by Jeff Edwards
It should be noted that Sperry’s attitude toward destructive deterrence, as naive as it may appear in hindsight, was relatively common among arms developers of the early twentieth-century. Sperry and his contemporaries believed that—if the frightfulness of warfare could be escalated far enough—human beings would have no choice but to abandon war. Sadly, two World Wars, countless smaller wars, and a global nuclear arms race have disproved that theory.
Elmer Sperry may have been wrong in predicting the end of armed conflict, but his vision for an autonomous flying weapon captured the attention of the Naval Consulting Board. In 1917, the board awarded the Sperry Gyroscope Company a $200,000 contract to develop an aerial torpedo.
Sperry began by developing a gyroscopic autopilot system, and installing it on a Curtiss N-9 biplane. He wanted to start by demonstrating that an aircraft could regulate itself in flight, without a human at the controls. The N-9 carried a pilot to handle take-off and landing procedures, but the intent was to eventually transition to fully automatic flying. In the meantime, the pilot was also tasked to observe the plane in flight, and report on its performance under control of the autopilot.
After a number of successful test flights, Sperry supervised the construction of a purpose-built aerial torpedo airframe, powered by a two-cylinder engine. The actual manufacturing and assembly of the torpedo airframe prototype was carried out by the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company.
The torpedo prototype was modified to carry a pilot, on the assumption that human observation and assistance would be helpful in identifying and ironing out bugs during the early developmental tests. Sperry’s son, Lawrence, became the test pilot. Although the exact number of test flights is no longer certain, it’s commonly accepted that the Sperry Aerial Torpedo crashed at least four times with Lawrence Sperry at the controls. Available technical data suggests that these incidents were caused by mechanical problems in the prototype, rather than error on the part of the pilot.
In spite of these challenges, Elmer Sperry eventually felt that his torpedo design was sufficiently mature to operate without human assistance. The first unmanned flight of the Sperry Aerial Torpedo took place on March 6, 1918, in what is now regarded as the first successful launch of a guided missile.
Operating completely under automatic control, the torpedo climbed from its launch position to a pre-designated altitude, and continued in smooth, stable flight until the autopilot’s distance control ended the test at a preset range of 1,000 yards.
The maiden test of the Sperry Aerial Torpedo was a success. Unfortunately, it was not to be repeated.
Future flights did not go well, as the unmanned aircraft failed to achieve stable flight, deviated from its intended flight path, or simply fell out of the air. Ultimately, Sperry engineers discarded the purpose-built torpedo airframe, and returned to the Curtiss N-9 test bed to re-examine their entire approach to the design.
While Sperry and Curtiss were struggling with numerous technical challenges, the United States Army Aircraft Board decided to undertake its own aerial torpedo project. The Army asked inventor-engineer Charles Kettering to design an unmanned flying bomb, capable of striking a target at a range of 40 miles or more.
Kettering, who had observed tests of Sperry’s aircraft autopilot in 1917, agreed to take on the challenge of developing an aerial torpedo. While he recognized the potential of Sperry’s earlier engineering in unmanned flight control, Kettering wanted a cheaper and less complicated design.
Working in consultation with Orville Wright and the Dayton-Wright Airplane Company, Kettering developed a lightweight airframe with dihedral biplane wings and a tapered cylindrical fuselage constructed of wood laminates and papier-mâché. Powered by an air-cooled 40 horsepower De Palma engine, the unmanned craft was 12.5 feet long, weighed 530 pounds, and was designed to carry a 180 pound explosive warhead.
Its official title was the Kettering Aerial Torpedo, but people began referring to it as the Kettering Bug almost from the start, possibly in reference to its dragonfly-like silhouette.
Kettering designated independent engineering teams to handle various parts of the developmental research. One of these teams designed an inexpensive portable launch system, consisting of a four-wheeled cradle which rode on two parallel rails.
Although he had set out to develop an autopilot that was cheaper and simpler than the version used in Sperry’s earlier N-9 tests, Kettering was not able to produce a workable model of his own. Ultimately, he asked Elmer Sperry for assistance. Although they were technically competitors, Sperry agreed to help with the autopilot problem.
At last, with the preliminary engineering problems resolved, the Kettering Bug was ready for testing in September of 1918. After several preliminary ground trials, the first full test flight was conducted on 2 October.
The flight began with a smooth takeoff, but it did not go well after that. Instead of turning onto its assigned heading and leveling off, the Bug climbed too steeply until it stalled and then crashed.
Kettering Aerial Torpedo, Patent Application (1927)
The Kettering Aerial Torpedo was not off to an auspicious start, but a number of subsequent tests were more successful. The Army was encouraged enough to order 100 prototypes, but only about 45 were produced before the Armistice was signed and World War I over.
Seeing no further immediate need for the technology, and frankly not entirely impressed with the results up to that point, the Federal Government decided to combine the Army and Navy aerial torpedo programs. Competitive test events were more favorable for the Sperry design, and the Kettering Bug was abandoned.
The U.S. military conducted limited experiments over the next two years, before cancelling the project entirely in 1920.
The War to End All Wars had come to a close, and so had the aerial torpedo program. Optimists predicted a future of global peace and prosperity, in which there would be no need for the tools of battle. Unfortunately, they were wrong. Mankind was not finished with war, and war was certainly not finished with mankind.
Another global conflict, even larger and more brutal than the first, was looming just over the horizon. And military leaders of that coming war would not forget the idea of an unpiloted aerial bomb that could destroy enemies at a distance.
The first generation of unmanned flying weapons had not carried out a single attack under actual conditions of battle. They had not destroyed a single target, or killed so much as one enemy soldier. But the second generation of such weapons would not be long in coming. And when they did arrive, they would change everything.
CHAPTER 14
USS TOWERS (DDG-103)
WESTERN PACIFIC OCEAN; SOUTH OF JAPAN
SUNDAY; 23 NOVEMBER
1348 hours (1:48 PM)
TIME ZONE +9 ‘INDIA’
Commander Silva opened the door to the wardroom, but before she could step inside, she heard the voices. They were muffled, but she didn’t have any trouble making out the words.
“Holy shit!” the first voice said. “We’re really going into battle? You’re not just fucking with me? We’re really gonna do it?”
“I don’t know if we’ll be fighting,” the second voice said. “The big dogs don’t exactly share their battle plans with junior enlisted types. But we’re hauling ass down to the Bay of Bengal, and that’s where all the shooting is. I know that much.”
Silva glanced through the open door. The wardroom was empty of people. The chairs were all pushed neatly up against the long table, and the blue linen table cloth was bare, except for a carefully aligned row of coffee cups, stacked upside down on white saucers.
She stepped through the door, and closed it quietly behind herself. She knew where the voices were coming from now. The small square serving window from the wardroom pantry was not completely closed. A stainless steel shutter could be pulled down to cover the serving window, isolating the pantry from the wardroom to give the ship’s officers privacy during meals or meetings. When the shutter was open, the mes
s attendants could pass food or dishes back and forth between the wardroom and the adjoining pantry as they were serving meals to the officers.
Usually, the shutter was either completely open or completely closed. But whoever had used it last hadn’t pulled it all the way down, leaving a gap of four or five inches at the bottom of the serving window. The voices of the two young mess attendants were coming through the opening.
“Yeah,” the first mess attendant said. “But the Indians and the Chinese are shooting at each other, right? We’re just going down there for like, diplomacy reasons, or something. We’re not really going to fight.”
“I don’t know,” said the second mess attendant. “Those crazy bastards are launching missiles all over the place. We could end up in the middle of a shit storm, no matter what the big plan is supposed to be.”
Silva felt a momentary urge to clear her throat, or make some sudden noise that would let the two young Sailors know that their soon-to-be-captain was in the wardroom. Not that she needed their help to get a cup of coffee. She was quite happy to pour for herself. But it seemed rude to eavesdrop on their conversation.
Still… It was never easy for a commanding officer—or a prospective commanding officer—to find out what the Sailors on the deck plate were truly thinking. Over time, a CO could develop a rapport with the crew that would bridge that communication gap, at least in part. But Silva was new to the Towers. She hadn’t yet had time to get a good feel for the men and women who would be her officers, much less the enlisted crew.
She would be assuming command soon, but she was a complete stranger to these people. And they were strangers to her. For the moment, any qualms she felt about listening in on a private conversation were outweighed by her desire to know what the junior Sailors were saying amongst themselves.
She picked up the nearest coffee cup, moving carefully to avoid making a noise. The mess attendants were still talking.
“You got that right,” the first mess attendant said. “This ship has a way of being at the center of the fucking crosshairs when the bombs and the bullets start flying.”
The second mess attendant snorted. “Dude, have you seen the pictures? Guys in my division have pics of the damage from that last shoot out, up in the Russian ice pack. The forward gun was totally blown away. Completely fucking gone. Nothing left but a crater in the deck.”
“I heard about that,” the other sailor said. “But I haven’t seen any pics.”
Silva had seen pictures of the damage from the last deployment, and pictures of the damage from the deployment before that. These kids might be a bit too free with the profanity, but they were right about one thing; the Towers did have a way of winding up in the thick of the fighting.
She lifted the coffee pot from its warmer, and poured herself a cup. The liquid was dark, and the odor was acrid. An old Sailor would call this good Navy java, but Silva didn’t care for coffee that had been on the burner too long. She could live with it though, and she didn’t want to interrupt her impromptu intelligence-gathering session to ask for a fresh pot.
She eyed the dark liquid dubiously, before deciding to double her usual dose of creamer to take the worst of the edge off of the carbon taste.
“I don’t know whether to be excited, or scared shitless,” the first attendant said.
The second attendant laughed. “I’m going for both.”
The first mess attendant didn’t join in the laugh. “I’m sure glad Captain Bowie is still the skipper. If this crap with the Chinese had happened two weeks from now, we’d be stuck with the new CO.”
“What have you got against Commander Silva?” the second attendant asked. “She seems okay to me.”
“I don’t have anything against her,” the first attendant said quietly. “I’m sure she’s fine, and I’m sure she knows what she’s doing. But if we’re going into battle, I’d rather have Captain Bowie in command.”
“I know what you mean,” the other Sailor said. “But we don’t get to make that choice. In a couple of weeks, she’s going to be the skipper. We’ve just got to hope she’s up to the job.”
“Yeah, but what if she isn’t up to it? Has she ever been in a real combat situation before? What if she doesn’t have what it takes when the shooting starts?”
The second mess attendant snorted again. “You need to stop worrying about that shit, and start worrying about these dishes. We’ve got to start getting ready for evening chow.”
Commander Silva set her cup down on the table. She didn’t feel like coffee anymore. She walked out of the wardroom, the untasted contents of her cup swirling gently as the door swung shut behind her.
CHAPTER 15
MINISTRY OF NATIONAL DEFENSE COMPOUND
AUGUST 1ST BUILDING
BEIJING, CHINA
MONDAY; 24 NOVEMBER
9:11 PM
TIME ZONE +8 ‘HOTEL’
Vice Premier Lu Shi sat at his desk, leafing slowly through the stack of photographs for the tenth or eleventh time. The photos varied in size, age, and quality. A few had been composed by professional photographers, and some were recent high-resolution digital images, printed on glossy card stock. Most were ordinary snapshots, taken at various times over a period of nearly three decades. There were even a half dozen Polaroids, alternately fading from exposure to sunlight, or merging into supersaturation by color emulsions that had continued to incrementally intensify with the passage of years.
Lu Shi had scavenged the pictures from every family photo album he’d been able to lay hands on. The collection depicted indoor scenes, outdoor scenes, close-ups, wide shots, group poses, and solo portraits. The images shared a single common element. Every one contained Lu Shi’s son, Lu Jianguo.
Here was Lu Jianguo at age six or seven, playing a pickup game of soccer with a gaggle of other boys on the grass in Chaoyang park. And here was plump baby Jianguo, swaddled in orange silk for the traditional red egg and ginger ceremony at which he had received his name. Fourteen year-old Lu Jianguo, wearing the red scarf of the Young Pioneers, marching in ranks with his comrades in Tiananmen Square. A snapshot of the boy at about age eight, sleeping stretched out on the back seat of a limousine, with his head resting on his father’s knee. A formal portrait of Lu Jianguo in a severely-tailored gray suit. He must have been about twenty-five in that shot. It had probably been taken shortly after he’d become a junior secretary in the Ministry of Public Security.
The phone on Lu Shi’s desk rang, but his brain registered the sound only vaguely. He continued to leaf through the stack of photographs, searching for something that he could neither name, nor fully imagine. Some indefinable sliver of information or fragment of insight that could make sense out of the senselessness that had seized control of his life.
How could Lu Jianguo—this beautiful boy, this bright young intellect, this brilliant communist—be gone? How was such a thing even possible? The very idea was wrong. Hideously wrong. Monstrously wrong.
At some point Lu Shi’s eyes ceased to register the photos as they passed through his fingers. The motions of his hands became mechanical repetition.
In the late nineteen-seventies, when Lu Shi had himself been a rising young star in the Communist Party, he had fought hard to bring China’s one-child policy into being. It hadn’t been a popular law in those days, and it wasn’t much more popular now. But it had been a necessary measure.
By 1976, China’s population had multiplied to nearly a billion, and the rate of growth had still been increasing. If the trend had been allowed to continue, the People’s Republic would ultimately have devolved into famine, and economic collapse.
The decision to limit each family to a single child had not been made lightly, and it had not been easy to enforce. As with any restrictive regulation, there were exemptions which could be exploited by the privileged elite. Several senior party members had taken full advantage of the loopholes. Lu Shi had not been one of them. The one-child policy was important to China’s future. Lu Shi could
not very well espouse the benefits of the policy, while violating it himself.
So, he had obeyed the law which he had helped to create. He had fathered only one child. Now, that child was gone, and the future was gone with him.
CHAPTER 16
USS CALIFORNIA (SSN-781)
NORTHERN INDIAN OCEAN
TUESDAY; 25 NOVEMBER
1522 hours (3:22 PM)
TIME ZONE +6 ‘FOXTROT’
Captain James Patke scanned the tactical display on his command console, carefully studying the wide ring of icons that represented the frigates and destroyers encircling the Chinese aircraft carrier. Like most submarine commanders, Patke had an almost Zen-like level of patience when he was on the hunt, and the current mission was putting that patience to the test.
China was a latecomer to carrier warfare, but their defensive screening tactics were turning out to be surprisingly effective. It had taken Patke and his crew nearly two days of unhurried probing to find a weak spot in the aircraft carrier’s defensive perimeter. There had been opportunities to slip in more quickly, but Patke was determined to be even more cautious than usual.
The Chinese and Indian navies were both pretty damned trigger happy right now. If you made the mistake of spooking either one of them, you were likely to get your ass shot off.
Patke looked up from the display and glanced toward his Officer of the Deck. “Take us to periscope depth.”
The USS California was a Virginia class attack submarine, so she didn’t technically have a periscope. In place of the traditional Type 18 scopes used by other classes of U.S. attack subs, the Virginia class boats were each equipped with a pair of AN/BVS-1 photonics masts. The new fiber optic system was both technically and tactically superior to its predecessors, but no self-respecting submarine officer ever wanted to utter the phrase ‘photonic mast depth.’ As a result, much of the old periscope-related terminology remained in use, even though the periscope itself was no longer around.
