The death last week of Tom Clancy recalled an evening in the early summer of 1986, in a small hotel bar in Newport, RI, a couple of miles down the road from the US Naval War College.
Earlier there had been formal sessions bringing mid-career US submarine officers together with civilian journalists in an effort to — in the words of one organizer — “achieve greater understanding.”
This was construed to mean that the submarine service wanted a bigger slice of the Reagan defense-spending bonanza, and thought shining a little light on one of Navy’s most successful, but obsessively secretive, branches might help.
Yet that day the Silent Service had lived up to its reputation: There was talk, but virtually no information of consequence was exchanged.
After dinner in the hotel bar, it would be a little different.
Eight or 10 officers sat around a long table. Some commanded, or soon would, attack submarines — designed to destroy other submarines. Others drove ballistic-missile boats — designed to destroy, well, the world.
So they were very serious men, albeit in good spirits that evening. But they were beyond fascinated with Clancy and his novel “The Hunt for Red October,” then a runaway best-seller.
Who the hell was he, and how did he come by the sensitive detail peppered through “Red October,” if not the very concept of the novel?
The officers understood what the nation at large then did not — that “Red October,” Clancy’s first novel, was as much fact as fiction. The plot-line was fantastical, sure, but the Cold War’s undersea rivalry was ongoing, hands-on and fraught with great peril — and every man at the table had been there and done that, and thus just knew.
That evening, they wondered how Clancy did, too.
He was a life insurance salesman, for Pete’s sake. Obviously the Navy had put him up to it, and assisted along the way, right? Wasn’t “Red October”the first novel ever published by the venerable US Naval Institute Press? Didn’t that say something? And so on.
It was all very good-natured, and before long the table concluded that the Navy had indeed greased the skids for Clancy — that in all likelihood “Red October”was a product of the same public-relations apparatus that had brought everyone to the War College that day. And for the same reason.
The officers seemed pleased, and good for them. Doesn’t everyone deserve a moment in the sun? Especially folks who are secretive both by law and by tradition?
Yet their conclusions sold Tom Clancy short by a substantial margin. “Red October” was indeed his first novel, but who could have imagined what was to come — a whole new genre, the military techno-thriller?
One should never discount what can be concluded from stringing together technical tidbits from open-source journals.
Reports in the various Jane’s defense publications a decade ago revealed — though not in so many words — that Israel had cobbled together a credible submarine-based second-strike nuclear capability. This was a development of great political and military significance, and a “secret” that would’ve fit neatly into a Clancy novel plot, had he ever had time for it.
But he was a busy guy. His novels tumbled out one after another, testimony to the talents of a fellow who read all the Jane’s publications — and could spin a yarn like a top.
The best of them were spellbinders, like “Red October,” and all were populated by uncomplicated men, honor-bound in service to America’s ideals, if not always to America’s leaders.
His heroes may not have been the most human of characters, but they were credible — distilled from the likes of the quiet, capable, competent submarine officers sitting around that long table in Newport almost three decades ago.
Certainly Clancy had much confidence in the universe from which he pulled his characters — as did America, which was one reason why his work was so popular then.
Things are more jumbled today.
Yes, if a Russian or Chinese ballistic-missile submarine is at sea today, one can be reasonably sure that an American attack submarine is somewhere in the vicinity.
But it is significant that the first time a US submarine purpose-built to launch guided missiles went to war, in April 2011, the target was Libya and the weapons were conventionally armed Tomahawks.
That there was never a call to use the heavier stuff is a blessing, obviously, but it also speaks to the competence and courage that Tom Clancy saw in the men of the Navy’s submarine service.
He loved them, and they loved him. RIP.