In the Maurai Grand Fleet, a VTOL plane misses the deck and crashes:
"The armada had taken its first loss, and what killed the man was the North he had come to tame." (p. 364)
The North as enemy is already familiar to us. See Northern Winter. Not all deaths in war are caused by the human enemy. Later, two ships collide in fog and are disabled with casualties. Anderson always describes war as if from experience. He is like a war correspondent from alternative realities.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
You need a very special kind of pilot for taking off and landing on aircraft carriers! It's different from landing and taking off from air strips which STAYS put, as it does on land.
Radar would have helped greatly to prevent the collisions mentioned here. But that was not available to the Maurai. One of the costs of their stand on technology.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: the Maurai didn't have anything against radar, I think. It's just the resource constraints.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Granting that, then why didn't the Maurai build SOME radars? It would have been so useful for their Navy and air force, after all! I would argue a powerful and prosperous state like the Maurai Federation COULD have made some radars--if it really wanted to.
Ad astra! Sean
It's a matter of priorities. They didn't perceive a very strong need for it, and you can't recall lost time.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
True about how in many cases it comes to do picking among priorities. Except, in this case I think the Maurai were mistaken.
Ad astra! Seam
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