 But today we have shepherd of the argon George are going to be doing what's called an alternative history It's alternative history of naval battles of World War two We were talking earlier about my time with the area and he starts saying well We got this in here and so on so forth so he draws from every warfare community Except CDs. I don't know. He maybe has something on CDs in there. Not yet He's retired Navy captain. He was the chairman of the JMO department late 90s late 90s 94 to 99 Now in 1906 there was a revolution in naval design the dreadnought and All of the countries began building dreadnought battleships. However those previous German laws and the result of requiring Great Britain to have an alliance with France and Russia is What led directly to Great Britain's involvement in World War one? and all of the men that they lost in the trenches In Flanders fields as I called it The stalemate on the Western Front All of that was a result of these German naval laws that required Great Britain to make an alliance with France to defend the Mediterranean Mediterranean was fairly safe the Austrians did not have as many ships And there was never really a threat to that sea line of communication after the war There's a new law that Japan passes requiring eight battleships and eight battle cruisers and It was interpreted to be less than eight years old So this starts another Revolution in terms of alliances in terms of threats the threat is now in the Pacific The United States is directly involved because of our Pacific Coast and Hawaii I'll get to that Great Britain is involved because of all her colonies in Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and and we wind up with These very huge authorizations the 1919 U.S. Authorization was for 10 battleships and six battle cruisers all with 16-inch guns the British 1921 estimates were for the G3 battle cruisers four of them with 16-inch guns and M3 battleships with 18-inch guns All of the all but four of these ships are over 40,000 tons in displacement our battleships were 43,000 tons the British were 48,000 tons Now the Japanese are building at the same time They have the Nagato class of 8 16-inch guns the Kaga class of 10 16-inch guns the key class of 18-inch guns and four 16-inch gun battle cruisers of the Amagi class all under construction and the Japanese are really upset at the Americans because of our racist attitude toward Japanese immigration to the United States our Open-door policy in China because Japan felt that China should be their sphere of influence and Japan gets divided in Terms of their hierarchy There's a fleet faction that wants to continue this 8-8 program indefinitely and there's a Faction that says we probably can't afford this it'll bankrupt the country That's called the treaty faction and these two factions politically are opposed to each other Oops, I want to go back. I think John I Think there's a what if slide in there someplace Where there is what if okay? What if this well first of all this treaty happens? and this treaty requires the scrapping of those in America those six battle cruisers and Ten excuse me eight of the battleships All of the British ships are to be scrapped All but two of the Japanese ships are to be scrapped All of the obsolete and obsolescent warships are to be scrapped Millions of tons of scrap steel Will suddenly fall on the scrap metal market? nation worldwide France is going to scrap things Italy's going to scrap things All of the armaments from the First World War all of that steel is being scrapped It's all being dumped on the scrap metal market The shipbuilding industry in the United States Great Britain Japan to a lesser extent France Italy virtually collapses there's a glut of commercial shipping because of all of the ships that were built during the war and those Obsolescent ships which are not as economically viable as the newer ones that were built during the war Also are being scrapped the armament industry collapses There are no there's no demand anymore for big guns The equipment to build those things is very unique And therefore if there is no demand That equipment gets scrapped Armor There is no demand for any of the armor, which is a very specialized steel making process huge hundred ton billets of steel forged to a shape and then Conditioned with carbon to make one face of it extremely hard That all goes away X as I said the excess and obsolescent commercial shipping goes away steel production Goes down because there's not as much demand There's not as much demand for Mind iron ore. There's not as much demand for coal to fuel the steel making process or coke which is vital to steel making and Coke is a Derivative from coal where all of the impurities have been taking out essentially pure carbon As I said the warships are required to be scrapped and the armaments from World War one are required to be scrapped So as I went to go write this book. I said what if What if this fleet faction and Treaty faction had a different outcome Because in Japan many of their political fights were solved by assassination So what I hypothesized was that the head of the Japanese Delegation in Washington and Admiral and I will never pronounce this correctly Thomas Aburo Kato is Assassinated the night before the second plenary session went Secretary of the state Hughes is going to lay out all of these major reductions in the world fleets Clearly the Japanese are upset There is no FBI. It's the Washington Metropolitan Police Department. That's called in to try to solve this problem All the resources of the federal government, but the reality is the treaty faction Members of the Japanese delegation that remain are now in fear of their lives so They go home Without the Japanese Signing on to the treaty and all those battleships being built in the Pacific Pacific the United States has no option but to continue building its 1919 program the British had no option but to continue their 1921 estimates and I hypothesize that this just Continues going on until Hitler Stalin Mussolini and Hirohado decide to commit the world to war again at about the time period of the Second World War 1939 now my novel takes place in April of 1942 The Battle of the Atlantic is at a critical stage There's a German task force They managed to break out through the Denmark Strait But in the process was damaged by the Royal Navy And went to breast in France Hitler conquered France to be repaired and The French Underground has been keeping the intelligence services aware of how The progress is being made towards the repair of these ships And they're getting very close to being ready to sail Breast obviously is a difficult place for the Royal Navy to blockade There is still a huge German fleet in Willem Schaben and the Jade Bay So the home fleet is tied down and scap of flow Norway has been occupied by the Germans So there's there's really not much that the British can do They ask the Americans Can you help us with this and my novel is based on What the Americans are going to do to solve this problem and to prevent this German raiding group from getting out in the Atlantic Destroying the British convoys which will inevitably result in the starvation of Great Britain and Churchill's acquiescence to surrender And without Great Britain you can imagine how bad the Allied or now American position was One of the things that intrigued me when I was a captain of a submarine and went down to Roosevelt roads in Puerto Rico Was a tour that I was given to the base and they pointed out the buildings that were built for the King and Queen of Great Britain to occupy if Britain surrendered so that The Colonies would stay in the war and that Roosevelt roads was being set up as a base for the remainder of the Royal Navy That existed after the surrender now Fictions about characters Which I learned the hard way and I say the hard way because When I first wrote it I wrote it about battles and ships And aircraft and submarines And I sent it off to an editor who I found online By the name of Connie Buchanan Connie Buchanan was the editor for the hunt for red October and Connie sent me back After I paid her a lot of money sent me back my novel with more red ink of Her comments than my black ink, and it was a hundred and twenty thousand words Well, I gave up I Didn't know how to write a novel so After a while I started thinking about it and said okay novels are about really characters So I've got to make a character and I made Captain Shepard McLeod And I gave him an interesting background I he Was an extremely successful leader and naval officer He was exceptional at sea he had command of a destroyer had command of a light cruiser and when the war Started with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He was in command of the battle cruiser Shenandoah All right now they had just been outfitted with a mark 3 radar brand-new to the Pacific Vice Admiral Trotter who was the commander of the scouting force decided that They needed to know exactly what this new piece of radar could do At sea rather than just what the tech manual said so after the fleet came back to Pearl Harbor on Friday The Shenandoah and a destroyer went northwest of Hawaii Shepard decided that he would go into the bad weather up there to make sure he could find out Exactly what the radar could do in the rain and the fog and everything else that was happening up there Which was shielding the Japanese coming to attack Pearl Harbor? Now they already were outfitted with what was called a CX AM radar That radar It's basically an air search radar and yes, the Shenandoah saw the Japanese attack waves going to Pearl Harbor Shepard sent a message one of the many messages that were ignored on Sunday morning December 7th and as a result the American fleet is both damaged and The channel to Pearl Harbor which is narrow was blocked And Shepard doesn't know any of that All he knows is that he knows where the Japanese planes came from and His job as a scouting force is to find them and stay with them and radio their positions So that the American fleet can come and destroy the Japanese Well, he finds them And they're not in a battle formation. They're in an anti-submarine formation and They're not heading west back to Japan. They're headed east Towards the west coast of the United States Well Shepard's radio in this positions and whatnot and he's not getting any answers As to what's going to happen. So on his own initiative in this bad weather He decides that he's going to use this new gunner radar that he's just found out the details of and start Lobbying 16-inch shells into the Japanese formation Where he thinks the aircraft carriers are And that's what he does and he starts out doing that and he sees three of those radar blips that he thinks are the carriers slow and fall out of formation and That's when the escorts for the Japanese Find the Shenandoah and they start blasting away and Shepard makes a run for it He's not that successful The Shenandoah is badly damaged. One of the hits they get is on the super structure Where there's a fire that develops? The damage control parties there trying to put it out with their fire hoses and another hit happens Well, and that that damage control party is literally obliterated and That happened right in front of Shepard's eyes as he was looking through one of the command slits in the command tower and The blood and the bone and the flesh from those men pepper his face within seconds, there's another hit on the command tower this time and Shepard is thrown across it his left leg is badly damaged His femur is I don't want to say shattered because there was enough of it left that they Surgeons could put it back together again But many of the men that he had been standing with are now Dead or dying or badly wounded one of Shepard's crew members Petty officer Raimondo to Jesus Cruz Boson's mate who is his gig coxen and At several others Carrie Shepard to the battle dressing station and his ship surgeons Managed to stabilize his leg not amputated Clearly Shepard's not fit to command his exo takes over They find out that the harbor to the channel to Pearl Harbor is closed So they go to San Diego and Shepard spends a month in Balboa Naval Hospital Having his leg operated on one operation after another to try to piece it together and line it up and get it to heal Right and during that time period he starts having nightmares and flashbacks Now To try to make sure I had Shepard McLeod correct. I had The novel reviewed by a clinical psychologist as well as a clinical therapist with great experience with PTSD Because I wanted to make sure that how I presented Shepard Was accurate now in the second world war as John said The men that suffered from PTSD had to hide it It was considered cowardice you may remember a very famous incident where a Soldier suffering from quote shell shock was slapped by General Patton in Sicily and he's lost his command of the Third Army as a result Because he wasn't sensitive enough but For a leader if you had PTSD you had to hide it So my character Shepard McLeod throughout the novel is hiding this thing But when bad things happen he immediately goes back to that command tower and thinking of the men he lost There's a hit on the command tower of the argon during the battle And he thinks his friends have now been obliterated and he goes almost catatonic Until the command tower calls them up For some direction and he can't believe that they're all still alive But they're alive because he had just turned at the last minute and therefore the shell just wrecked the bridge Rather than enter the command tower But you can't just have one Protagonist you have to have a host of characters and that gets me to Corvette and Captain Hans Dieter Meyer Kriegsmarine commander of you 197 part of operation And I'll get it right Beckinslog now. What's Beckinslog mean? It's a symbol crash Why did I do that? Because I didn't want to say Beckinslog, which was drumbeat the actual operation that Dernath put in motion. It's the same operation He has a in command of a type 9 you boat and he's been assigned to the premier Patrol area off the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay and this operation is going to start the same day that the American task force sails from Norfolk the drama builds I'm not going to tell you the results that Hans Dieter Meyer suddenly becomes a key element in Whether the task force will be able to accomplish its mission or not Because the Americans only have Two battle cruisers and two carriers the Germans have two carriers and four battle cruisers the odds against the Americans are pretty bad Now the leader of the German raiding group is vice-admiral clogs shoulder now Meyer I'm gonna go back a little bit is already has already been awarded the night's cross Which means he's already sunk a hundred thousand tons of shipping his dream Which he dreams of every night is to have sunk 200,000 tons or Sunk a major warship like Gunter Peane did sinking the Royal Oak So that he'll get the night's cross with swords, which Hitler personally will give him Meyer was In the Hitler youth his idol is I don't know if Hitler so he dreams of this and he dreams of this glory and Maybe it fogs some of his decision-making at a critical moment Schroeder can't stand Hitler. He's a product of the Imperial Navy But he knows that if he can get out in the Atlantic And start sinking German or British convoys like he did when he broke out because he sank one 38 ships Think in terms of the actual event of one Sharn Horst and nyes now broke out into the Atlantic and started sinking merchant ships That's Clause Schroeder's dream because he knows that will win the war and he's going to be the hero Rear Admiral Hamilton is in charge of the American Task Force 88 Good guy has to deal with problems There are Events They're ambiguous. I try to write into the book the fog of war and how Commanders and captains have to deal with the unknown and make decisions based on probability of outcomes Admiral Sir Bruce Hardy is in charge of force H Now he's got renowned repulse and Ark Royal and that's it. He doesn't have the forces Stop the Germans Unless he can make a night torpedo attack, but the timing is wrong But he's going to go out there and he's going to try because that's what the Royal Navy does Squadron leader Rupert wife Jones RAF is commanding 419 squadron of Sunderland flying bloat boats out of Pembroke dock in South Wales and His area of responsibility to search is the Bay of Biscay and some of the Eastern Atlantic now The book starts with them standing down to get a brand new radar fitted into the Sunderlands So that his Sunderlands are now the best search asset that the RAF has Well, the fitting of that ASV 3 is just in time And he sends them out Shepard has some interesting characters working for him Look man a tenant commander Bronco Billy Burtick is in charge of his scout up for observation squadron and Argonne and her Hanger are big enough so that he's actually got eight planes OS to you Kingfisher's Mods sevens Because the Kingfisher never had folding wings during the war But for my novel they've got folding wings and that's why they have a modification beyond where They actually had during the war Bronco Billy Burtick He's a fighter pilot at heart He's also Devastatingly handsome And that and at the end of the novel I'll tell you that the photograph of him with his flying helmet his traditional white scarf flight jacket a little bit of Exhaust fumes on his face Goes into the Philadelphia Inquirer and rumor has it It's posted in all of the dormitories Female dormitories of the University of Pennsylvania John William Hamlin the fourth well as The fourth indicates he's the fourth generation of a long line of naval officers His great-grandfather John William Hamlin the first was a hero in the in the Pacific Civil War think Chris Chris is Chris is my help here His grandfather was a hero of the Spanish-American War His father was The head of the Navy just before Admiral King now The captain of the argon when she was built Uh Got a phone call from Admiral Hamlin and said Please help my son and put him in a position where he can recover his reputation They didn't know anything about him John William Hamlin the fourth. I will say has been badly damaged by his first commanding officer Who will never serve in command again? And one of Shepard's Really great leadership problems is what to do because John William Hamlin the fourth happens to be the director officer of The direct the gun director at the top of our gun There's no way to get to him. There's no way anybody can supervise him. There's no way That he's not going to affect the battle outcome because that Director has the best view and the longest range of any of the ones on board the argon authentic manner Jonathan Becker he in Today's world would be called a geek He's got some problems with Navy etiquette and he doesn't pick up on the Navy social cues and He doesn't necessarily wear his uniform correctly or even the right uniform at times But Jonathan Becker is absolutely brilliant and It takes a while for Shepard to learn What Becker as his CIC officer can do for him and that eventually plays a critical role at the end of the book I've talked about Boson's mate Ramondo Jesus Cruz Who was with Shepard on the Shenandoah and When it was rumored that Shepard would be going to argon many of his shipmates were sent there deliberately so that Shepard would have a group of people he could rely on Without having to learn immediately what people could do or couldn't do Cruz is one of them He's in charge of the gig as well as one of the 40 millimeter gun mounts Commissary Stewart first-class George Washington Carver Jefferson The Navy of 1942 was very segregated Okay, George Washington Carver Jefferson grew up in the cotton fields of Alabama But he is another one People that is absolutely dedicated to Shepard. They have this little funny tradition every morning of It's another fine Navy day as a greeting Jefferson knows everything about him it turns out that Jefferson's also a loader on this 40 millimeter mount that Cruz is commanding Lieutenant Barry Jensen is the second best flyer The Shepard has Arthur Wesley Roberts is the navigator of the argon Interesting leadership challenge Arthur does not want command Shepard has to figure out why and Hopefully by the end of the novel get him enthusiastic about what command is so that Arthur will go on Commander Charles third guard Williamson is a gunnery officer kind of cocky thinks he knows everything Pretty good He was responsible for bringing the 40 millimeter mounts to fruition in the United States Navy and now he is the gunnery officer on the argon Little cocky Maybe he cut some corners that he shouldn't Ted Grubowski's the exo great guy just two junior to command a battle cruiser But he kept that ship going after the first captain died of a heart attack on the bridge coming back to Norfolk Radmle Ray Calhoun Salt of the earth Sailor at heart Great tactician Ray Liberally makes the bellow wood his flagship rather than the argon Because the bellow woods captain is all of the worst things you can think of in terms of a pompous Washington only service escorting admiral's wives to Dancers and he thinks his command of the bellow wood is his justice ward Only long enough to get his quote capital ship command ticket punched so he can leave and go back to Washington He's a micromanager That's a problem now the novel I wrote I tried to make Absolutely Exact in terms of the customs the traditions of the Navy the equipment The cover that you saw I sat down with blueprints for the mark 38 director and Converted them into CAD drawing the same with a mark 34 director the same with a mark 37 director the same with the radars As well as design the ship the procedures to operate those pieces of equipment are laid out in there The procedures for the guns are laid out Very accurately Argonne is equipped with five inch 54s, which we're going to be on the Montana class battleships She's equipped with six inch 55s a gun that was probably a progression of what? The US was doing as well as 18 inch 55s very long-range weapons There's a new concept of battle cruisers to be very high speed and Very long range to such that if an enemy is found Say a carrier task force during the night They can steam at high speed and engage them with gunfire Before the aircraft are launched Safely that's part of the operation and Then there's the operational art something that I taught The operational art is how you accomplish the mission that you're assigned with the assets that you have Well shepherds got this ship Beautiful ship very high speed It's one thousand two hundred and ninety six feet waterline length a hundred and thirty thousand tons Now is there any engineer? Are there any engineers here? Okay, well The limitation on shaft horsepower is the reduction here You can't get with the laws of mechanical engineering beyond about seventy five thousand on one shaft So I had to design a new reduction gear that would allow me to get a hundred and fifty thousand Shaft horsepower on one shaft Using that I now have a ship that's capable of speeds in the high 40s The whole if you go and do something called the hull speed a Fletcher class destroyer is 26 knots And I'll class battleship is 35 knots and the argon is 49 knots Now what hull speed means is the point of transition between What a ship is slicing through the pressure wave that's building in front of it and when it has to start climbing over That pressure wave and if you look at all of the pictures of high-speed destroyers They're kind of pointed up and their sterns are down as they're trying to make this impossible climb over a pressure wave those of you that have small boats You climb over the pressure wave all the time and just plane The novel has been reviewed part of iUniverse which I contracted to Publish this it's a vanity publisher, which means you pay they publish I Contracted with Kirkus blue ink and Clarion to review it They are supposedly very honest. They will tell you whether it's any good or not Kirkus is the hardest one to get a positive review out of and they put me in the top 5% Blue ink gave me a starred review Which put me in the top 6% of all the books that they they looked at and they looked at 3,000 books a year Clarion forward gave me five stars Reader reviews on Amazon So far I have 14 reviews 13 are 5-star. There's one 4-star on iUniverse my publisher there are four reviews. They're all five stars So I have been incredulous at the reception that the book has gotten From the world of publishing and I will never make any money off of it Because I'll tell you that if you're not writing about zombies or Warlocks or What's called chiclet romance novels? You're probably not going to have something with wide distribution or You can be famous and hire a ghostwriter and then Those people will make lots of money like Hillary Clinton with 220,000 books Out out there to be bought so that's my book and If you're looking for a good read and I assume everybody here is kind of interested in the Navy Kind of interested in interesting interactions between characters. I Would ask you to buy it and if you do it today I would be happy to stay and sign it for you and I will tell you that the first place I tried to market my book was on Amazon.com if you send them a Microsoft Word file With a cover illustration They'll put it out there and I did that and it was a mistake. It sold 13 copies I took it down when I went to the publisher one of those 13 sold for $190 on Amazon UK recently because it's the first edition and I deliberately made this the second edition I Didn't keep three copies and I'm hoping that the price keeps going up So I can maybe recover some of the thousands and thousands of dollars that I've put into Trying to get this published and trying to get it to be a good novel now A lot of the reviews on Amazon are when's the sequel coming out? Well, the sequel is right now at a bunch of Agents for their consideration and I'm hopeful because it's been two months since I sent it to them and they haven't said no It's also with a publisher For several months and I sent them an email Because I wanted to try to get it better and I was going to go back to my second editor John Kudrick to have him give me comments on it. He gave me preliminary indication, but I mean a real thorough scrub And They said no Don't spend any money on it We'll do that For you, so I'm hopeful now this novel went down to the United States Naval Institute for their consideration for a year and it got through every single chop Until the last one and then they said no So I wasted a year I'd love to entertain your questions Yes My friend that told me I've got to stay within the view line or John gets mad at me my motivation my friend was actually my therapist because In command of my third submarine. I Almost killed a shipyard worker We were getting ready for sea trial. That was the commander of the pre-commissioning unit of the SSBN Rhode Island and Some little bird in the back of my head said go look at the missile deck again And I looked and just as I looked a paintbrush came up in between the fairings of the missile muzzle hatches Now what we were I was about to order and would have ordered except for the little bird in the back of my head Was what was called a battle readiness test where we flop all the miss all 24 of these missile muzzle hatches As fast as we can 11 second intervals because that's launch interval for tried two missiles Okay, and I would have killed several painters That were it were not to my knowledge in the superstructure trying to get the ship ready for sea trials the next day I Started suffering from hallucinations, and I reported myself as unfit for command and My gold crew CO took the ship out and they continued with their record second setting performance They set the records which will never be broken for initial criticality and power range testing time for Sea trials time And it's a it was a great great crew But the Navy did not like the fact that I Was no longer available to the Navy and they wreaked their havoc on my XO Because they felt that he hadn't taken up enough of the burden that was on me And he had nothing to do with that and to this day. I regret that that happened So that was my motivation Because my friend and therapist said why don't you write and I'll tell you that it has been the best therapy I ever had Putting into shepherd what I personally knew I Had command of three different submarines one of them. I got a 15-second ceremony on two hours notice And it was a turnaround job, which you can imagine And that that was probably the first Thing that started Medicating a major effect on my health The stress compressed the vertebrae in my neck enough That I was in agony from pain in my left arm And I hid that as long as I could just like shepherd Until finally we had to report it to the squadron commander And he almost fired the medical officer on the spot because he knew the medical officer had known about it And hadn't told the Commodore But got a new captain the crew was phenomenal They demanded a full change of command ceremony They gave me to this day my most prized possession, which was the ship's wheel Now it wasn't the actual we was a wooden one And with the ship's plaque and underneath that there's an engraved plaque that says you bought this brought the spirit back Because the ship's motto SSN 676 was the spirit of 76 And that's why they said I brought the spirit back And The Navy looking for a place for me to go sent me here to the war college as the Lockwood share of undersea warfare Which I did for a little while I remember I told you the story about a rick over That turned out to be very important because I was actually assigned to the Department of Energy a joint tour So I became a joint service officer as a result of that and When Admiral Stark was looking around for somebody to take over JMO When the guy that was there suddenly decided to retire and go to Saudi Arabia I was of the right seniority and a joint service officer So I got it until they could find a permanent relief well, the model of the admiral's barge back there is has great significance for me Because shortly after that the admiral decided to take all the senior management out on a night cruise to talk about this that are there the thing which was his want and I was sitting next to him in the stern sheets And he proposed that all of the students Should be ranked based on their class standing at the end of their year in their fitness reports And I've never been one to hold my tongue very well And I said don't mind you under my breath Admiral Stark heard it and I had to defend my position and after I defended it He decided not to have the students Who were the best and the brightest and had come from very stressful jobs To have another stressful job, but rather have a job that they just needed to pass And I got that job and I had held it for five years Because the Navy didn't have any other use for me And we had we had a lot of fun I managed to get a lot of other excess captain sub-rainers to fill a lot of billets around the war college Yes, the submarine force was taking over the war college during that time period Very surreptitiously, but we're doing it And this was probably my number two tour that I enjoyed the most Mostly because I was still suffering from that incident On the Rhode Island at the time And I really couldn't engage the faculty the way I wanted to And my all-time favorite was Winning to get fired and being told to leave the building on five minutes notice Which was Admiral Rickover's typical mode of operation You're fired! Get out of here! And it happened once to a captain on his staff while he was down there It was, you know, get out of here! Captain Severance called Mr. Wagner the deputy from the lobby because he was out of the building Said, yeah, well this fired me But Mr. Wagner was an amazing man and knew how to work with Rickover And after a while Admiral Severance was formally brought back into the Naval Nuclear Power Program And his record restored Did I answer your question? I started in 2006 And as I said, I went chapter by chapter I had a group of people that I'd never met Who did the reviews, who would review the chapter at a time for me One was an aviator from the Second World War Flying from carriers Another was a machinist mate from the Second World War And this group of people would give me comments and say, no, it doesn't work like that There are no valves here I think it's submarines, you know So I got those details from those reviewers I went through about 14 changes for each of those chapters Then I made one major revision And then I sent it off to County Buchanan Another two revisions Sent it to John Kudrick Another revision And what finally went to iUniverse was the sixth revision And iUniverse asked me to change about five of the scenes that are in it Which I did And that's what was published Now, I believe that there's a good book in everyone And for all of you I really hope you will take the time to sit down and write your memoirs Whether it gets published or not It is going to be priceless for your children Your grandchildren, your great-grandchildren, etc Just like the oral histories are that are going on now But not everybody gets to do those So my recommendation is to write That's a lot of fun It's a lot of fun building characters And trying to keep them mentally straight In your mind So that their interactions make sense And it's a lot of fun And when I did the battles and what not The first thing I did was take a chart And lay it all out So I got all the times and the bearings correct And my son's telling me I've run out of time Thank you Thank you very much Again, I will say the book is downstairs For those of you interested in sending the bookstore Good read I just want to thank you for your presentation And most of all, thank you for your honesty Thank you It's refreshing I know And that's probably been my great advantage or disadvantage In terms of my career was truth to power Did the battleships of World War II have a command tower? Yes, they did If you go to Fall River and see the battleship Massachusetts You will see many of the pieces of equipment And the layout of the ship that's similar to Argon But remember, this ship is twice as long One and a half times as wide And four times the displacement What did you have for a fire control in your ship? The same thing that's in the Massachusetts A Ford Mark I computer And Ford isn't the Ford Otto Malerith There was another Ford who worked exclusively for the Navy Developing fire control instruments And he developed an analog computer That was onboard Virtually all of the Navy warships From battleships to destroyers For surface gunfire control As well as any aircraft gunfire control That's all mechanical All mechanical analog computer Using gears and very finely made spindles And cams to do the calculations That were necessary I met the Admiral of the Fallen Charger Reactivating battleships Oh, wow He was saying that the electronics people came in And said throw that junk out and we'll put our stuff there And one salvo destroyed all the electronics Yep, yep Now the Ford Mark I was a great piece of equipment And Argon has Let me think, eight Twelve of them She's got eight Mark 37 directors Two Mark 34 directors for six inch mounts And two Mark 38 directors