Military fiction is among the oldest forms of fiction -- one could argue that even The Iliad is partly a form of military fiction. I have a variety of military fiction, most of it set in some time within about the last 200 years.
| A mil-fic epic: the Hornblower Saga | Mil-fic set in World War II |
The adventures of James Bond |
Modern military fiction |
Of course, World War II provides plenty of material for military-fiction writers. As I'm interested in the history of WW2, I also enjoy good, technically accurate WW2 military fiction. Alistair MacLean wrote a number of WW2 novels, some good, some not so good:
HMS ULYSSES
c.1955, Fawcett
ISBN: 0-449-12582-3
MacLean's first WW2 novel, and at least his second-best. HMS Ulysses is a Royal Navy light cruiser assigned to the Murmansk (Arctic) convoy run. She's fast, powerful, well-equipped, modern -- and carries a dying captain and a mutinous crew. She and her squadron have been assigned to escort the eighteen loaded merchant ships of convoy FR-77 to Russia. The Germans will do everything they can to stop the convoy. 'Everything' includes attacks by U-boats, two- and four-engine bombers, and even Germany's only surviving heavy cruiser. The Arctic convoy run was among the most thoroughly miserable parts of the naval war, and MacLean does a creditable job of showing just how awful it was. Part of the novel's success probably stems from the fact that MacLean was there -- he was a crewman in the Royal Navy during WW2, and served aboard a light cruiser on the Arctic convoy run.
THE GUNS OF NAVARONE
c.1957
It's mid-1943. A heavy German offensive in the Aegean Sea has left a British garrison facing extermination. The only way to evacuate the garrison leads past the German-held island of Navarone, and an enormous rock fortress that holds two battleship-caliber heavy guns. No ship can approach without being sunk; no airplane can make a bomb run on the cave that holds the guns. The only chance to destroy the guns is a strike by a carefully selected team of commandos. The team must travel to Navarone by boat, land on the island without being detected by the Germans, then travel overland to the fortress, get inside, and destroy it. They have a long way to go, most of it through enemy-patrolled waters, and a series of misfortunes seem determined to end their mission before it begins. Some of the misfortunes seem more than coincidental, and are -- a traitor has betrayed the team to the enemy. This novel is usually considered MacLean's best. It was made into a classic war movie by the same name.
FORCE 10 FROM NAVARONE
c.1968, Fawcett
ISBN: 0-449-23949-9
The Navarone team's next assignment. They're tired, they're stressed, they have three overeager, inexperienced Royal Marine commandos for a backup team, and their mission is more impossible than Navarone was: saving a force of 7000 Yugoslav resistance fighters (Partisans) trapped by German forces in the mountains of Bosnia. The Partisans are pinned down within a "cage" of impassable mountains, armed only with small-arms, with German heavy forces guarding all three of the access routes: two mountain passes and a bridge across a river gorge. This is a creditable piece of work, but it isn't as successful as THE GUNS OF NAVARONE was. There's an unpleasant feeling of pieces being moved on a chessboard -- plots and counterplots, double agents, triple agents, all impossibly complex, all working out in just the right sequence for Mallory and his team to accomplish their mission.
Edward Beach (Captain USN, Ret) wrote a couple of novels about submarine war in the Pacific to go with the nonfiction books he wrote about submarining:
RUN SILENT, RUN DEEP
c.1955, Pocket Books
A first-person narrative of American submarine combat in WW2, told by submarine commander "Rich" Richardson. He starts as the commander of an S-boat in the Atlantic Fleet in late 1941, just before the war. His Executive Officer's examination for command turns into a disaster that sets the two friends against each other. Then his S-boat is given to the Free Polish Navy. He and his crew, including his angry Exec, are then transferred to the new fleet submarine Walrus and sent to the Pacific to join the submarine war against Japan. Once Walrus is in the Pacific, the story becomes largely a fictionalized account of the submarine war that the author lived through. Richardson commands Walrus on four war patrols, sinks a number of ships, is depth-charged by destroyers and a Q-ship. The story gets more intense when Rich and Walrus tangle with a particular Japanese destroyer captain, Tateo Nakame, known as "Bungo Pete" to the Americans because he oeprates around the Bungo Suido entrance to the Inland Sea. After an encounter with Bungo Pete leaves Richardson with a broken leg, he goes on shore duty for several months. During that time he participates in the program to solve the submarine torpedo fiasco. After Walrus is sunk by Bungo Pete, Richardson takes a new submarine, the Eelfish, and sets off on a mission of revenge that leads him to break the ultimate seaman's taboo, by killing survivors of a sunken ship.
DUST ON THE SEA
c.1972, Zebra Books
ISBN: 0-8217-2580-7
The sequel to RUN SILENT, RUN DEEP. It isn't nearly as good, unfortunately, and that seems to be partly a result of the switch from first-person to third-person narrative. As it opens, submarine commander "Rich" Richardson is recovering from the devastating ordeal he underwent at the end of RUN SILENT, RUN DEEP. His next war patrol aboard his submarine Eel proves to be no easier, as he heads deep into enemy waters as flagship of a wolfpack. Up against very effective enemy forces, Eel is having both personnel problems and mechanical problems. To top things off the pack commander, an old friend of Rich's, is acting more and more erratic as time passes.
For years I thought Beach was the best writer there was of WW2 submarine material, both fictional and factual. I still think he's very, very good. But not the best, not any more. He lost the 'factual' title to Richard O'Kane the moment I picked up O'Kane's CLEAR THE BRIDGE! Then he also lost the 'fictional' title to Harry Homewood, when I picked up Homewood's first book. Homewood served aboard several subs as an enlisted man, which gives him a different view of submarine warfare than you get from ex-officers like Beach. He wrote two novels about WW2 submarine warfare. Unfortunately, both seem to be long out of print. Which is a pity, because my copies of both have been read to shreds, and I'd really like to replace them.
FINAL HARBOR
c.1980, Bantam Books
ISBN: 0-553-23823-X
The story of USS Mako, a fictional sub involved in the Pacific War during the first couple of years of the war. It's also the story of her captain, Arthur Hinman, who runs headlong into a bit of history you won't read much about in the official versions: the wrangling and political infighting that divided the American command staffs during the first two years of the war. Between the faulty torpedoes, the command failures, and other problems, the story of US submarines in the Pacific during 1942 and early 1943 was not a happy one, and Homewood doesn't gloss over any of it.
SILENT SEA
c.1981, Bantam Books
ISBN: 0-553-20923-X
A direct sequel to FINAL HARBOR, which starts only a couple of days later. This one describes the war experiences of USS Eelfish, commanded by Michael Brannon, who was Executive Officer aboard the Mako at the beginning of FINAL HARBOR. In SILENT SEA, Eelfish and her crew perform a variety of tasks typical of submarine duties in the Pacific War during 1943-45: besides attacking enemy ships, they run messages, pick up and land special agents, and rescue American flyers from downed aircraft. They also have sideline seats for several of the war's major engagements, like the Battle of Leyte Gulf.
I don't find spy novels especially interesting -- real spy stories seem to beat them all hollow. About the only spy novels I have are Ian Fleming's James Bond novels, which I got into by way of being a fan of the early James Bond films:
- CASINO ROYALE -- Le Chiffre, a French union leader and covert Russian agent, is trying to get out of money problems via gambling at the casino in Royale-les-Eaux. Bond's assignment: beat Le Chiffre at the gaming tables and ensure the ruin of his union. His problem: the enemy already knows about him and his mission, and is determined to see that he fails. When Bond succeeds in his mission despite a bungled assassination attempt, Le Chiffre resorts to more direct means to get the money he needs. A simple and straightforward story, this novel is made more interesting (to me) by Fleming's meticulous descriptions of Bond's gambling methods and tactics.
- LIVE AND LET DIE -- Very old gold coins are being sold in America through the crime network of "Mr. Big," a master criminal whose organization includes only blacks. The coins are apparently treasure-trove, from the treasure of the late-17th-century British politician and pirate Sir Henry Morgan. Because it's happening on US soil, the CIA is involved; because the trove is thought to be on British territory, Bond's Secret Service has a role to play. Bond and American agent Felix Leiter are assigned to penetrate Mr. Big's organization and find the coins' source.
- MOONRAKER -- A personal mission becomes a professional one after Bond's boss M asks his champion agent to help him find out if multi-millionaire businessman Sir Hugo Drax is cheating in high-stakes card games. M is concerned because Drax has developed a prototype ballistic missile for the British government which is capable of carrying an atomic warhead. The Moonraker is days from its first test and appears to be headed for complete success -- so why was the agent assigned to watch Drax's project suddenly and inexplicably murdered? And just why does Drax cheat at cards? The rationale behind Drax's actions depends heavily on some history that few people know: Nazi commando operations in Germany toward the end of WW2. It's worth noting that Fleming's explanations for his villains' actions are always pretty believable and pretty well rooted in reality, unlike the "crazy superrich man" that's so often used as the villain in Bond movies.
- DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER -- James Bond is assigned to infiltrate a diamond-smuggling operation run by American gangsters based in Las Vegas. Along the way he gets a tour de force of the American underworld: crooked horseracing, rigged gaming tables in Las Vegas, and more. He's assisted by his old friend Felix Leiter, who is now a private eye, and by other agents for the Pinkerton's detective agency. Again, a fairly straightforward story that's made much more interesting by the detailed descriptions of gambling and criminal networks.
- FROM RUSSIA, WITH LOVE -- The Russian anti-espionage organization SMERSH develops a complex plan to kill a well-known Western secret agent, as another stroke in the Cold War. Their bait: an advanced cipher machine and a beautiful girl. Their chosen target: James Bond. Their plan: Kill Bond in such a way that it looks like suicide, and causes a scandal in England. Bond knows there's something underhanded going on, but he has no idea what until it's almost too late for him to react. The movie version of this is rare among Bond movies in that it sticks quite close to the book, with only a few additions and changes.
- DOCTOR NO -- After being poisoned by a Russian agent, Bond returns from sick-leave to be given what seems like a "milk run" mission: find out what happened to the Secret Service's resident agent at Nassau in the Bahamas. The trail leads to a mysterious island called Crab Key and a half-German, half-Chinese eccentric with the peculiar name "Doctor No." He seems harmless enough . . . so why is Strangways dead, and why is someone trying to kill Bond? It turns out that Doctor No's island is hiding a secret: a hidden Russian-funded base intended to sabotage the United States ballistic-missile research program.
- GOLDFINGER -- Auric Goldfinger is one of the richest men in the world. Most of his wealth is in gold, which the Royal Bank of England thinks was smuggled out of England. At their request, Bond makes contact with and then follows Goldfinger in an attempt to figure out whether Goldfinger is smuggling gold, and if so, how? The original assignment becomes almost moot when Bond stumbles onto Goldfinger's true master plan: the greatest bank robbery in history. Goldfinger has allied himself with a dozen American crimelords, and intends to raid Fort Knox. Bond is captured but manages to avoid having his true identity uncovered. Instead, he becomes one of Goldfinger's advisors, unwillingly helping Goldfinger while looking for a way to turn the tables on him.
- THUNDERBALL -- The organized crime syndicate known as S.P.E.C.T.R.E. has stolen two atomic bombs from the RAF and is using them in a game of global blackmail. James Bond is one of hundreds of agents sent out to all corners of the globe, to try to find the missing bombs before SPECTRE's deadline expires. His assignment is the Bahamas; his partner, none other than his old friend Felix Leiter, recalled to duty by the American CIA. His opponent: Emilio Largo, field commander for SPECTRE.
- THE SPY WHO LOVED ME -- An unusual entry in the series, this is written in first person. A young woman working at a remote hotel/resort finds herself in the middle of a battle between James Bond and a couple of very nasty thugs, agents of the resort's owner who wants to burn it as an insurance scam.
- ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE -- After the Thunderball affair, SPECTRE's leader Ernst Stavro Blofeld disappeared. Now he's surfaced again, and Bond goes after him. The trail leads to an estate high in the Alps, and a new and diabolical plan against England. Along the way, Bond encounters a beautiful, suicidally depressed young woman named Tracy di Vicenzo, whose father happens to be Marc-Ange Draco, head of the Union Corse, the most powerful crime organization in France. Draco finds some information on Blofeld's whereabouts, and Bond pursues it to Blofeld's new lair, a remote skiing hostel in the Alps. Blofeld is up to his old tricks, it turns out, planning a biological-warfare attack on England. Unable to get any help through his Service, Bond instead turns to the Union Corse to assemble an assault team and destroy Blofeld's mountaintop retreat.
- YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE -- In deep depression after the death of his wife, Bond is sent on a diplomatic mission to Japan, to form an alliance between the British Secret Service and the Japanese Secret Service. "Tiger" Tanaka, leader of the Japanese organization, requests an unusual form of assistance from Bond in return for the alliance: help him kill a Westerner named "Dr Shatterhand," who has set up a "garden of death" where more and more Japanese are going to commit ritual suicide. Who is this mysterious Westerner? None other than Bond's nemesis: Ernst Stavro Blofeld!
- THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN -- Bond goes up against the world's greatest assassin: Francisco Scaramanga, in an operation to both kill Scaramanga and ruin a criminal enterprise he's running in the Bahamas.
- FOR YOUR EYES ONLY -- A collection of five short stories about some of Bond's short missions, some professional, others personal.
- OCTOPUSSY -- Another collection of short stories about some of Bond's shorter missions.
Within the last few years, a new type of military fiction has been a big hit: the "techno-thriller" which uses a lot of advanced, high-tech modern weaponry in a good old-fashioned military-fiction setting. Tom Clancy is probably the best known author of techno-thrillers. I have three of his novels:
THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER
c. 1984
A new, very advanced Soviet missile submarine attempts to defect to the United States. Complex moves and countermoves ensue as the American Navy tries to find her, while the Soviet Navy tries to make sure she never reaches her destination. The depictions of American and Soviet submarine types, capabilities, and doctrines in this book were so accurate that it's rumored the American government looked into the possibility that there had been an intelligence leak.
RED STORM RISING
c. 1985
In this very long novel, Clancy spins a complex tale of a conventional ground war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, fought in West Germany in the style long assumed by planners on both sides: WW2-style armored/infantry combat, with modern weapons. The reader gets views of the war at sea from a nuclear submarine; the war on land as seen by an American armored-cavalry troop, the war in the air through a variety of viewpoints; the intelligence war; and the special war fought by the commanders and their political masters.
PATRIOT GAMES
c.1987, Berkley
In the internal chronology, this is the first of Jack Ryan's adventures. While Ryan and his family are on vacation in England, they get caught in an attack by Irish terrorists attack against the Prince of Wales, heir to the British throne. Ryan intervenes, and with a lot of luck he kills one terrorist and captures another. The action then becomes something of a cop/spy thriller, following Ryan's life as the captured terrorist is tried and convicted, then escapes, then makes two separate attempts to finish the job by attacking Ryan and his family back home in America. I find this novel really interesting for two reasons: the detailed description of how the international-intelligence game works, and the material on guns and shooting. Other than that, PATRIOT GAMES is forgettable. Clancy was never very good at writing good characters or believable stories, and he didn't do those things any better in this novel than in any other.
Clancy went on to write other techno-thrillers -- CARDINAL OF THE KREMLIN (which is more of a spy novel), CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER, THE SUM OF ALL FEARS, DEBT OF HONOR -- but I don't think any of those measure up to the first two.
Many other authors have followed in Clancy's footsteps. Some of them have surpassed his output in quality if not in quantity.
Stephen Coonts wrote a series of novels that follow a US Navy carrier pilot, Jake Grafton, from Vietnam up to a fictional present. I read aout four or five of these before I lost interest, but I've only kept two:
FLIGHT OF THE INTRUDER
c.1986, Pocket
ISBN: 0-671-64012-7
Lieutenant Jacob Grafton is an A-6 Intruder pilot assigned to an aircraft carrier cruising off the Vietnam coast in 1971-72, striking at targets on land. The plot follows Grafton through a cross-section of typical events for a combat bomber pilot during Vietnam: carrier launches and landings, tanker flights, bombing flights, and shipboard life. An unusual aspect is that Grafton loses his bombardier to a rifle bullet while on a combat strike. Angry and depressed, Grafton talks his new bombardier into trying an unauthorized bombing strike against the North Vietnamese capital. His career survives -- barely -- which is perhaps the least believable thing that happens in the story. He returns to flying combat missions, and finally gets shot down over Vietnam. he and his bombardier are nearly killed before they can be rescued.
THE INTRUDERS
c.1994, Pocket
ISBN: 0-671-87061-0
A direct sequel to FLIGHT OF THE INTRUDER. The Vietnam War is over, and Jake Grafton is assigned to a land-based training squadron for A-6 crews. But Grafton can't forget either the war or the fury he feels at antiwar civilians. After an incident where he throws a loudmouth through a bar window, Grafton is transferred to a Marine A-6 squadron that is going out aboard another carrier. His time with the Marines becomes a tour of peacetime carrier flying: tankers, bombing practice, a "demonstration" over a Russian task force.
Richard Herman is another techno-thriller author. I've only read his first novel:
WARBIRDS, THE
Herman, Richard
c.1989, Avon Books
ISBN: 0-380-70838-8
This follows a US Air Force tactical attack wing through a fictional conflict in the Persian Gulf region circa the early 1990s. It focuses on a single junior pilot named Jack Locke. Along the way, it shows him and the wing training and fighting, and also dealing with the labyrinth of Air Force command politics. The combat sequences are very realistic. The behind-the-scenes political crap is infuriating .. which probably means it's also very realistic.
James Cobb's contribution to the genre is a series of novels that focus on the command career of Amanda Garrett, Commander in the United States Navy. Currently there are four novels in this series:
CHOOSERS OF THE SLAIN
c.1996, Berkley
ISBN: 0-425-16053-X
The USS Cunningham is the US Navy's first stealth warship, fitted with a series of high-tech systems to defeat enemy radar, infrared imaging, and sonar systems. She also carries a wide array of advanced weaponry, from long-range SAMs to heavy land-attack missiles and even a single anti-satellite missile. But the ship, the crew, the captain, and the technology are all untried in combat conditions. In this book, Garrett and her ship and crew undergo their trial by fire. The government of Argentina is trying to seize control of the San Martin Peninsula on Antarctica. They've already sent an advance force to secure the bases there that were run by other countries. Now they need to reinforce and resupply those bases. The Cunningham is sent to enforce a naval blockade between Argentina and its advance force on the peninsula. In about a week's time, the Cunningham fights four major actions against all the foes a modern warship might face: two different air strikes, a submarine attack, and a vicious surface battle with the Argentine reinforcement convoy and its escorts.
SEA STRIKE
c.1997, Berkley Books
ISBN: 0-425-16616-3
After the Argentina battle, the Cunningham is assigned to the Pacific Fleet, just in time to watch as a war breaks out in China. Republic of China troops from Taiwan have allied themselves with domestic rebel groups and launched an invasion of mainland China. The Communist Chinese regime threatens to defend itself with nuclear weapons. The Republic answers this threat by revealing it has acquired nukes of its own. The watching US Naval ships are drawn in when the Chinese sail their only operational ballistic-missile submarine -- invisible and untraceable, the submarine will become a permanent threat. Except .. the submarine never actually left Chinese waters. With her superiors' permission, Commander Garrett takes the Cunningham into Chinese coastal waters in a desperate attempt to find and destroy the submarine before the war goes nuclear.
SEA FIGHTER
c.2000, Jove Books
ISBN: 0-515-12982-8
Obe Belewa is a career army officer in the Nigerian Army. he's also sick of watching Africa tear itself apart, so he sets himself up as a military dictator and takes over first Liberia and then Sierra Leone, combining the two into the West African Union. A United Nations force is organized to counter Belewa's new aggression, against Guinea. The UN force consists of a hodge-podge of units from different countries, which in a typical UN way are hamstrung by a lack of coordination and a worthless command structure. The international forces have only two advantages. One is PGAC-1, three American Navy hovercraft that have been modified into heavily armed "seafighters." The other is the aggressive, skilled Commanding Officer of PGAC-1: one Captain Amanda Garrett. This is an excellent piece of work, wlel above the run-of-the-mill military thriller, largely because Cobb takes the time to make General Belewa more than a cardboard third-world dictator.
TARGET LOCK
Cobb, James H.
c.2002, Jove Books
ISBN: 0-515-13413-9
It's common knowledge that piracy is rampant in the waters around Indonesia. It's not known how extensive the piracy is, or how well-equipped the pirates are. In Cobb's version of events, they're well-equipped enough to steal an incredibly valuable industrial satellite laboratory, and hold it for ransom. The US Naval Special Task Force, with Garrett in tactical command, is assigned to find the satellite fast, before the pirates can sell its contents. In the process, she and her force discover that the "pirates" are in reality a well-trained, well-equipped, well-led guerilla combat force, and the satellite theft was committed to help fund their operation. But what is that operation's ultimate goal?
