Next year will be the 25th anniversary of the publication of Tom Clancy’s Red Storm Rising, And I thought it might be fun to have a group build centered around the book or the concept of WWIII in Europe, or perhaps even just NATO vs. Warsaw Pact. I confess I’m also looking in this direction because I’m hoping to get the USS Chicago and USS Maryland kit for my birthday.
So, let me know what you think, pros and cons, what your level of interest is, etc. I’m thinking if I do this, I might organize it in one of these ways:
RSR GB: Only build it if it appears in the book (don’t worry, the book mentions at least 100 different vehicle types)
WWIII in Europe: Build something from any alternate history of WWIII you want.
NATO vs. Warsaw Pact: Build anything that served with one of these countries at any time since the treaties were signed.
NATO vs. Pact The Final Years: NATO and Pact stuff that served in the last dozen years of the Cold War-- 1980 to 1992
Or we could throw the whole NATO/Pact thing out and make it a Build One for the Gipper Group Build commemorating the 100th birthday of President Reagan.
One of my all time favorites, first Clancy book I ever read and really hoped they’d make it into a movie. Then I realized it would be a six hour movie (at least) in order to cover just the BASICS of the entire plot and character list.
I’m in as long as it’s " Red Storm Rising" as the focal point… I think that’s a GREAT theme… Means that it’s limited to 1986 and earlier vehicles, weapons, ships, aircraft, etc…
Damn… Can’t find my over-read and falling apart paperback anymore, the one that went through Operations Just Cause and Desert Shield/Storm with me and back again… Stik! What was the name of the M-1 TC that got the batlefield promotion from SFC to 2LT when the platoon did that “Thunder Run”?
I wanna do his M1, since I still have a Tamiya M1"A-Nothing" with the 105mm gun… Could even get an M60A3 and M1 on the same diorama…
EDIT: FOUND(MOST OF) IT!
SFC Terry Mackall, 11th ACR…
Was reading that book for the first time during REFORGER up on the Fulda Gap and it was a little spooky then, lol… Saw Spetznaz behind every tree & bush, lol…
Hey, just thought of something… That’d be the only GB in history (maybe) that’d have a real use for the old Testor’s “F-19 Stealth Fighter”… The “Frisbees” mentioned in that book that swacked the Soviet’s armor and that bridge site on the first night was the F-19, according to Clancy, IIRC…
Yeah, the book alone has so many great possibilities for builds. I built my 1/48 F-14A in VF-84 subdued markings from the initial Backfire attack on the carriers. I got that book when I was coming off leave in 86 I think. Read it on the fligt in to Houston on my way back to Ft Polk. I think I read the whole book in four days or so. I could NOT put it down. My unit then was 5th ID, III Corps. I kept seeing us as part one of those re inforcement convoys trying to get across the Atlantic to the front in Germany. Especially having done a REFORGER a couple years before in 84. That book certaily made you think when you read it as a soldier in that era.
The battle in Hamelin (I think it was) has numerous possibilities for different AFVs. And then there is Iceland, the subs, the 1980s Battle of the Atlantic… I am already building HMS Torbay but I do have USS Chicago in the stash…
BTW, I am on my thrid copy of the book. My first two paperback editions are long gone so for the third I bought it in hardcover. I just need Hunt For Red October and Patriot Games in hardcover to complete the Jack Ryan series.
I also have the board game for RSR and HFRO (which can be combined to do a complete land/sea/air campaign), but no one around here to play with since board war games are out of style…[^o)][proplr]
Ya, the Eagle guys could pull out that F-15C with the ASAT and paint it up with “Buns” Nakamura as the pilot, after the ASAT Missile motor exploded… That’d be a helluva weathering/battle-damage job, with no refs…
I swear, between Clancy’s RSR and Harold Coyle’s “Team Yankee”, that was a helluva time in the Cold War to be a Soldier and reading that stuff, lol…
I have that M2Anothing Bradley in the stash just waiting for this to kick off.
We were ready for Korea in '76, and my old unit was in Beirut shortly thereafter. Did a little winter exercise in Norway as a reserve in the early eighties.
I always wondered where we would go iff’n them Russkies rolled into Germany.
Stick, I’ve got a whole trunk full of paper war games. I was playing those way back in high school and college. TSS, Panzer Blitz, Pz Battles, France 1940, and all those Strategy and Tactics Magazine games. Still have them all.
RSR came out when I was at USAFA. Very motivational
Heh… I was three weeks into Basic Combat Training at Ft Leonard Wood when those “Ax Murders” happened that year up on the Korean DMZ… A “veteran” of almost 25 WHOLE days in the Amry, lol… The Drills had us ALL thinkin’ we were gonna finish BCT in 10 more days, march to the airfield, draw ammo, get on the planes, and head straight into a shootin’ war… Was scared s***-less for a couple days… 'Course, I was only 17 then too, lol…
Heh… That Drill Sergeant Griffin… What a joker… [bnghead]
Back then, in Jimmy Carter’s Military? Same place as us… Into Body bags… [whstl]
DISCLAIMER: For anyone take the last remark I made as an invite to “go political”, let me start by saying, DON’T…
It was a reference to the state of US Military Readiness and Training at the time during it’s transition from a conscript military to an all-volunteer military… If you want to comment from an “educated point of view” (meaning you had to be a member of the US Military before, during, and/or shortly after the Carter Administration) fine, but it wasn’t a window for political discourse…
One of the way I read it, after reading my copy almost to point of destruction, was to read it by location… Once thing started happening, I’d read starting at say, like, “USS Whatever”, then just read only the parts that took place on that ship… Then I’d go back and start at another place, and just read that , then go back to Keflavik, then just read that, etc, etc, etc… It was like reading a bunch of short stories that way…
We returned from SEA and I was sent to Okinawa before Bremerton WA. Woke up and was told to get my gear and be ready. Someone, somewhere, remembered if we deployed there’d be nobody to guard the nuke boats in Bremerton, as that detachment had orders elsewhere. Ah the joys of Carter’s administration.
The Marine Detachment Bangor Maine had a unique issue around the winter of '76-'77. Seems they had been forgotten as that unit was essentially disbanded by the military budget cuts. The only issue was no one told the Marine Corps and the detachment commander. After a month of no paychecks, the checks were all held in Kansas City, the unit skied into town and took over the town square. Police Fire and city administration sided with the jarheads and checks arrived shortly.
Dragon gunners actually practised on motorized Tamiya Shermans which were set in motion on the chow hall floor. Guess who built the model tanks?
Whoa…sorry I haven’t been by, but I thought this idea had died with a thud…the thread was up for days with no replies.
I’m going to light this candle as the Red Storm Rising 25th Anniversary Group Build. Will post the thread tomorrow or Saturday. Oh, and I went by the LHS and ordered the Airfix HMS Trafalgar today. She’ll be built as HMS Torbay, of course. [:D]
Heh… Yepper… I’m guessing you did, lol… I did the same thing for my unit, although I didn’t motorize anything… I built a fair number of kits for ID models so the guys wouldn’t keep boloing the “Indentify FriendlyThreat Armored Vehicles and Aircraft” portions of the CTT (Common Task Test)… The flash cards just didn’t cut it, (although I still have a couple decks of those aircraft ID playing cards)…
That was about the only time I built any models of jets that were operational after 1960, lol…
I had the models on display in the Day Room where it was easy to look 'em over at one’s leisure, but nobody ever paid attention to them until the day before and of the CTT, lol…