How accurate is the description of the Naval War in the Atlantic in Tom Clancy's "Red Storm Rising"?
- Thread starter Alexniko
- Start date
-
- Tags
- naval power soviet navy us navy ww3
IIRC, they didn't find them at the end, they already knew where they were. They were just at the bottom of the target priority list. And if they haven't been attacked, it would make sense to redeploy some of the AA assets to other targets that are getting hit. The ending is probably one of the least problematic aspects of the books.
Tu22m does not even have the capability to do antiship in ATlantic
It would be slaughtered way before it reaches there
Isn't its best antiship role is to defend the bastion seas and naval ports of ussr from CVBG attacks
Yes. And the invasion was aided by a missile taking out the ground forces command post. It that hadn't happened the resistance might have been better.
Maybe it was the murder of the Icelandic family and the gang rape of their daughter.
Coulsdon Eagle
Monthly Donor
The most interesting part was the lengths regimes will go to keep in power. Not only the maskirova - slaughtering their own nation's kids - but the option of seeking help instead of declaring war was totally off-limits. Shame the side-shifting KGB head met a paratrooper who lost his daughter in tragic circumstances.
Well, in RSR they score their greatest victory through a trick - IIRC, they lure the Tomcats from USS Nimitz and Foch's Crusaders out of position with decoy missiles, then the Backfires attack when the fighters are too far away to react and just swamp the escorts with missiles. And it's also noted that even after Foch is sunk, the French Crusaders are able to catch up and knock down something like six or seven Backfires. So he seems to have been aware of the difficulties it would have had in the role.
Last edited:
Except for the whole puppetizing half of Europe for half a century and when the colonials got too uppity in Prague and Budapest in the 60s and 70's reacted with full blown military interventions to crush those popular uprisings.
Something friends of mine do not buy since he seem to know so much about how agencies work
"Seems to" being the key word. AIUI, most people in the Intelligence community tend to laugh at how they're portrayed in his books
The idea that the Eastern European nations were colonies of the USSR in the same way as India was a colony of the United Kingdom is absolutely ridiculous and honestly somewhat insane.
Most of Eastern Europe had higher living standarts than the USSR itself, and the Soviets concluded quite some contracts that were not really economically favourable for Moscow (oil shippments way below the world market price, mineral exports, developement aid that didn't give the USSR itselt any gain, etc.). Furthermore, the Soviets never really exported capital to the Eastern European nations.
Now, sure, the USSR had a lot of influence in Eastern Europe, and the most communist leaders tried hard not to antagonize Moscow.
However, many Eastern European governments also implemented pollicies that contradicted the CPSU's party line (like Walter Ulbricht's continuation of economic reforms after 1968, Gomulka's open criticism of Polish-Soviet relations, Kadar's pollicy of "Goulash Communism", Honecker's friendly pollicy towards the FRG at the hight of the Cold War, Ceacescu's open rejection of the Warsaw Pact intervention in Czechoslovakia, Hoxha's decision to outright leave the Warsaw Pact, etc.) without any direct reaction from Moscow.
The claim that Eastern Europe was effectively under Soviet military occupation has no basis either, at least after Stalin's death.
In Romania and Bulgaria there were no Soviet troops at all. After the events of 1956 the Northern Group of Forces, harboured in Poland, amounted to 58.000 troops, most of which were stationed on the countries western border with the task of swiftly reinforcing the Warsaw Pact's lines in Germany in case of war. The Central Group of Forces, harboured in Czechoslovakia and Hungary, had a total strengh of about 85.000 troops. The only Warsaw Pact country that harboured a larger number of Red Army forces was the GDR - the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany consisted of about 340.000 troops. The total Soviet military contingent in Eastern Europe amounted to around 480.000 troops.
In contrast, the US military contingent in Western Europe amounted to 400.000 troops during the Cold War. 250.000 of these were stationed in the FRG, while the UK harboured around 75.000 American troops.
Eastern Europe was as much under "Soviet military occupation" as Western Europe was occupied by the US.
Now, again, this is not to say that the USSR didn't have a lot of influence in the Eastern European nations - it did. From a marxist point of view, the relations between the Soviet Union and the other Warsaw Pact nations were not healthy and didn't correspond to the ideal of internationalism. However the Eastern European nations were NOT Soviet colonies.
Also, neither Prague nor Budapest took place during the 70s...
Last edited:
When Red October came out the defense establishment actually thought he had a source on the inside. He used open source material and got most of his naval combat material from Larry Bond. Bond was in the Navy for six years. TC gives him credit inside the cover of RSR. Clancy was close on real sub ops, but not exact. It just sounded good because even to this day the US never discusses sub ops. There is an urban legend in the sub force that when the Clintons took office they freaked out over the real stuff US boats did. We stopped doing stuff for the first few months of their term so who knows. Read Blind Mans Bluff. It’s stories are correct and real.
Justinian
Banned
Tom Clancy was off on a lot things, but most importantly the air and land war. But as another poster noted, why would they waste the northern fleet on some kind of Iceland gambit, when they would need it to keep pressure on the Scandinavian countries. Plus the premise that the Soviet union could some how have oil depletion problems is ridiculous.
Colony might have been a bit of an exaggeration from a short quip.
Yes I know the Soviets subsidized their Eastern European puppets. But puppets they were none the less. Yes some of them didn't have significant Soviet garrisons but you must be joking if you seriously think that the leaders of those puppet states didn't know perfectly well that if they went even a little too far the Soviets would at least until the mid to late 80's respond with a full bore military invasion as they did with Budapest and Prague. Yes some of those puppet states did have slightly different Marxist policies but after Budapest and Prague their leaders did know their was a line that they couldn't cross. Having slightly different Marxist policies then the Soviets doesn't make them non puppets.
And the idea that the US relationship with it's Western European allies is directly comparable to the Soviet relationship with its Warsaw Pact puppets is frankly absurd. The Brits on several occasions voted in Labour Governments that had heavily socialist and semi communist elements. The US reaction wasn't happy by any means but the reaction wasn't to send the 101st Airborne into London. The French openly removed themselves from the NATO Command structure and more or less kicked American troops out of it's borders. Once again the US didn't send B52s to level Paris. The US retaliated to Libyan funded and organized terrorist attacks on US servicemen by launching bombing raids. The French refused to allow said bombers to cross through french air space. The US response wasn't to send those same bombers against Paris.
The US did a lot of sketchy and immoral stuff during the Cold War. But the notion that the US relationship and policies towards it's NATO allies is in any way similar to the USSR's relationship with it's puppets in the Warsaw Pact is ludicrous beyond belief.
On the whole? Yeah, the US treated its allies (at least those in NATO) better.
But rejecting any similarities out of hand is overly charitable. The US literary set up underground ultra-far right terrorist networks in several NATO countries, which on occassion engaged in serious violent action against the legitimate government, and that was without any nation ever doing something as drasting as falling to domestic revolution. Had anti-US leftists marched through Rome, Athen or Brussels in the 50s (or 68, to keep the symmetry) you could fully expect military intervention to be at least strongly considered.
It would be very dark but I would love to read a brutally realistic portrayal of a post 1980s nuclear exchange world.