Have Blue

by John Argo

When a man loves an airplane, it's a matter of calculations. When a man loves a woman, everything is up in the air. Paul Owens, in the early 1970s, found an obscure Soviet technical journal—which has led him to an inspiration (stealth technology) that would save the Free World (based on true history). Paul falls in love with a beautiful, intelligent young widow named Marsha Kassner, 32, who moves next door with her son Peter, 9. A brilliant aircraft engineer at Lockheed's Skunk Works, Paul is also a handsome young man tending toward fast cars, long hair, and loud music—all anathema to his stiff-necked supervisors. This is back during the 1960s, when men wore crewcuts and listened to easy listening music. In this fictional treatment of true events, certain mid-level managers conspire to eliminate Paul, in favor of someone as safe, bland, and devoid of ideas as they are. Their mediocrity, and their resistance to change, nearly derails one of the most brilliant inventions of the century. Have Blue, named after the project that gave birth to this technology that saved mankind from World War III, is a historical techno-thriller with a strong romantic story line, loosely based on the first days of that project. The fictitious hero of this story, a young engineer with a fascination for aerodynamic nosecones, discovers a stunning mathematical secret in an obscure Soviet journal--overlooked by similarly mediocre managers in the Communist domain. The F117A Stealth Fighter project, originally developed under several code names including Have Blue, was the most top secret US military program since the development of the atomic bomb (Manhattan Project) during World War II. For the nonfiction treatment, you may compare the true story in Skunk A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed by Ben Rich and Leo Janos, regarding the life of Kelly Johnson (project director at the Skunk Works). One of the key engineers working for Johnson and project manager Ben Rich was Denys Overholser, the young genius who uncovered an obscure Soviet mathematical paper that had been widely ignored. These are all good guys in the real history--the author of this novel has taken some liberties to deliver a rollicking romantic techno-thriller that gets the main points of the story across. Paul, Marsha, and the rest of the characters are all inventions of an admiring author's imagination. In 1973, the fate of the world hung on what would eventually become known as the F117-A stealth fighter, as became clear during the so-called Yom Kippur War (October 1973) between Israel and her Arab neighbors. This brief, devastating war was a test run between U.S. and Soviet proxies. One of the key arenas became the war between Soviet-built Egyptian defensive radars and U.S. penetrating attack jet technology—and the latter won, hands down. In our story, as in real life, the hero discovers an obscure Soviet mathematical paper, which develops principles first developed by the Scottish genius James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) and later mathematicians, and from this creates a technology that makes a B-52 look as small as a child's marble on radar signatures. And, in our romantic suspense thriller, Paul Owens must overcome the obstacles of resistance to change, and downright espionage and treason, to keep the nation secure and restore the world's balance of power. Now if only Paul Owens could overcome the forces conspiring to keep him from bringing his growing affection for Marsha Kassner through all the opposing radars to win her heart.

170 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 31, 2012