Larry Bond on Tom Clancy


From USNI News - this is Larry speaking:

The most correct thing you can say about the relationship between Hunt for Red October and “Harpoon” is that “Harpoon” was one of the many data sources that Clancy used when he was writing the book.

One way to tell “Harpoon” was one of [Clancy’s] sources is in the knife fight at the very end of the book where the Alfa-class is dogfighting with Red October. The Alfa fired a “Type-F” torpedo, which is what I called the Russian wire-guided torpedo in my [“Harpoon”] rules. When I wrote the first draft there was almost nothing in the unclassified realm regarding torpedo designations for the Russians. In fact I didn’t want to use the classified stuff—that was amazingly complicated.

I came up with Type A through Type F. When you see a bad guy fire a Type F torpedo [in the book]—that’s Tom using “Harpoon.”

Interview.

(USNI = U.S. Naval Institute)