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Righteous Might
The USS Gerald Ford, a modern-day nuclear-powered aircraft carrier is hosting the family and friends of crew members at the end of a long deployment when they are asked to test a new defensive system for DARPA with help from their British and Japanese allies. After a mysterious accident during the test, the entire battlegroup finds itself at Pearl Harbor on December 6, 1941. The fleet is hopelessly outnumbered, but they do still have some modern technology at their fingertips to help even the odds. The captain has only hours to decide whether or not to strike at the approaching Japanese fleet and change the entire course of World War II, all while trying to figure out what life will look like for the sailors and civilians in their fleet after the battle.
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Published June 1, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 12, 2020
So, have you ever had one of those ideas that, when you looked back at it, you wish you’d kept to yourself? If you have, then you probably have a good idea how Rebecca Lasky feels as the events in “Righteous Might“ unfold.
Rebecca is one of the main character among an ensemble of characters the reader meets as the story progresses. In her case, the idea she has is for a way to make an object the size of an aircraft carrier invisible to radar. The fact that she works for DARPA, the Defense Department’s in-house research arm, means she’s in a position to try her idea out in real life.
That’s how Rebecca, her boss, and a team of technicians end up on the Gerald R. Ford as it and it’s battle group steam out of Pearl Harbor. The equipment that she hopes will make her idea a reality has been installed on the Ford, but her task has expanded: it is now hoped that her experiment can hide the entire battle group from radar.
As far as the crew of the Ford are concerned, the test is nothing but an annoyance. They’re on their way to the continental US and their home port after a long deployment, and all the tests are little more than a delay to them. What none of them know is that their delay is going to be much longer than they thought.
The experiment works, but as the equipment is being shut down, things go terribly wrong. Everyone is rendered unconscious, but once they wake up, they find things have gotten much stranger. None of their satellite-based systems, from GPS to communications, is working. Even their normal communications channels are silent. It’s only when they dispatch a reconnaissance flight to Pearl that the magnitude of how much trouble they’re in becomes clear: Battleship Row is no longer an empty memorial, it’s filled with the ships that will be sunk on December 7, 1941.
“Righteous Might” delves into one of the most fundamental problems such a situation would present to ti’s protagonists: what do you do when you can literally rewrite the future you know? Do you try to change history, or do you stand back and let the timeline develop as you remember it? Keith Conrad spins a good yarn, examining that problem through the eyes of his characters. He makes his main characters come alive, and it’s a story that’s easy to get lost in.
Does that mean the story is without fault? No. Maybe you have to be an aviation nerd like me to know (or even care) about the fact that no American fighter has been armed with machine guns since the F-86’s built in the early 1950’s. Yet Keith Conrad repeatedly speaks of the ultra-modern F-35’s that make up the majority of the Ford’s air wing firing their machine guns. There are a few other, minor points that niggle at the writer in me, but in the end, the story has enough drive to carry it through those problems.
Rebecca is one of the main character among an ensemble of characters the reader meets as the story progresses. In her case, the idea she has is for a way to make an object the size of an aircraft carrier invisible to radar. The fact that she works for DARPA, the Defense Department’s in-house research arm, means she’s in a position to try her idea out in real life.
That’s how Rebecca, her boss, and a team of technicians end up on the Gerald R. Ford as it and it’s battle group steam out of Pearl Harbor. The equipment that she hopes will make her idea a reality has been installed on the Ford, but her task has expanded: it is now hoped that her experiment can hide the entire battle group from radar.
As far as the crew of the Ford are concerned, the test is nothing but an annoyance. They’re on their way to the continental US and their home port after a long deployment, and all the tests are little more than a delay to them. What none of them know is that their delay is going to be much longer than they thought.
The experiment works, but as the equipment is being shut down, things go terribly wrong. Everyone is rendered unconscious, but once they wake up, they find things have gotten much stranger. None of their satellite-based systems, from GPS to communications, is working. Even their normal communications channels are silent. It’s only when they dispatch a reconnaissance flight to Pearl that the magnitude of how much trouble they’re in becomes clear: Battleship Row is no longer an empty memorial, it’s filled with the ships that will be sunk on December 7, 1941.
“Righteous Might” delves into one of the most fundamental problems such a situation would present to ti’s protagonists: what do you do when you can literally rewrite the future you know? Do you try to change history, or do you stand back and let the timeline develop as you remember it? Keith Conrad spins a good yarn, examining that problem through the eyes of his characters. He makes his main characters come alive, and it’s a story that’s easy to get lost in.
Does that mean the story is without fault? No. Maybe you have to be an aviation nerd like me to know (or even care) about the fact that no American fighter has been armed with machine guns since the F-86’s built in the early 1950’s. Yet Keith Conrad repeatedly speaks of the ultra-modern F-35’s that make up the majority of the Ford’s air wing firing their machine guns. There are a few other, minor points that niggle at the writer in me, but in the end, the story has enough drive to carry it through those problems.
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June 22, 2020A neat read,,meshing DARPA,,time/space experiments,superb competence of our navy people, green scenery of hawaii of the 40s, 40s vehicles,and an experiment with radar jamming equipment goes awry in the pacific not terribly far from our ports and facilities in hawaii.
USNC GERALD FORD w approx 50 F 35s,on maneuvers with a brit carrier are thrown back to 1941 because of a nature fluke interfering with the experimantal tall mast of machinery to conceal the carrier from adversarys' radar, If you liked the philadelphia story ( not the tv soap story all) the last battleship,midway,whether the old one or the 2019 remake,this ought to ring your bells,and klaxon too. get the book if you want the particulars and order of battle.I think keith left a couple paragraphs at the book end suggesting there will be a book 2.
One history detail,the role of the US senator in boarding the carrier from his pleasure craft in 41 dec early,I opine harry hopkins FDRs man of all seasons ( robt sherwoods bio,a lot of valuable background in the early war,,hopkins and roosevelt) harry was a skinny runt,had a quick brain,,always seeking info needling asking questions,he'd a made a good contrast to a slower talking but calculating skipper of a powerful carrier with 50 times the punch of a 40s
carrier. Last, hollywood and some script writers, CGI artwork,maybe older carriers about to be mothballed would make for a great SciFi movie,
June 30, 2020
This Sci-fi novel has time travel and air and naval battles with realistic physics regarding the differences between flight capabilities in the 1940s versus today. It's a fun mystery read as the crews of the various ships try to figure out what happened during the DARPA test. It takes turns that seem to be changing the past while respecting and referencing the original course of history. I'm really hoping for a sequel.
July 1, 2020
A little bit of Final Countdown meets Philadelphia Experiment, this one was absolutely flooring, cover-to-cover. Character development was awesome, though I certainly wouldn't mind seeing them in further works, along with how they end up affecting the world after these events. Absolutely loved the battle portions--the detail reminded me of watching the likes of Midway play out; extraordinarily real and I absolutely loved the MacGuyver-like technical improvisation by the characters. Overall, a wonderful read and will definitely pick it up again one day.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews