Heinlein, Robert A – Expanded Universe

care of me, always have.”

“Betsy?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Be ready to tell us again.”

“Now!” She added, “That’s a bullfrog G, three octaves down.”

“This note?”

“That’s right.”

“Get that on the grid and tell the General to get his ships up! That cuts it

to a square ten miles on a side! Now, Betsy-we know almost where you are. We are

going to focus still closer. Want to go inside and cool off?”

“I’m not too hot. Just sweaty.”

Forty minutes later the General’s voice rang out:

“They’ve spotted the ship! They see her waving!”

AFTERWORD

In 1931 I was serving in LEXINGTON (CV-2). In March the Fleet held a war

game off the coast of Peru and Ecuador; for this exercise I was assigned as radio

compass officer. My principal duty was to keep in touch with the plane guards,

amphibians (OL8-A), guarding squadrons we had in the air-i.e., the squadrons were

carrierbased land planes; if one was forced to ditch, an amphibian was to land on

the water and rescue the pilot.

No radar in those days and primitive radio-the pilots of the plane guards

were the only ones I could talk to via the radio compass. The fighters had dot-dash

gear; the radio compass did not. To get a feeling for the limitations of those days,

only 28 years after the Wright brothers’ first flight, see my “The Man Who Was Too

Lazy to Fail” in Time Enough For Love, PutnamlBerkleylNEL.

A radio compass depends on the directional qualities of a loop antenna. To

talk you rotate the antenna for maximum signal; turn it 90° and you get a minimum

signal that marks the direction of the other radio-or 180° from it but you are

assumed to know whether your beacon is ahead or behind you-and you do in almost

every case where it matters, such as going up a channel in a fog. That minimum will

tell you direction within a degree or two if the other radio is close enough, loud

enough.

If it’s too far away, the signal can fade to zero before you reach the

bearing you need to read, and stay zero until well past it. No use turning it back

90° to try to locate it by the maximum signal; that curve is much too flat.

Late afternoon the second day of the exercise we were in trouble; the other

squadrons were landing but VF-2 squadron was lost-all too easy with one-man fighter

planes before the days of radar. The captain of the squadron, a lieutenant

commander, held one opinion; the pilot of the amphib held another-but his opinion

did not count; he was a j.g. and not part of the squadron. The

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juniors in the squadron hardly had opinions; they were young, green, and depending

on their .~kipper-~znd probably had fouled up their dead reckoning early in the

flight.

The squadron captain vectored for rendezvous with the carrier, by his

reckoning. No carrier. Just lots and lots of ocean. (I was in the air once, off

Hawaii, when this happened. It’s a lonely feeling.)

No sign of the U.S. Fleet. No SARATOGA (CV-3), no battleships, no cruisers.

Not even a destroyer scouting a flank. Just water.

At this point I found myself in exactly the situation described in

SEARCHLIGHT; I could talk to the plane guard pilot quite easily-but swing the loop

90° and zero signal was spread through such a wide arc that it meant nothing. . .

and, worse, the foulup in navigation was such that there was no rational choice

between the two lobes 180° apart.

And I had a personal interest not as strong as that of Betsy Barnes’ father

but strong. First, it was my duty and my responsibility to give that squadron a

homing vector-and I couldn’t do it; the equipment wasn’t up to it. Had I kept track

of vectors on that squadron all day- But that was impossible; Not only had I had

four squadrons in the air all day and only one loop but also (and damning) there was

war-game radio silence until the squadron commander in trouble was forced to break

it.

But, second, the pilot of the plane guard was my closest friend in that