....started WWIII.
64 years ago, a former American war correspondent named Pat Frank released a novel called "Alas Babylon". I read it the first time in the mid-1970s. I'm sure other tman guys read the book back in their youth, although the younger crowd probably know nothing of it.
The book is mostly about a group of people in rural central Florida surviving a nuclear war between the USSR and the USA. Well written stories are often multi-scaled; either geographically, temporally, or both. Frank does this early on to set the stage of the main story. In Alas Babylon, WWIII starts accidentally in a tension filled world because of seemingly minor event that spins badly out of control. Here's the small part from the book about how U.S. Navy officer "Peewee" Cobb puts a match to the geopolitical tinder...
Peewee Cobb had been given a code name, Sunflower Four, and instructions to orbit over an
area of sea off Haifa, astern of Task Group 6.7. If the hostile reconnaissance jet came in from a
base in Egypt or Albania, he would be in a position to intercept.
His fighter was armed with Sidewinders, ingenious, single minded rockets, heat-seekers. A Sidewinder's nose was sensitive
to infra-red rays from any heat source. Peewee had fired two in practice. They not only had
destroyed the targets, but had unerringly vanished up the tail pipes of the drones.
At thirty thousand feet, Peewee judged he was on station and called for a radar fix. The
missile-cruiser Canberra, closest ship in the formation, confirmed his position. As he circled, the
sky in the southeast grew light. When the sun touched his wingtips, the sea was still dark below.
Then gradually, the shape and color of sea and earth became plain. He felt entirely alone and
apart from this transformation, as if he watched from a separate planet. He checked his map. Far
to the east he picked out Mount Carmel, and a river, and beyond were the hills of Megiddo, also
called Armageddon. He continued to orbit.
His earphones crackled and he acknowledged Saratoga. The fighter controller's voice said,
"Sunflower Four, we have a bogy. He is at angels twenty-five, his speed five hundred knots.
Your intercept course is thirty degrees. Go get him!"
So the snooper was already north of him and racing up the coast, hoping to hang on to the
flank of the task group and observe it by radar from a position close to friendly Syrian territory.
Peewee took his heading and pushed his throttle up to ninety-nine percent power. He slid through
the mach with a slight, thrilling tremor. Every fifteen or twenty seconds he made minute
alterations in course in response to directions from Saratoga, which was holding both planes on
its screens.
Then he saw it, flicker of sun on metal, diving at great speed. He pushed the Tiger's nose over
and followed, reporting, "I am closing target." He touched the switch that armed his rockets, and
another calling for manual fire, singly.
The chase had carried him down to nine thousand feet and the bogy was still losing altitude. It
was a two-engined jet, an IL-33, Peewee believed, and remarkably fast at this low level. There
was no doubt the bogy knew he was on its tail, for reconnaissance aircraft would be well
equipped with radar. His speed held steady at mach 1.5, but his rate of closure slowed.
Far ahead Peewee saw the Syrian port of Latakia, reputedly built into an important Red
submarine base. Within a few seconds he would be within Syrian territorial waters, and a few
more would carry him over the port itself.
At this point Peewee should have dropped the chase, for they had been strictly warned, in the
briefing, against violating anyone's borders. He hung on. In another five seconds.
The bogy finked violently to the right, heading for the port and its anti-aircraft and rocket
batteries and perhaps the sanctuary of an airfield in the brown hills and dunes beyond.
Peewee turned the F-11-F inside him, instantly shortening the range.
He pushed the firing button.
The Sidewinder, leaving a thin pencil mark of smoke, rushed out ahead.
For an instant the Sidewinder seemed to be following the flight of the bogy beautifully, and
Peewee waited for it to merge into the tail pipe of one of the jet engines. Then the Sidewinder
seemed to waver in its course.
Peewee believed, although he could not be certain, that the bogy had cut its engines and was
in a steep glide. Following the Sidewinder, Peewee lost sight of the bogy.
The Sidewinder darted downward, toward the dock area of Latakia.It seemed to be chasing a train. That crazy rocket, Peewee thought.
There was an orange flash and an enormous ball of brown smoke and black bits of debris
rushing up to meet him. Peewee kicked his rudder hard and climbed away from it, compressed
within his G-suit and momentarily losing his vision. Then the shock wave kicked him in the rear
and he was out over the Mediterranean again. He was asking for a vector back to his ship when
another flash reflected on his instrument panel. He banked to look back, and saw a black cloud,
red flames at its base, rising from Latakia.
Fifteen minutes later Ensign Cobb, freckles standing out on his white face like painted
splotches, was standing in Admiral's Country of Saratoga trying to explain what had happened.
Last edited by NonPCfed; 05/31/23 07:26 PM.
