Accuracy in fiction

So how accurate do you really have to be in a novel? Because after all, it is fiction.

Or to put it another way: If I put helicopters* aboard a destroyer that doesn't usually have any, would people notice? What if the destroyer is a member of the class -- the Arleigh Burkes, for example -- that does have the helicopters, except that this particular ship doesn't?

But I love the name of the ship, and its history. And it just feels right that it be in that scene, in that book.

But . . . I absolutely need the helicopter.

In the end, I renamed the ship. But I did use the original ship's motto, leaving it in as a wink to readers in the know.


* The point is a little more subtle, but it'll take me an hour to explain it, and by that time the playoff game will be on. And you won't care anyway . . .