MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - What If the South Had Airpower?--New Historical Novel

KarlKlein · 08-08-2010, 11:37 AM

I get the distinct impression that this critic started out not wanting to like my book and he succeeded admirably. This disappoints me. I am pleased that it interested him enough to take the time to research the books premise. He didn't however do his research to support the premise but to refute it. Had he wanted to find facts to support it they exist in great numbers. I'm afraid he assumed Germany was the cradle of lighter than air flight when nothing could be farther from the truth. Had his research led him to France in the 1800's he might have discovered that dirigibles were being flown there as early as 1852. Henri Giffard's steam powered, propeller driven craft comes to mind. There were even a couple of electric airships as early as 1881. They had banks of heavy batteries -- imagine that.

A dirigible would indeed have had serious problems if it encountered wind sheer, just as everything from a Piper Cub to a 747 does today. There are inherent dangers associated with any kind of flight. As far as ground weapons are concerned, mounted guns could not be elevated to fire at an airborne object overhead, not to mention tracking it; and if one had been fashioned to fire up at anything like a critical angle it would have destroyed the gun carriage. Recoil was handled by letting the gun roll back. Bombing was not an insurmountable problem nor were explosives, but that’s all covered in the book. I'm sure it’s an exercise in futility to explain all these things to this particular critic. He seems to have made up his mind all without reading the book. I'm afraid when a person criticizes a book without reading it, it says more about the person than about the book. All other things aside, I might remind the critic that it is a novel, a work of fiction--not a text book. It makes one wonder if Jules Vern would have finished the novel if he had someone of this fellows ilk explaining to him at great length how unlikely it was that an atomic submarine could be built when he wrote Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea.

Hopefully he'll hitch up his plow one more time and discover that although there were indeed ironclads afloat, most ships were still made of wood and quite susceptible to the explosives of the time. He might also discover that doped silk does quite well in low pressure conditions and considering that this particular dirigible was not involved in trans-atlantic flight it would not be a big problem.

But there I go again trying to convince someone whose mind is already made up. It was comforting to know that he thinks my failings are shared by many professional writers. I'm sure they will be enlightened as well. I'll only add one more thing: an aeronautical engineer of my acquaintance reviewed my ideas and thought them quite workable in theory. I truly do appreciate this gentleman taking the time to write this critique unflattering as it was and I wish him well.

08-08-2010, 11:37 AM	#42
KarlKlein Junior Member Posts: 4 Karma: 10000 Join Date: Jul 2010 Device: none	I get the distinct impression that this critic started out not wanting to like my book and he succeeded admirably. This disappoints me. I am pleased that it interested him enough to take the time to research the books premise. He didn't however do his research to support the premise but to refute it. Had he wanted to find facts to support it they exist in great numbers. I'm afraid he assumed Germany was the cradle of lighter than air flight when nothing could be farther from the truth. Had his research led him to France in the 1800's he might have discovered that dirigibles were being flown there as early as 1852. Henri Giffard's steam powered, propeller driven craft comes to mind. There were even a couple of electric airships as early as 1881. They had banks of heavy batteries -- imagine that. A dirigible would indeed have had serious problems if it encountered wind sheer, just as everything from a Piper Cub to a 747 does today. There are inherent dangers associated with any kind of flight. As far as ground weapons are concerned, mounted guns could not be elevated to fire at an airborne object overhead, not to mention tracking it; and if one had been fashioned to fire up at anything like a critical angle it would have destroyed the gun carriage. Recoil was handled by letting the gun roll back. Bombing was not an insurmountable problem nor were explosives, but that’s all covered in the book. I'm sure it’s an exercise in futility to explain all these things to this particular critic. He seems to have made up his mind all without reading the book. I'm afraid when a person criticizes a book without reading it, it says more about the person than about the book. All other things aside, I might remind the critic that it is a novel, a work of fiction--not a text book. It makes one wonder if Jules Vern would have finished the novel if he had someone of this fellows ilk explaining to him at great length how unlikely it was that an atomic submarine could be built when he wrote Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea. Hopefully he'll hitch up his plow one more time and discover that although there were indeed ironclads afloat, most ships were still made of wood and quite susceptible to the explosives of the time. He might also discover that doped silk does quite well in low pressure conditions and considering that this particular dirigible was not involved in trans-atlantic flight it would not be a big problem. But there I go again trying to convince someone whose mind is already made up. It was comforting to know that he thinks my failings are shared by many professional writers. I'm sure they will be enlightened as well. I'll only add one more thing: an aeronautical engineer of my acquaintance reviewed my ideas and thought them quite workable in theory. I truly do appreciate this gentleman taking the time to write this critique unflattering as it was and I wish him well.