Book Review: 'Carrier: A Guided Tour of an Aircraft Carrier'
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| (C) 1999 Berkley Books |
Before his death at the age of 66 in October of 2013, Clancy was also a respected commentator on military affairs, Second Amendment rights, and politics. He was not shy about his conservative views; the Jack Ryan series often depicts liberal politicians (such as the hapless and unethical Edward Kealty, a thinly-disguised doppelganger for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts) as morally weak, idealistic-but-foolish, and sometimes even traitorous antagonists for his earnest avatar, John Patrick Ryan. Clancy, who was an unabashed fan of President Ronald Reagan, often stated his political viewpoints through the thoughts, actions, and speeches of CIA analyst and eventual President of the United States Jack Ryan.
Throughout his 32-year-long career as a writer and political commentator, Clancy tried to educate the American public about the various branches of the armed forces, their roles and missions, and - more importantly - the men and women who serve in them. Clancy did this obliquely in most of his works of fiction, of course, but he also wrote 11 non-fiction books that focused on America's military forces and the many challenges they faced at the turn of the century.
Seven of these non-fiction works made up the Guided Tour series that began with 1993's Submarine: A Guided Tour Inside a Nuclear Warship and ended with 2001's Special Forces: A Guided Tour of U.S. Army's Special Forces. Co-written by Clancy and John D. Gresham, these books give readers a virtual walk-through of various U.S. military units, including a Marine Expeditionary Unit, a U.S. Army armored cavalry regiment, an Air Force fighter wing, and an airborne task force.
They are floating cities with crews of thousands. They are
the linchpins of any military strategy, for they provide what has become the
key to every battle fought since World War I: air superiority. The mere
presence of a U.S. naval carrier in a region is an automatic display of
strength that sends a message no potential enemy can ignore. Now, Tom
Clancy welcomes you aboard for a detailed look at how these floating
behemoths function. With his trademark style and eye for detail, Clancy brings
you naval combat strategy like no one else can.Carrier includes:
* Takeoffs and landings: flying into the danger zone
* The aircraft onboard: their range, their power, their weaponry
* The role of the carrier in modern naval warfare
* Exclusive photographs, illustrations and diagrams
* The aircraft onboard: their range, their power, their weaponry
* The role of the carrier in modern naval warfare
* Exclusive photographs, illustrations and diagrams
Plus: An interview with the U.S. Navy's Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Jay Johnson - From the back cover blurb
Published in 1999, Carrier: A Guided Tour of an Aircraft Carrier is the penultimate book of the Guided Tour series. As the title suggests, Clancy takes readers along for a detailed "field excursion" aboard one of America's Nimitz-class nuclear-powered aircraft carriers.
Due to the prominent nature of the aircraft carrier's place in American defense policy and its primacy in the U.S. fleet, Carrier: A Guided Tour of an Aircraft Carrier covers a wide range of topics. These include:
- The history of U.S. Naval aviation
- The design and construction of a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier
- Concepts for follow-on classes of aircraft carriers
- The make-up of a 1990s-era carrier air wing
- Conjectures about 21st Century carrier air wings
- The integration of women aboard U.S. Navy warships and the aftermath of the 1991 Tailhook scandal
Carrier: A Guided Tour of an Aircraft Carrier is divided into eight chapters. They are:
- Naval Aviation 101
- Hand on the Helm: An Interview with Admiral Jay Johnson
- Wings of Gold: A Naval Aviator's Life
- Building the Boats
- Tools of the Trade: Birds and Bombs
- Carrier Battle Group: Putting It All Together
- Final Examination: JTFEX-97-3
- Aircraft Carriers in the Real World
The book also contains a foreword, an introduction, the usual author's "thank you" page to his creative team, a conclusion that sums up Clancy's take on why carriers are necessary in today's world, a glossary of military terms and acronyms, and a bibliography.
My Take
Whether or not one likes Clancy's works of fiction - or his conservative world-view, for that matter, one can't deny that the late author was instrumental in improving the American public's opinion of our armed forces in the later years of the Cold War.
Before the publication of such novels as The Hunt for Red October and Red Storm Rising, the military and intelligence establishment were often portrayed in a negative light, especially during and shortly after the Vietnam War. CIA and professional military officers were frequently depicted as reactionary, nefarious, and often villainous individuals in the thrall of "dark shadow forces" intent in squashing individual rights in order to fight Communism and other threats to America.
Clancy's books changed all that. The Jack Ryan series - and Clancy's World War III novel Red Storm Rising - shone a more positive light on the CIA, the military, and even the various branches of government. As a result, when the Persian Gulf War of 1991 was fought, most Americans expressed pride in the men and women who served overseas in our first showdown with Saddam Hussein.
Carrier and the other six books in the Guided Tour series should be read by anyone - liberal or conservative - who wants to understand how the military works and why the U.S. needs to spend billions of dollars on defense. Most of us don't know much about our armed forces beyond what we see in movies or video games. and much of that "knowledge" is Hollywood fantasy.
Clancy uses his no-frills, straightforward writing style to explain the complexities of a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, its air wing, and its support vessels in a way that the average reader can understand. His authorial voice, as in his fiction, is that of a guy who wants to tell a story. His prose is crisp and clear, and his descriptions of such things as a nuclear reactor or an F-14 Tomcat are vivid and easily grasped by even the least-technically minded reader.
As a bonus, Clancy closes the book with a short fictitious scenario that puts a carrier group in the middle of a war between two nuclear-armed countries - India and Pakistan. Written in the late 1990s. Aircraft Carriers in the Real World is best described as "speculative fiction" that is intended to sho what a 2015-2016 U.S. Navy might look like if all the upgrades described in the non-fiction chapters of Carrier: A Guided Tour of an Aircraft Carrier had come to pass. The featured carrier, the fictional USS Colin Powell, is a ship of the CVN-77 class, the follow-on to the aging Nimitz-class, and it is home to F/A-18F Super Hornets, F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, and other planes that were still on the drawing board when the book was written. Some of Clancy's predictions, such as the retirement of the Tomcat and the adoption of the JSF into naval service, came true.
Others, though, have not come to pass. The new post-Nimitz class carrier was named Gerald R. Ford, after America's 38th President (who was, by the way, a U.S. Navy officer who saw action aboard an aircraft carrier during World War II) and it is not of the CVN-77 class. Rather, it's a ship of the CVN-21 class, the designation chosen by the Navy for carriers built in the 21st Century.
Happily, there also was no nuclear war between India and Pakistan.
Still, Clancy's Aircraft Carriers in the Real World points out the unpredictability of the post-Cold War world. And considering how much India and Pakistan distrust - and dislike - each other, the late author's choice of adversaries may not be as fanciful as it seems.
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