For Honor We Stand
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First Watch--2000-0000 (1 Blue) (2 Gold) (3 White)
Middle Watch--0000-0400 (1 Gold) (2 White) (3 Blue)
Morning Watch--0400-0800 (1 White) (2 Blue (3 Gold)
Forenoon Watch--0800-1200 (1 Blue) (2 Gold) (3 White)
Afternoon Watch--1200-1600 (1 Gold) (2 White) (3 Blue)
First Dog Watch--1600-1800 (1 White) (2 Blue) (3 Gold)
Second Dog Watch--1800-2000 (1Blue) (2 Gold) (3 White)
The Captain and the XO do not stand a watch. Rather, all officers other than the CO, XO, and the CMO serve as “Officer of the Deck,” serving as the officer in charge of minute to minute operations in CIC when neither the CO nor the XO is in CIC. Officers of the Deck stand watch for eight hour shifts on a rotating basis.
waving the flashlight: manually directing active sensor scans in a particular direction or directions, either from a fixed orientation or from a programmed scan pattern, usually as a means of obtaining more information to develop a passive sensor contact. Waving the flashlight is to be avoided in certain circumstances because doing so alerts the source of the passive contact that you are aware of his presence.
WHAG: Wild Hairy (or Half) Assed Guess. Just what it sounds like—a guess based on almost pure conjecture with little or no supporting evidence. A WHAG is derived almost entirely from the intuition of the guesser. A surprisingly large number of WHAG’s turn out to be correct.
Will Robinson: the traditional naval nickname given to the youngest and/or the smallest of the squeakers or new junior Midshipmen in service at any given time on board a warship. The name is taken from the name of a character in the 1960’s television series Lost in Space, a program based on the doubly ridiculous premise that small starship crewed by a single family and one pilot journeying from Earth to the Alpha Centauri star system to relieve terrestrial overpopulation as part of a family-by-family colonization program became “lost in space.” (Doubly ridiculous because of the absurdity that a colonization effort would be mounted by sending each family in its own starship, rather than in large ships containing hundreds or thousands of families, and the impossibility of becoming “lost in space” so long as the vessel retained the rudimentary equipment necessary to identify stars by their spectra and a database of stellar spectra and coordinates.) In that program, Will Robinson, a child prodigy and the main character in many of the stories, was the youngest member of the family in question. When the program began, he was a boy of about eight or nine, roughly the same age as the youngest squeakers on a modern naval Warship. A recurring feature of the program was the announcing of an approaching hazard by the ambulatory robot assigned to the mission (imaginatively named “Robot”) declaring “Danger, Will Robinson. Danger! Danger!” The program, which began as a fairly straightforward, if scientifically illiterate, adventure series, degenerated into a comic melodrama featuring infantile plots involving improbable alien monsters. The program was roughly contemporary with Star Trek (see) and, during their initial network runs was the more popular of the two, but—unlike Star Trek—had limited cultural influence and almost no influence on human space forces and exploratory programs.
Wing Attack Plan R: A reference to the 1964 Stanley Kubrick film Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Wing Attack Plan R was a fictitious nuclear war plan that enabled the commander of a bomber wing to order the forces under his command to execute a retaliatory strike against the Soviet Union in the event a Soviet first strike killed the President and other civilian authorities. In the film, the plan was devised in response to concerns about the United States “deterrent lacking credibility.” In reality, the United States had an airborne military nuclear command post, code named Looking Glass, continuously in the air during this period which was virtually invulnerable to attack and which had the capability of ordering a retaliatory strike. Accordingly, it is unlikely that there was ever any real plan similar to “Plan R.” Doctor Strangelove is one of the classic films that is part of the Midshipman’s visual literature curriculum, which is why both Captain Robichaux and Lieutenant DeCosta were familiar with it. While a comedy, the film is a generally accurate portrayal of many aspects of the nuclear weapons policy and strategic deterrence theory of the time. It is also the source of the iconic cultural image of the B-52 bomber pilot, Major Kong (played by Slim Pickins), riding the thermonuclear weapon like a bronco down to detonation.
XO: Executive Officer. The second in command of any Warship. On most ships, the XO actually commands the ship through most routine operations and maneuvers, leaving the Captain time to work up battle plans, devise training operations, respond to communications from higher authority, and other high level matters. If the ship is boarded by an enemy, traditionally, the XO commands the Marines and members of the crew tasked with repelling boarders while the CO “fights the ship.” One of the primary responsibilities of the CO is to train the XO to be ready to replace him at any time should the CO be incapacitated or promoted to a higher command, or to assume command of another vessel on his own promotion. Accordingly, in many ways, the XO may be viewed as an “apprentice CO.”
Yankee search: active sensor sweep, i.e., a sweep in which the ship broadcasts sensor beams and detects the reflections from objects in the vicinity, as opposed to the normal sensor mode which is passive detection of emissions from contacts. A Yankee search omni is a sweep in all directions around the ship, as opposed to a Yankee search down a particular bearing or bearings or of a given zone. The term dates back to Salt Water Navy submarines but is otherwise of obscure origin.
Z: (when appended to a time notation) Zulu time. Standard Union Coordinated Time. So that all USN Vessels can conduct coordinated operations, they all operate on Zulu Time, which is, for all intents and purposes, the same as Greenwich Mean Time—mean solar time as measured from the Prime Meridian in Greenwich, England, on Earth in the Sol System. When any other time system is used in any naval communication (such as the Standard time of a planet on which operations are taking place or local time at some place on a planet), that fact is specifically noted. Clocks on Union warships are linked to the ships’ Velocity Register so that they account correctly for any time dilation caused by travel at relativistic speeds. Significant correction is rarely needed, however, because—even though many Union warships are capable of velocities in excess of .95 c—they rarely do so because of the tactical disadvantages imposed upon a ship experiencing time dilation in comparison to other vessels that are not.
Zhou Matrix: a standard fleet static defensive formation in which ships are arrayed in a plane perpendicular to the threat axis with more powerful ships interspersed with less powerful ones to provide mutual fire support and to avoid giving the enemy a “weak zone” to exploit. Named for Rear Admiral Zhou Chou Dong who first proposed it in a lecture on hypothetical future space combat tactics in the former People’s Republic of China in 2022. The Zhou Matrix can also be used offensively as the “anvil” portion of the “Hammer and Anvil” formation invented by Admiral Kathleen “Killer Kate” Phillips” at the Battle of Sirius B on August 22, 2264.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
H. Paul Honsinger is a retired attorney with lifelong interests in space exploration, military history, firearms, and international relations. He was born and raised in Lake Charles, Louisiana and is a graduate of Lake Charles High School, The University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and Louisiana State University Law School in Baton Rouge. Honsinger has practiced law with major firms on the Gulf Coast and in Phoenix, Arizona, and most recently had his own law office in Lake Havasu City, Arizona. He currently lives in Lake Havasu City with his beloved wife, Kathleen, his daughter and stepson, as well as a 185 pound English Mastiff and two highly eccentric cats.
Harvey G. Phillips is a former teacher, educational administrator, car and truck salesman, and newspaper columnist whose hobbies include military science, amateur astronomy, and Byzantine history. He is married to the fantasy/romance author, Laura Jo Phillips, to whom he provides minor as
sistance from time to time with the military, astronomical, scientific, and technological aspects of her stories. He lives in Northwest Arizona with his wife Laura Jo.
This is their second novel.