

If you were lucky, it would make it out of the tube.īut now, the captain moans, it is all mechanized. The captain would eyeball the target through the periscope with no gauges, do some arithmetic in his head, and order the torpedo fired verbally. He said that in WWI, when you submerged in a U-Boat, you were never quite sure that the cantankerous submarine would surface again. In the movie THE ENEMY BELOW (the movie that the ST:TOS episode "Balance of Terror" was based on) the German U-Boat commander was reminiscing. Watching the evolution of space warships will be interesting as well. Is it going to be like WWI aircraft? That is, rickety ships with a few crude weapons bolted on as afterthoughts, flown by a few aces who are familiar with the eccentricities of their craft? (Imagine a Space 1999 Eagle Transporter as a futuristic "Sopwith Camel") Or will it be more sophisticated? What's its going to be when space combat finally arrives?
