt. 800!

Date: 1996/07/28
NUDETS and the South Atlantic.

As a matter of policy, America will not declare a "rogue" nuclear detonation without a rediological sample. I presume this all refers to the well known (and well hushed) nuclear detonation off South Africa. It was *probably* a joint venture of Israel and South Africa (nice to know if the things really go "boom" when you want), but it was definitely a nuclear detonation. There is a characteristic double-flash from a nuclear explosion which I explain in "Sum." But in that case we were unable to get an airborne sample, and did not declare it a nuke shot. (Were we creatively incompetent in getting the RC-135 there because of the Israeli connection?)

There followed an amusing discussion of high-altitude "super-lightning" as a cover for the actual event. This phenomenon is real, but it wasn't the first time the Vela satellite saw it by a long shot.

TC
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Subject: Re: Bombing in Atlanta

Date: 1996/07/28
Clancy proposes:

Why call this Atlanta event a "terrorist incident?

First, it was a crude device.

Second, the caller was evidently just a regular jerk.

This dolt was a criminal. That's all. Just a criminal. Was there any political content to the crime? I think not on first inspection.

He's just a criminal, a common, everyday jerk (statistically it is likely that he's got a rap-sheet or has seen the inside of a mental-health institution). Find him. Try him. Fry him.

But don't *elevate* him, okay? How much less of a problem would we have if the media had the brains to deny these bastards the publicity they crave? I do not propose censorship, which is unconstitutional in any case, but the press *does* choose what they print and how they print it. A little thought on their part would go a long way.

TC
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Subject: Re: Terrorists and Freedo

Date: 1996/08/16
Clancy on Low-Intensity Conflict.

In the immortal words of General P. X. Kelley, Commandant of the United
States Marine Corps:

"If they're shooting at me, it's a HIGH-intelsity conflict."

Something worth keeping in mind.

TC
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Subject: Re: Is Tom Clancy a Freemason?

Date: 1996/08/18
Clancy on Freemasonry:

No, I do not belong. The Catholic Church may still prohibit it for us fish-eaters, and I'm not much of a joiner anyway. On the other hand the Masons and the Shriners support hospitals for crippled and burned kids, among their other charitable works, and I'm not going to knock them.

TC
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Subject: Re: Progression of Presidents

Date: 1996/08/24
Clancy deposes on Ryan politics:

WHAT politics?

I assiduously avoided politics in the book - or at least I tried to do so.