I picked up a book about writing that was recommended, of all places, on a forum about video games. Its called Spider, Spin Me a Web by Lawrence Block and it contains a bunch of essays collected from his column on fiction writing for Writer’s Digest magazine. Its a good and quick read and every chapter is a self contained nugget of writing goodness. One chapter talked about writing in the style of your favorite author.
I got turned on to Tom Clancy during high school and it always fascinated me how he could go on and on about the way technology worked. He made it sound fascinating and not at all like a technical manual. I wouldn’t call him my favorite author, but it made me think about attempting to do the same thing but for a different time period. I have to say, this kind of writing involves a heck of a lot of research and I don’t know if I’m cut out for this kind of techno-realism. Which is great because that was the point of trying to write in someone else’s style: to figure out if that’s the kind of writing I wanted to do.
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August 5, 1940. The sky was still pitch black and the German ground crews were already busy. German airbases doting the French countryside came alive with a steadily increasing hum of activity. Fighters were being fueled and made ready for combat while bombers had their precious cargo loaded carefully on board.
The flight crews and pilots were busy with their own preparations. Each squadron had already been briefed on the on their different missions. Coordination of the different bomber raids and fighter escort would be the key to their success. Several bomber crews would be attacking airfields located near the British coast while others were to attack the radar towers which sprouted up along the coastline. The Germans knew little about the radar towers and still less about how they, along with the British coast watch units, were tied into a complex network of switchboards and command posts. They did not know that the British had already created an integrated aerial defense system designed to help determine when and where the German air raiders were going to strike next. And more importantly, how best to intercept them.
On the British side of the Channel, near Dover, Airman Donaldson manned his radar station located in a small underground bunker just south of several large steel radar towers. The radar console had a round glass display in the center. Unlike modern radar displays which showed a radial line sweeping in a circular motion, the display showed a bright fluorescent green line running along the bottom of the screen. The line was currently flat, meaning that the radar waves sent out by the tower were not being reflected back by German bombers.
The radar towers themselves rose more than 50 feet high in order to increase their range of detection. It was the same principle that guided sailors to post lookouts on the topmost parts of the ship. In both cases the aim was to see further to the horizon except in this case it was not light waves but radio waves that were being detected. The massive towers sent out continuous pulses of radio waves across the English Channel and several smaller radar receivers front of them monitored whether any of the radio waves were reflected back.
The Airman said a quick thank you as someone handed him a cup of tea. He held it in both hands and took a long slow sip. In almost that same instant radio waves sent out by the radar transmitters, traveling at near the speed of light, had crossed the Channel and reflected off the lead bombers of the first wave. Before he had even put his cup down, some of the radio waves had bounced off the bombers and came straight back to the radar receivers, the signal amplified, and sent straight to his display.
The flat line on the display turned into a curved mound, grew bigger as more radar waves were reflected back by increasing numbers of German bombers. Airman Donaldson put down his cup and swore an oath as he adjusted knobs on his radar set. The set could immediately determine the range, or distance to the approaching bombers but the Airman had to perform manual adjustments in order to determine the bearing or direction they were coming.
Finally he arrived at what appeared to be the best settings and read the numbers on the knobs. He called for the watch officer. “Sir, incoming German raid, bearing 247, range 150 miles. From the strength of the signal I’d say its a big one. Probably 100 planes.”