The information about infections was developed with the help of Dr. Frances Anagnost Williams, and T. J. Rowbotham’s “Legionellosis Associated with Ships: 1977 to 1997.” Weapons specifications are from various open sources.
For overall help, thanks also to Charle Ricci of the Eastern Shore Public Library; the Joint Forces Staff College Library; Matthew Stroup of the Navy Office of Information, East; Commander, Naval Surface Forces Atlantic (Sylvia Landis and Kevin Ducharme); and very much to the crew, chiefs, and officers of USS San Jacinto, CG-56. They resemble the crew of USS Savo Island only in the positive ways!
I’m especially grateful to Mark Durstewitz and Bill Hunteman, who put in many hours reading chapters and commenting in detail. Queried from time to time, Joe Leonard also supplied invaluable perspective from the points of view of a cruiser captain and a squadron commander.
Let me emphasize that all these sources were consulted for the purposes of fiction. I’m not saying that anything in these references, or derived from these interviews, leads to the conclusions my characters reach or voice in the story. Likewise, the specifics of personalities, tactics, and procedures, and the units and locales described, are employed as the materials of fiction, not reportage. Some details have been altered to protect classified capabilities and procedures.
My most grateful thanks go to George Witte, editor and friend of over three decades, without whom this series would not exist. And also to Sally Richardson, Kenneth J. Silver, Kate Ottaviano, Sara Thwaite, and Staci Bua at St. Martin’s. And finally to Lenore Hart, anchor on lee shores, and my North Star when skies are clear.
As always, all errors and deficiencies are my own.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DAVID POYER’s military career included service in the Atlantic, Mediterranean, Arctic, Caribbean, Pacific, and Middle East. Tipping Point is the fifteenth in his continuing series about the modern U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. His work has been required reading in the Literature of the Sea course at the U.S. Naval Academy, along with that of Joseph Conrad and Herman Melville. He lives on the Eastern Shore of Virginia.