MY CHIEF ADVISER THROUGHOUT THE LONG MONTHS OF writing this novel was Admiral Sir John (“Sandy”) Woodward, the Royal Navy’s senior Task Group Commander in the South Atlantic during the battle for the Falkland Islands in 1982. There are some who consider this former naval Commander-in-Chief one of the best naval strategists of recent times. Perhaps more widely held is the view that Admiral Woodward was also one of the better submarine specialists the Royal Navy ever had. “My task for the Nimitz Class,” he once said, “is to keep the story feasible, to keep it within the boundaries of possibility, where fiction has to be less strange than truth.”
His advice was as careful as it was thorough. Somewhat miraculously, the admiral is still in my corner.
On the infrequent occasions when Sandy was unavailable, I turned for technical expertise to my friend, Captain David Hart Dyke, another retired Royal Navy officer who also faced the guns and bombs of the Argentinean Air Force in the South Atlantic in1982.
Captain Peter O’Connor, the former Commanding Officer of the guided missile cruiser USS Yorktown, was my principal U.S. Naval adviser. He has my enduring thanks for his time and patience. Another Virginian, retired Vice Admiral Robert F. Dunn, generously provided me with superb data on the day-to-day operations in a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier.
There were many other serving officers, both submariners and surface ship executives on both sides of the Atlantic, who were more than happy to guide me through the techniques of command, and I thank them all, and wish I could name them personally.
I thank, too, Alan Friedman, author of Spider’s Web, for his careful advice about the banking tactics of the more dubious Middle Eastern regimes.
Finally, I would like to thank my longtime friend and colleague, Joe Farrell of Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, who read the manuscript meticulously, separating American and English phrases and the military jargon which enters a book such as this. He says he was given the task of preventing American fighter pilots from sounding like Winston Churchill.
Since he also arranged my introduction to Captain O’Connor, I’ll forgive his irreverence.