Tom clancy of 1980s : criticism

SsgtC

Banned
Well . . . I presuming the US Navy's professional crews can easily deploy then operate a mere two Sqns (24) F-14's from the 5,700 ft runway at Valgar Airport considering they've trained to operate these aircraft off a cramped 1,000 ft metal box in the middle of the ocean!
That metal box also has all the fuel, spare parts, ammunition, food and berthing for the hundreds of personnel assigned to those two squadrons. The Faroes have none of that. And the Tomcat doesn't operate in a vacuum. Where are you putting the Hawkeyes to provide airborne radar coverage to locate outbound shipping strikes and provide raid warning of incoming attacks? What about the helos for SAR and ASW to protect inbound merchants delivering supplies and to pick up downed flight crew? What about refueling aircraft to extend the range of your fighters when the Soviets invariably change their operating procedures to cut down on attrition? It's not nearly as simple as you're trying to make it out to be.

Ignoring your obvious sarcasm . . . . I was actually referring to the part in the novel where the US close the Panama Canal to traffic allowing their US Pacific Navy forces entrance to bolster the Atlantic convoy protection. If the US forces moved out of the Pacific it would encourage China against Taiwan, North Korea against South Korea. It would make better sense to leave them where they are as a deterrent and also attack Soviet forces in the Pacific Coast forcing the tie up of Soviet forces. Hell . . . you could even encourage Japan to help by getting them to try and retake the Kuril Islands
The forces transferred to the Atlantic are escort ships like frigates and ASW destroyers and amphibious ships to land an entire Marine division at once. None of the battle forces needed to deter China or N Korea were sent to the Atlantic.
 
Germany in WWII?

You might find that it's a bit different dropping off a few troops by U-Boat to monitor the weather than actually invading the place then controlling it!
I never mentioned u-boats, I wrote
surprise assault using false flag cargo ships

I also wrote
The problem would be keeping it, in the face of enemy air & sea superiority.

As for:
Well . . . I presuming the US Navy's professional crews can easily deploy then operate a mere two Sqns (24) F-14's from the 5,700 ft runway at Valgar Airport considering they've trained to operate these aircraft off a cramped 1,000 ft metal box in the middle of the ocean!

That "cramped box" comes with it's own specialized suppport equipment, stores of specialized spare parts, tools, jet fuel, munitions, crew quarters, medical area, radar & flight control, defensive weapons and escorts. Apart from basic ground support equipment and maybe the fuel (assuming the F-14 would fly well with comercial-grade fuel), everything else would have to be carried over there. So, not, something you can do overnight. You'd also have to move some E-2 Hawkeyes for AEW. Also, why F-14s? The USN didn't have that many to ship around; if anything like this was tried, it would most likely be the USAF.

Ignoring your obvious sarcasm . . . . I was actually referring to the part in the novel where the US close the Panama Canal to traffic allowing their US Pacific Navy forces entrance to bolster the Atlantic convoy protection. If the US forces moved out of the Pacific it would encourage China against Taiwan, North Korea against South Korea. It would make better sense to leave them where they are as a deterrent and also attack Soviet forces in the Pacific Coast forcing the tie up of Soviet forces. Hell . . . you could even encourage Japan to help by getting them to try and retake the Kuril Islands

I get it, but, again "Cause the book is Europe-centric" is indeed the main point. If you don't go that way, then you get a book bigger than "Lord of the Rings" and "The hobbit" combined. And things are not as clear cut. As for China vs Taiwan, the balance of power at the time was far more favourable to Taiwan than today. China's had very little power projection, and the airforce was still full of obsolete designs. Politically, they had been drifting away from the USSR for some time, (with relatively small scale shooting incidents in their common border), even going so far as providing assistance to the mujahideen when the USSR invaded Afghanistan. I would not be surprised if they decided to play a "wait and see" game. As for the Koreas, I allready posted that.
 
... I was actually referring to the part in the novel where the US close the Panama Canal to traffic allowing their US Pacific Navy forces entrance to bolster the Atlantic convoy protection. If the US forces moved out of the Pacific it would encourage China against Taiwan, North Korea against South Korea. It would make better sense to leave them where they are as a deterrent and also attack Soviet forces in the Pacific Coast forcing the tie up of Soviet forces. Hell . . . you could even encourage Japan to help by getting them to try and retake the Kuril Islands

I was part of the Pacific Rim US defense in the 1980s, & there was no way all or a majority of the forces there would be withdrawn in a hurry. Sure, some ASW & other naval assets would be moved, but the bulk of the US forces would have not sprinted off to Europe in the first 30 or 90 days, or even 150 days. Lack of transport would be one large factor. Moving the REFORGER Forces would not leave a lot for withdrawing the USAF bases/ground support from the far east, nor Army Ground forces. The Navy is a slightly more flexible there. But still, its not like the entire carrier fleet, escorts and all can just change course and direct to Panama at Full Ahead.

Furthermore that Clancy had little to say about combat in the Far East, along the Soviet Pacific front does not mean there was none. I can guarantee that in the RSR scenario there would have been strike and counter strike between Red air and naval forces and their US counterparts Exactly how fast that extends to involving Japanese or Korean forces I cant say exactly, but in 1984 the Japanese SDF officers I worked with regarded any Soviet War in Europe as guaranteeing a immediate war involving Japan. They understood the US military was too deeply embedded in Japan & Korea for either to remain neutral They operated under the assumption the USSR would attack US installations on Japanese territory from the first hour whatever position a Japanese government declared. Further they expected Japanese defense installations to be attacked as well as the US/SDF were too intertwined to attack effectively separately. Ditto for Korea in my opinion.
 

WILDGEESE

Gone Fishin'
I never mentioned u-boats, I wrote

I never said you did. I was using this to illustrate how difficult it would be for the Germans in WWII to mount an operation . . . . look at how their Kriegsmarine got mauled by the RN in the Battle of Narvik 1940 to the point where their surface fleet wasn't combat effective.

I also wrote

The problem would be keeping it, in the face of enemy air & sea superiority.

What air superiority? . . . it's over 400 miles between Iceland and the Faroe's and another 500 or so miles to Norway so where are they getting this air cover from if they haven't landed forces there?

That "cramped box" comes with it's own specialized suppport equipment, stores of specialized spare parts, tools, jet fuel, munitions, crew quarters, medical area, radar & flight control, defensive weapons and escorts. Apart from basic ground support equipment and maybe the fuel (assuming the F-14 would fly well with comercial-grade fuel), everything else would have to be carried over there. So, not, something you can do overnight. You'd also have to move some E-2 Hawkeyes for AEW. Also, why F-14s? The USN didn't have that many to ship around; if anything like this was tried, it would most likely be the USAF.

So the US, UK don't try forward basing for their assets? If so I take it this didn't happen then?

download.jpg


download (1).jpg


If they the RAF can get these babies plus F-4's here then the Faroe's should be a doddle.

As for the the Hawkeye's etc . . . they'd still be based in Scotland out of harms way. There is a thing called air to air refueling! What do you think we have these for to patrol the GIUK Gap.

formation-raf-vicker-vc10-inflight-refuel-tanker-aircraft-followed-B20BJB.jpg
 
Admittedly I have read only a handful of his books based on this my major criticism of him is his depiction of russians,

And women. And any nationality other than US. Also strongly homophobic at times.

I devoured his stuff as a teen in the 80's and 90's, but re-reading them with a bit more age and experience a couple of decades later and they are still readable but haven't aged well. Especially in the later novels there is a strong "Americans win because America and we are better at everything than everybody else" jingoistic vibe, and some quite callous and nasty stuff for the sake of it as well.
 

SsgtC

Banned
As for the the Hawkeye's etc . . . they'd still be based in Scotland out of harms way. There is a thing called air to air refueling! What do you think we have these for to patrol the GIUK Gap.
Here's the problem, Navy E-2s used probe and drogue refueling. USAF KC-135s use Boom refueling. The two systems aren't compatible. Then there's the fact that the KC-135s are controlled by SAC to support the nuclear strike mission. They would be totally unwilling to cut tankers loose for this mission. They would have to be ordered to by POTUS, and this isn't an issue he's going to force.
 
IMHO he was successful because nobody had written stuff like that before.
this. THFRO was interesting because of the details on submarine warfare/tension, and the cream of the Soviet Navy barreling across the Atlantic towards the US. RSR dialed that up to 11. Even if in hindsight it wasn't all quite accurate, at the time, it was gawdamn interesting...
 

WILDGEESE

Gone Fishin'
Here's the problem, Navy E-2s used probe and drogue refueling. USAF KC-135s use Boom refueling. The two systems aren't compatible. Then there's the fact that the KC-135s are controlled by SAC to support the nuclear strike mission. They would be totally unwilling to cut tankers loose for this mission. They would have to be ordered to by POTUS, and this isn't an issue he's going to force.

Yes . . . . but wouldn't they be refueled by KA-6's? . . . also based in Scotland.

The image above was to illustrate the RAF in support of their GIUK Gap operations.
 
I'm not sure if the OP is the kind of person who can suspend their disbelief that a work of fiction is less than perfect in order to enjoy a number of fairly easy 'romps' through the high Cold War.

I found HFRO and RSR easy to read and good fun, if not necessarily serious literature. Very much the equivalent of cheap lollies, which are great up to a point, but eating too many will give you a stomach ache.

For similar content, but done better and with greater intellectual rigour, Hackett et al's The Third World War: August 1985 and The Third World War: The Untold Story are superior texts on the ''Cold War goes Hot" subject.
 
For similar content, but done better and with greater intellectual rigour, Hackett et al's The Third World War: August 1985 and The Third World War: The Untold Story are superior texts on the ''Cold War goes Hot" subject.
they are pretty good, although rather dry. I really liked the chapter on the war in Scandinavia in the second book. The main problem with them was how fast they became dated... the chapter on the Middle East in the first book was made obsolete practically overnight due to events in Iran. RSR, OTOH, didn't really become dated until the end of the Cold War...
 
For similar content, but done better and with greater intellectual rigour, Hackett et al's The Third World War: August 1985 and The Third World War: The Untold Story are superior texts on the ''Cold War goes Hot" subject.
At the time, I thought unrealistic, as at that time, there was no way that things wouldn't spiral out to global nuclear warfare
Pact Forces withdrawing after one thrust is slowed? Nope
Kiev in retaliation for the nuking of Birmingham? Nope.
One thing that HFRO really got right was this
 
they are pretty good, although rather dry. I really liked the chapter on the war in Scandinavia in the second book. The main problem with them was how fast they became dated... the chapter on the Middle East in the first book was made obsolete practically overnight due to events in Iran. RSR, OTOH, didn't really become dated until the end of the Cold War...

Clancy's relevance was largely because he limited himself to the Central Front, North Atlantic & Western Approaches from an early/mid-1980s standpoint which was largely obsolete within a few years.

Hackett et al tried to think through a global war scenario from a standpoint of the late 1970s - probably the nadir of the Western Alliance - and make predictions that were later overtaken by short-run events.

As an aside - as much as RSR was a bit of a cheap lolly hit, the intellectual and factual rigour put into getting the naval battle scenes ''correct'' is undoubted. The reminiscences of Larry Bond here and some other commentary here are insightful.
 
I rather liked Bond's first three novels. By a happy coincidence, one year that I went to Gencon, I took Red Phoenix to read on the plane... and then found out that Bond was one of the featured guests there that year. I braved one of the long lines to get my copy signed by him....
 
At the time, I thought unrealistic, as at that time, there was no way that things wouldn't spiral out to global nuclear warfare
Pact Forces withdrawing after one thrust is slowed? Nope
Kiev in retaliation for the nuking of Birmingham? Nope.

You (and I) were not necessarily the audience that Hackett et al were going after in 1979 and 1982. The key audience were Those Who Mattered on both sides of the Atlantic and their 'need' for a well-crafted message of an alternative scenario in response to a WP invasion that was neither surrender or nuclear annihilation. A scenario that didn't undermine confidence in NATO or present another turn on the ''conventional war leads to strategic nuclear exchange" track.

And it was Minsk, not Kiev that was the quid pro quo for Birmingham.
 
Last edited:
Top