Nimitz Class

What happens in Nimitz Class could happen in the real world, with momentous consequences for us all. The U.S. Navy and the Royal Navy are all too aware of the threat. But even now, certain politicians on both sides of the Atlantic seem perfectly prepared to cut defense budgets regardless of stern warnings from the military.

I should perhaps remind them all that when countries such as Great Britain and the United States lower their guard in any way whatsoever, they end up paying for it, in blood, sorrow, and tears.

Margaret Thatcher, out of office now, but frequently still in our minds, remains a far-seeing politician of an entirely different class. In her historic lecture at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, on March 9, 1996, she told her American audience:

The Soviet collapse has also aggravated the single most awesome threat of modern times: the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. These weapons — and the ability to develop and deliver them — are today acquired by middle-income countries with modest populations, such as Iraq, Iran, Libya, and Syria…acquired sometimes from other powers like China and North Korea, but most ominously from former Soviet arsenals.

She reminded her audience that by the end of the decade we could see twenty countries with ballistic missiles. Nine with nuclear weapons. Ten with biological weapons. Thirty with chemical weapons.

“On present trends,” she said, “a direct threat to American shores is likely to mature early in the next century.

“Add weapons of mass destruction to rogue states,” said Margaret Thatcher, “and you have a highly toxic compound.”

She pointed out that many such states are led by “megalomaniacs and strongmen of proven inhumanity, or by weak, unstable or illegitimate governments.” She added that the potential capabilities at the command of these unpredictable figures, “may be even more destructive than the Soviet threat to the West in the 1960s.”

Patrick Robinson’s book vividly illustrates precisely what the lady means. And in its pages it also raises the question of how, in a turbulent and dangerous world, we make our resolution plain, without excessive cost in both materiel and, more particularly, people.

Nimitz Class will, I hope, bring home to an even broader public the extreme pressures under which the Armed Services continue to operate. In particular I would suggest that serving Naval officers read it, perhaps especially Navy cadets, who may have ambitions to join the Submarine Services on either side of the Atlantic.

— SANDY WOODWARD

Acknowledgments

My chief adviser throughout the long months of writing this novel was Admiral Sir John (“Sandy”) Woodward, the Royal Navy’s senior Task Group Commander in the South Atlantic during the battle for the Falkland Islands in 1982. There are some who consider this former naval Commander-in-Chief one of the best naval strategists of recent times. Perhaps more widely held is the view that Admiral Woodward was also one of the better submarine specialists the Royal Navy ever had. “My task for the Nimitz Class,” he once said, “is to keep the story feasible, to keep it within the boundaries of possibility, where fiction has to be less strange than truth.”

His advice was as careful as it was thorough. Somewhat miraculously, the admiral is still in my corner.

On the infrequent occasions when Sandy was unavailable, I turned for technical expertise to my friend, Captain David Hart Dyke, another retired Royal Navy officer who also faced the guns and bombs of the Argentinean Air Force in the South Atlantic in1982.

Captain Peter O’Connor, the former Commanding Officer of the guided missile cruiser USS Yorktown, was my principal U.S. Naval adviser. He has my enduring thanks for his time and patience. Another Virginian, retired Vice Admiral Robert F. Dunn, generously provided me with superb data on the day-to-day operations in a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier.

There were many other serving officers, both submariners and surface ship executives on both sides of the Atlantic, who were more than happy to guide me through the techniques of command, and I thank them all, and wish I could name them personally.

I thank, too, Alan Friedman, author of Spider’s Web, for his careful advice about the banking tactics of the more dubious Middle Eastern regimes.

Finally, I would like to thank my longtime friend and colleague, Joe Farrell of Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, who read the manuscript meticulously, separating American and English phrases and the military jargon which enters a book such as this. He says he was given the task of preventing American fighter pilots from sounding like Winston Churchill.

Since he also arranged my introduction to Captain O’Connor, I’ll forgive his irreverence.

— Patrick Robinson

About the Author

Patrick Robinson was born in Kent, England. He has worked as a journalist and in publishing, and is the author of a number of nonfiction titles, including Admiral Sir Sandy Woodward’s account of the Falklands War, One Hundred Days. Mr. Robinson has homes in Ireland and on Cape Cod. His military thrillers are, in publication order, Nimitz Class; Kilo Class; H.M.S. Unseen; U.S.S. Seawolf; The Shark Mutiny; Barracuda 945. Please visit www.patrickrobinson.com.

Also by Patrick Robinson

One Hundred Days

(with Admiral Sir John “Sandy” Woodward)

True Blue

Nimitz Class

Kilo Class

H.M.S. Unseen

U.S.S. Seawolf

The Shark Mutiny

Slider

Praise for Patrick Robinson

Jack Higgins: “An absolutely marvelous thriller writer.”

Carlo D’Este: “Patrick Robinson is a master craftsman of the technothriller. No one does it better — not even Tom Clancy.” (D’Este’s books are Eisenhower: A Soldier’s Life and Patton: A Genius for War.)

Publishers Weekly: “His willingness to challenge the rigid boundaries of the military thriller is welcome, particularly as his writing stays always on its toes.”

Nimitz Class