Can Anyone Here Answer Some "Red Storm Rising" Questions For Me?

Yes, questions about the famous Tom Clancy novel. I know its been 30 years but based on things we know since then I have some questions regarding certain military operations conducted during this hypothetical conflict.

 

Sure?

I've read it a bunch of times and WW3 fiction is one of favorite genres.

 

Thanks! Me too!!

1) Why were the U.S. carriers not being used for most of the war. By my calculations the war lasted about six weeks and the Nimitz/Saratoga group was severely damaged the second day of the war. Then the carriers did not play a major role until more than a month later during the retaking of Iceland. The captain of the Pharris (latter Reuben James) himself even thought a commentators question "Where are the navies vaunted carriers" was a very good question.

I know that USN might've been somewhat shy about risking the CBGs after the Nimitz was severely damaged, Saratoga lightly damaged and Foch destroyed, but this was World War Three. The USN fully expected to lose one third of their carriers anyway.

2) Speaking of Iceland, how doable was the Soviet seizure of Iceland on the first day of the war? It seems to me that lots of things had to go right for them to pull it off.

3) How doable was the massive NATO "Dreamland" strike on the first day of the war? I know that Clancy had the descriptions and capabilities of the "stealth fighter" badly wrong and that the real F-117A has never carried AAMs (though I've heard there were experiments), but were there other ways that NATO could've taken out the Soviet Mainstays?

It seems to me that the Iceland Seizure and the smashing of the CBG were attempts by Clancy and Larry Bond to "keep the Soviet Navy in the fight" for the majority of the war given Clancy's interest in naval matters.

4) Speaking of which. Operation Doolittle. That seems like an awful lot of trouble just to get 60 Tomahawk missiles to hit four Backfire bomber bases. Once again, three carriers groups attacking the bases in the Kola seems more reasonable. I personally think Doolittle owes more to Clancy's interest in submarines than being a plan that would be implemented during war time.

 

1. The setting is pretty narrow focused so we don't really know what's going on in the Med, Persian Gulf, or Pacific, but it seems that most of the carrier activity is South of the GIUK gap providing air cover for the Reforger convoys.

2. Not very likely. The Soviet blue water amphibious capability was garbage. Their sea going barge idea might work in a surprise but there is no way they'd be able to keep those guys supplied. Aircraft from Scotland could easily interdict air supply and the waters around Iceland would be flooded with attack subs by the US and Britain.

3. Given at least a week of prep, anytime after November '83, Operations Dreamland could occur but it would be different. I can definitely see an opening night blitz by F-117's against C3I facilities across the Warsaw Pact.

4. Operation Doolittle makes more sense when you remember that using conventional Tomahawks to attack land targets was still really theoretical at the time.

Personally I think Clancy underestimates the losses the Soviet Naval Aviation forces would take.

 

I've also wondered about the death toll of the conflict for the participants and in total of course.

While the lack of nuclear or even chemical weapons and lack of lots of very deep air strikes by the Soviets it seems would seem to suggest a lower than typical death toll, the USN and USMC did lose upwards of 4,000 people in the attack on the CBG the second day of the war and 1,500 in the SUCCESSFUL battle with Soviet Naval bombers over Iceland.

And the war did last about 6 weeks by what I can see which would mean a fearsome number of soldiers and civilians killed near the Inner German Border.

 

Operation Dreamland in real life could actually be more effective than in Clancy's version.

The Frisbees in the book manage to kill some AWACS aircraft and mark some bridges and bridging equipment. Later they kill some POL facilities.

But IRL can you imagine how devastated any WP battleplan would be if the HQ's and bunkers of Soviet Frontal Aviation, Group of Soviet Forces in Europe, the Stasi, and the various political and military organization in the pact were all destroyed on opening night?

 

Casualties are hard to estimate again because of the narrow focus. Hundreds of thousands to maybe a million?

The lack of chemical warfare is IMO the single most unrealistic thing in the entire book.

 

In my opinion, Michael Palmer's "The War That Never Was" (in my opinion, superior to Red Storm Rising) the East Germans (like in Red Storm Rising) are extremely opposed to the Soviets using chemical weapons even threatening to side with NATO if chemical weapons are used.

But yeah, I think Sir John Hackett's "The Third World War: August 1985" and its sequel are much more realistic in regards to the use of chemical weapons.

that said since you are interested in World War Three fiction I have a question:

Just how many books did Sir John Hackett's book inspire or are related to?

From what I can tell

1) The Third World War: August 1985
2) The Third World War: The Untold Story
3) Team Yankee
4) Team Yankee The Graphic Novel
5) Red Army- IIRC it was inspired at least in part by the "Soviets winning" addition at the end of "The Untold Story".
6) First Clash-

I'm not sure but I thought "Chieftains" might've been related to Hackett's scenario as well.

 

Clarification: Team Yankee is Harold Coyle, my personal favorite writer in the genre.

If the East Germans ever tried to issue such a threat to the Soviets, I can see their senior leadership suddenly developing "health issues" requiring their retirement.

Every Soviet battleplan I've ever seen or heard of considered chemical weapons to be just another weapon and also an integral part of the plan.

 

Yes, but IIRC in Team Yankee, Coyle directly refers to events mentioned in "The Third World War" including at the beginning the sinking of a U.S. ship in the Persian Gulf by the Soviets and at the end the Soviet nuclear strike on Birmingham.

 

Correct. It is set in Hackett's universe but Coyle wrote it.

I love his stuff. I actually have a book of Coyle's. Not
like one of the books he wrote (I have pretty much all of them) but I have a book from his personal library.

 

Someone once wrote that Coyle's books have no "character shields".

That is, even though a character might be the focus of much of a novel up to that point he doesn't hesitate to kill them off or have them suffer horrendous injury.

Like in "Sword Point". Two of the main characters we''ve followed throughout the book are both killed in the final pages. One who was horribly burned already, aboard a U.S. hospital ship which is hit by Soviet anti ship cruise missiles. And a female character who is butchered in the desert by Iranian guerrillas..

What books did Coyle like to read. ?

 

That is 100% true. His characters die all the time and not always at climatic moments. He really wants people to understand that soldiers die in war, usually unexpectedly.

I loved Sword Point, it was actually the first book of his that I read. And it ties in great to the book of his that I own:

I read Sword Point shortly after I joined the Army and learned about the Rapid Deployment Force from it. The RDF has always been one of my favorite military history topics and I love collecting military history reference books.

I was at a Half Price Books in Kansas City a couple years ago and found a really cool reference book on the RDF written about the same time Coyle wrote Sword Point. It was only when I got home that I noticed a stamp on the inner cover "This Book is Property of Harold Coyle". He lives in Leavenworth and I guess he must have sold a bunch of his old reference books.

 

^Very interesting.

The coolest thing I ever found in a book was when I ordered a copy of "Whence The Threat to Peace" from Amazon.

"Whence The Threat to Peace" was the Soviet answer to the U.S. gov. "Soviet Military Power".

Anyway, a short typed letter fell out of it from the Soviet embassy in Washington to the American that the book was apparently being sent to.

 

I've always been interested in the fatalities of a NATO/Warsaw Pact war. I figured that the "Third World War by Sir John Hackett" scenario added up probably to 6-7 million fatalities with about 500,000 in the nuclear attack on Birmingham and 1,000,000 in the four nuclear warheads detonating over Minsk.

Most of the remaining civilian fatalities due to the extensive use of chemical weapons in central Europe.

Other nonnuclear/nonchemical weapons scenarios could be as low as 500,000 and as high as 3 or 4 million depending on the length of the conflict and whether major war also erupted in casualty heavy places like the Korean peninsula.

Though in all likelihood the greatest civilian fatalities in a World War Three situation would be in Africa, Asia and parts of South America due to the disruption of trade and transport of food and medical supplies.

 

I read both Red Storm Rising and Hackett's Third World War in the 80's, so I'm not sure I remember much of either of them. However my general impressions of Red Storm Rising was that it was really just a slice of what was really going on. To me, the most important and interesting part of the war would be the land war, but Clancy, being Navy, wrote what he knew. The Third World War concentrated much more on the land war aspect, but seemed to me at the time wildly optimistic of a NATO victory without things going nuclear. Of course, I was stationed in Germany at the time I read both books during the Cold War so I suppose I read them both with a more critical eye.

 

Well IIRC Tom Clancy was never in any branch of the military.

And from what I've read Hackett's Third World War featured the Soviets going further into West Germany and beyond across the North German plain than almost any comparable novel. The Soviets basically occupied everything across northern West Germany, Denmark, Belgium, Netherlands. Basically all the way to the French border.

 

Red Storm Rising is my favorite of Clancys books.

The narrow focus on Europe shortened the conflict and eliminated many units from use. In reality, Soviets would have struck east and west st the same time in order to stretch US forces. This conflict only lasted about 6 weeks, but reality would have been much different. At the very start, Soviet tanks would have smashed the initial lines of US and German armor. Best case scenario would still see all of Germany and probably most of France in Soviet hands.

Iceland would not be attacked in the method Clancy used. It's much more likely that Soviet forces would be flown in troops to secure the ports, and communications, then followed them with cargo ships carrying the heavy gear. I also think the Soviets would have used a much larger aviation footprint with dedicated attack and defense units.

 

I don't see the Soviets being able to smash through U.S. forces near Fulda and Hunfeld. From what I've read there the terrain is pretty defensible.

The likeliest regions of success for a Soviet attack would've been the North German Plain largely defended by British, West German, and Dutch units.

Even then the West Germans and Dutch IIRC had Leopard II tanks which were superior to what the Soviets would've brought forward.

Also I thought 6 weeks would be considered a "long war" by Soviet standards and expectations. From what I've read the Soviets had no operational plans whatsoever for anything beyond two weeks.

 

There'd be nuclear war before the French let the Soviet's take over most of the country.

And any cargo ships carrying supplies to Soviet's in Iceland would have ended up on the bottom of the ocean. NATO attack subs and aircraft with anti-ship missiles would have ensured that.

 

One thing that I disagree with in both "Red Storm Rising" and "The War That Never Was" is Cuba avoiding the fighting by making various excuses to the Soviets.

In "The Third World War: The Untold Story" Cuba wants to stay aloof from the fighting but the U.S. misinterprets intercepted messages from Cuba to the U.S.S.R. and hammers Cuba hard with massive airstrikes.

I always figured that in an effort to spread U.S. forces, the Soviets using their forces in Cuba or visiting Cuba to attack Western Hemisphere targets in order to distract the U.S. and draw some of its forces away.

In my own scenario I suggested,

1) Soviet missile boats from Cuba attacking oil platforms in the Gulf.
2) A couple of Bear bombers bombing Kennedy Space Center.
3) A couple of Soviet warships making a port call in Cuba before the war kicks off and then moving quickly toward Panama to fire cruise missiles against the Canal locks.

 

Post-1975 or so, the Soviet's never really had offensive forces stationed in Cuba. Their biggest assets in country were for intelligence collection.

 

I thought Soviets warships routinely made port calls there and Bear bombers fairly often flew off the U.S. East Coast, landed in Cuba to refuel and flew back again?

Note that you wouldn't need much in the way of forces to create a stir in war time

 

Any bombers or ships in Cuba when the war kicks off, are going to get interred by the Cuban government. Cuba doesn't want to get bombed to hell in the inevitable US counter attack.

 

That is the crux of my position.

1) Would the Cubans really act directly against elements of the Soviet military in such a manner?

2) What happened to the Cuba that in 1962 when Castro was urging the Soviets to launch a nuclear war even though he knew Cuba would be destroyed?