Apparently, even best-selling authors can’t be bothered to do their homework.
In my never-ending quest for light reading while I sit around in Wickenburg waiting for my marriage to be terminated, I picked up a copy of Atlantis Found by Clive Cussler from the library. This book features Cussler’s protagonist, Dirk Pitt, a man so outrageously skilled and lucky that he makes James Bond look as inept as Inspector Clouseau.
Hey, I did say I wanted light reading, didn’t I? (And yes, I do realize I was bitching about a supposed Cussler book just the other day.)
But no matter how light reading is, it really bugs me when an author gets something insanely wrong. Take, for example, this passage from the book:
Purchased by Destiny Enterprises from the Messerschmitt-Bolkow Corporation, the Bo 105LS-7 helicopter was designed and built for the Federal German Army primarily for ground support and paramilitary use. The aircraft chasing the Skycar carried a crew of two, and mounted twin engines that gave it a maximum speed of two hundred and eighty miles an hour. For firepower, it relied on a ventral-mounted, swiveling twenty millimeter cannon.
My helicopter pilot brain shouted “How fast?”
You see, there’s a little thing called retreating blade stall which normally limits the airspeed of a helicopter. I don’t know of any helicopter capable of going 280 miles per hour. Certainly not one with a single main rotor system.
But hell, I’m not an expert. I’m just a pilot. What do I know?
German Army BO 105P photo by Joey Quan.
So I looked it up the MBB Bo 105 on Wikipedia. And I scrolled down to the Specifications Section. And I learned the following specs:
- Never exceed speed: 270 km/h (145 knots, 167 mph)
- Maximum speed: 242 km/h (131 knots, 150 mph)
- Cruise speed: 204 km/h (110 knots, 127 mph)
280 miles per hour? How about 150 miles per hour? That’s more reasonable.
And, coincidentally, it’s the never exceed speed for my Robinson R44 Raven II — although, admittedly, I don’t have any ventral-mounted, swiveling twenty millimeter cannons.
Come on, guys! Do your homework! I know it’s fiction, but when you discuss the capabilities of an aircraft that actually exists, how about getting it right?
Discover more from An Eclectic Mind
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
The Sikorsky X2 is the only helicopter I can think of that could come close to that speed. It has a propreller that helps push the aircraft in addition to the co-axial rotor system. From Wikipedia:
Maximum speed: 260 knots (299 mph, 481 km/h)
Cruise speed: 250 knots (287.5 mph, 460 km/h)
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikorsky_X2)
It’s quite common for authors to look up data and forget to write down the right terms (kilometers vs miles). Sometimes they fudge the numbers assuming the reader won’t look up the correct data, because they need the better performance to spice up the story. Jules Verne did the same thing in his story about shooting a capsule to the moon. He had the escape velocity correct, (great for scientific information 100 years before we put a satellite into orbit) but fudged on the G forces from the cannon launched capsule so that the people inside would survive. The correct G loading would have flattened the occupants like pancakes, but that would have spoiled the story. I like to download H. G. Wells and Jules Verne stories as they are public domain. I love the humor derived from fudging the correct data and story endings due to being written just before the science is perfected like in H. G. Wells story of the War of the Worlds where we learned the secret of how to control an airplane to keep it from always crashing from the Martians (who did die from our diseases – since we already had this knowledge from infecting the American indians. ;^)
Interesting you should quibble about a single mention of the speed of a very real helicopter, but not comment on Cussler’s extensive description of the flying capabilities of the Moller M400 Skycar, of which Wikipedia says: “As of 2022, the Moller M400 Skycar has not achieved free flight”.
The book, like all of Clive Cussler’s books, is fiction, and artistic licence is an integral part of the game.
Easy: I know about helicopters, and have real data for this real machine. I don’t know anything about a “sky car,” which I assumed was fictional.
Interesting that you should quibble about my comments on a NINE YEAR OLD blog post.
Publisher swapped mph for kph. Simple mistake from and american publisher.
Is this reality or a guess?
Why would a publisher change kilometers per hour to miles per hour? That changes the MEANING of the text. It makes it WRONG.
I think it’s good to be critical of information in books. But i think it’s important to remember that Clive Cussler started writing books in his living room when his kids were sleeping and his wife went to work nights in the 70’s. He didn’t have Google and information wasn’t as readily available. I would have to agree that he probably mistook kph for mph while researching. The guy spins a pretty good tale all the same lol i love how old this post is and people are still posting on it! Cheers to everyone for reading and keeping his stories alive.
You’d be surprised at how people still interact with some of my old posts. I sure am.
I know it’s now 2024 but did you not notice in the story where he says the U-2015 is firing it’s deck gun? The type XXI never had a deck gun and yes they had two anti aircraft guns at the top of the conning tower but they would be hard pressed to do the damage he was writing. Also the type XXIs started their numbering at 2500 and not 2000. It all comes down to artistic license so that Clive and all writers can fudge the facts to suit the stories they are writing just look at Hollywood and their movies. Thanks Mr Langer for putting this blog out there for all of us to say a few words on.
OH here is something else you might like to know. Lockheed AH-56 Cheyenne: Maximum speed: 212 kn (244 mph, 393 km/h) Cruise speed: 195 kn (224 mph, 361 km/h). And that was back in 69-70.