He paid, which was nice.
What was even nicer was that he had read my spy thriller Operation Herod.
“There is just one problem with it,” he said tactfully. “That jet
fighter that you mentioned? It could never be used on an aircraft carrier. You
see, it’s an F22.”
I said this was fascinating, and useful. I also observed that
he’d had a copy of the manuscript for three years, and it would have been even
more fascinating and useful if he could have pointed out this solecism before
publication.
But what the heck.
My friend went on, “All
US carriers currently fly the F18, in the future theirs — and ours — will fly
the F35, but the F22 will never be carrier-compatible.”
Apparently
there were all kinds of problems with the sexy fighter jet I had chosen for my
sexy CIA operative and former Marine pilot Minerva Caine to fly on a mission with Rupert Hood.
Although
I had correctly given the jet an arresting hook, which it would need for an
aircraft carrier landing, this was not sufficient to make it carrier
compatible.
F22s
do have such hooks, but they are only used on land airstrips, in emergencies,
to stop the planes at the end of the runway. The F22 doesn’t have the heavier
structure undercarriage needed to survive the stresses of a carrier landing.
There
are all sorts of other problems with adapting a jet for carrier work. The
engine intakes have to be customized to avoid corrosion damage from salt water,
for instance.
I
know all that now, thanks to my friend. “I am sorry to be so irritatingly
pedantic about aircraft carriers,” he said. “I hope you’re not annoyed by the
correction.”
Not
at all, I said. I wasn’t put out. On the contrary, I got a kick out of it.
While I wouldn’t dare to compare myself to the great Ian Fleming (I could never
smoke all those cigarettes, for a start), this episode nonetheless gave me a
little thrill because it reminded me so clearly of Fleming being taken to task
by weapons expert Geoffrey Boothroyd for giving Bond the wrong kind of gun.
If anybody else spots factual errors in the Rupert Hood books (or indeed in today's blog post),
please get in touch and I’ll try and correct them in later editions.
Meanwhile, enjoy the pictures of the F22 (from Defense Industry Daily), the F18 (Wikipedia) and the F35 (The World of Aeronautics blog).
