Sea of Shadows eBook - Navy Thriller.com

52 JEFF EDWARDS
unanimous in saying that Kennedy would have survived his other injuries
if not for the head shot. Popular theories argue for a second, or even a
third gunman in the shooting, but no one seriously disputes the fact that a
single 6.5mm bullet ended John F. Kennedy’s life. It’s impossible to
know if the world was changed for the better or the worse in the wake of
JFK’s assassination. But there’s no doubt that Lyndon Johnson’s vision
for American was different from Kennedy’s. LBJ had different views on
Vietnam, human rights, and the future of the space program. And he led
the most powerful nation on Earth down different paths than Kennedy
might have taken.
Are these examples proof of the concept that inanimate objects can
drive the forces of history? To verify the validity of the assertion, we must
work the problem in reverse, in the same manner that we can check our
answer to a mathematical equation by working backward from the answer.
To determine if the bullet that killed Kennedy was truly responsible for
altering human events, we can ask two simple questions: If that particular
bullet had misfired, or gone astray, would the world be a demonstrably
different place than it is today? And, in natural corollary to the first
question, would JFK have made different decisions as president than did
his successor, Lyndon Johnson? If the answer to either question is yes, we
must conclude that a single 6.5mm rifle bullet seized control of the destiny
of the most powerful nation on Earth, and therefore the destiny of
mankind.
The same sort of reverse check can be run on the atomic bomb
question. If the bomb at Hiroshima had failed to detonate (for whatever
reason), would the world be a different place? Would the nuclear arms
race have ever come to pass? Would mankind have ever been forced to
live under the threat of nuclear annihilation?
These examples are relatively easy to recognize: the airplane, the Abomb,
the bullet that killed a president. But there are other instances, other
objects or machines that have shaped the fate of our planet.
One particular device has been the engine of history on numerous
occasions, and yet its impact is almost entirely overlooked. The torpedo.
On at least five verifiable instances in recorded history, the torpedo has
become the lever of Archimedes: the machine that moved the world.
To examine the influence of the torpedo, we must examine the history
of the torpedo itself. When was the torpedo invented? How did this
influential and deadly device come into being?
Some military historians trace the origins of the torpedo back to the
Roman Empire, and the fire ships that the ancient Romans would send
drifting amongst the fleets of their enemies. Others prefer to attribute the