| 01 March 2006 Everything Old I was supposed to work when I got home, but I didn't. Instead, I drafted an article about Japanese Float Planes instead of working when I got home. I should have worked on the PowerPoint slide presentation for this morning, and I am going to pay for my dereliction. Well, maybe it was work. But the idea of the crew swarming up from below decks to open the dry-deck shelters on the long sleek black submarine, throwing open the water-tight doors, and deploying the three sleek float-bombers in less than fifteen minutes is a striking image. Then imagine those bombers snarling their way across the narrow waist of Panama to hurl their bombs against the stout Gatun Locks on the Caribbean side of the Canal. I have been to the locks several times, the big gates being the accessible point to see just how the system works, using the fresh water from the man-made lake above to float the ocean going ships ever upward to transit the peninsula. Noriega had the dream, too, and that was supposed to be his trump card against the Yankees. They would never act while he had the power to shut down the canal permanently. That it was cutting the nose to spite his face meant nothing to him. Power is an intoxicating thing, and the little General liked that more than something tame like crystal meth. I have thought about it, standing and looking at the stout concrete of the locks, the idea of the bombs splintering against the massive mechanism, and the concrete crumbing against the water pressure that keeps the fresh water on the lake above, and then failing in a roaring tide. The lake would then drain into the sea, the big ships left land-locked and forlorn in the ditch amid the wreckage of the construction equipment that was left to flood in the race to complete the Ditch in the last year before the world went nuts, and Europe imploded. Destroying the Canal was the idea, anyway, and I imagine it has occurred to the dervishes in their caves, plotting for the next big media event. The Hoover Dam, perhaps, since the Canal is no longer a symbol of America but of something else. They have a thing for spectacle, when they can pull it off. Like the golden Dome they commissioned for destruction last week, or the desperate attack on the major oil refinery in Saudi Arabia. The provocation against the Shias was excellent theatre, but holy places are notoriously soft targets. The attack in Saudi that followed was supposed to be a major event, but it went by with barely a blink. The Saudis may have penetrated the terror cell, since the three cars that were intended to shut down the biggest and most visible symbol of the Kingdom's oil power barely got to the first check-point before they were gunned down. Periodically, agents of terror must demonstrate their potency or it will being to wane. Where there is no fear there is no power. They must be thinking hard about what to do next. Which is precisely where I find myself now. My PowerPoint was supposed to be about. miracles of technology for sale. But I got lost in the bright new idea of submarine-launched aerial vehicles that would slide from a torpedo tube and take wing at the sea-surface, flying on to take pictures, or perhaps swoop down on a target like a bird of prey. The notion was not new. In fact, it was so old that our father's generation thought about it all the way through and actually built them. Marvels of their time, really. They even issued the orders to go and bomb the Canal. They just got sidetracked, which is the way of things. There was a lot going on at the time, and the war thankfully ended before the sleek hulls turned east across the wide Pacific to blow up the Locks and drain the Canal. The submarines are on the bottom now, a couple placed on the bottom by their crews, others scuttled by the victorious Yankees to keep the technology from the victorious Communists. It is a story worth telling, but it will have to wait for another time. It is the same old story; I am getting sidetracked by life. Copyright 2006 Vic Socotra |