Dirk Pitt is a fictional character created by American novelist Clive Cussler and featured in a series of novels published from 1976 to 2021.

He manages to find adventure with his childhood best friend, Al Giordino, despite ending up with an ostensibly desk-bound role as the head of the National Underwater and Marine Agency.

Pitt was flying nearby returning to his base from a bombing mission and was ordered to intercept and alert the admiral by whatever means available.

When efforts to communicate with the Admiral's plane were unsuccessful, Pitt expertly shot out both engines on the transport, forcing them to ditch in the sea instead of landing at the captured base.

[2] Cussler derived this story as well as some of Pitt's awards from the real life World War II veteran Louis Edward Curdes.

In his career at NUMA, Dirk makes numerous shipwreck discoveries and thwarts countless plans by villains intent on global catastrophe or world domination.

In recent novels, Dirk becomes the head of NUMA, succeeding Admiral Sandecker when the latter is appointed Vice President of the United States after the sudden death in office of his predecessor.

The hangar also contains items collected from prior adventures, such as a cast-iron bathtub with an outboard motor fixed to one end, and is protected by a state-of-the-art security system.

She rescues Dirk Pitt from peril by swiftly severing the rope tethering his hands, deftly slipping a knife into his grasp just in time to thwart her father's men from orchestrating his demise in his hotel room.

The daughter of deranged scientist Frederick Moran, she is believed dead by Pitt when she is lost during an attempt to rescue her father as his underwater lair collapses.

Maeve is the single mother of two children, who she raises on her salary as a tour guide aboard a cruise in the Antarctic when she and Pitt first meet.

Crusader, which is owned by billionaire Philip Anschutz, then countersued, accusing Cussler of duping it into adapting his book into a film based on an inflated number of novels sold.

On March 10, 2009, Judge John P. Shook ordered Clive Cussler to pay $13.9 million in legal fees to Crusader.

In his ruling, Judge Shook agreed with lawyers for Crusader Entertainment that an original contract between the two parties called for an award of legal fees if either side breached.