Red Storm Rising 25th Anniversary GB

Modeling Subjects Group Builds
1

This August marks the 25th anniversary of the publication of Red Storm Rising, Tom Clancy’s novel of WWIII in Europe and the Atlantic. This build gives us a chance to commemorate a great book, build some Cold War kits and be glad the balloon never went up. Here are the rules:

  1. All categories of subjects (planes, armor, ships, cars, figures, space) are welcome.

  2. The subject must meet one of the following criteria:

A. It appears in the book.

B. It served in Europe or the Atlantic in 1985-1987. The book takes place in 1987, BTW, though that is never said explicitly.

C. USN Pacific Fleet equipment is OK if it’s home-ported in Pearl or San Diego, since ships from those locations come through the Panama Canal halfway through the book.

Though I’m not going to be a stickler about specific units (for example, an F-15 doesn’t have to be a Black Knights or ASAT F-15) try to get it right. An F-16 based in Korea doesn’t really fit. I also may make exceptions for things that would have been in the fight but aren’t mentioned specifically, but I want to hear your case.

If you’re not sure about something fitting in the build, run it by me. My goal is to be as inclusive as possible while keeping it reasonable.

  1. Build any scale you want. All aftermarket stuff is OK. Kits that have been started can be included as long as they are less than 50% complete. It’s acceptable to cross over with models that are involved in other group builds.

  2. The build runs from 15 January 2011 to 15 June 2012. I picked 15 June because that’s the day the war kicks off in the book, and 17 months should give the ship modelers plenty of time.

Here’s the roll call:

Agent G-- Tamiya M2A Bradley

Beav-- Possible F-19

BigSmitty-- 1/72 Hasegawa P-3C “Penguin 8”
Possible 1/350 USS Pharris

cdclukey-- 1/350 Airfix HMS Trafalgar built as HMS Torbay

1/350 Dragon USS Ticonderoga (tentative)

Hans von Hammer-- Tamiya T-62A

Stikpusher-- To be determined

2

There was mention of Norwegian F-16s though, or possibly they were Dutch… Anyway, they engaged some of the Backfires (?) early on, IIRC… Can’t check it out to make sure… That’s in the part of the book I’m missing… But no, no USAF F-16s were in it…

3

Oh, yeah… Put me down for a Tamiya T-62A from one of the Soviet “B”-units… Probably Polish…

I was gonna do SFC Ken MacKall’s 11th ACR M1A-Nuttin’, but when I went to look for it, I discovered it was one of the missing kits from last summer’s burglary…

4

Put me down, subject TBD. I have a lot to choose from.

5

I’m in with Tamiya’s M2A zilch Bradley.

G

6

I’m in…

At a bare minimum, I’ll be doing a Hasegawa 1/72 P-3C “Penguin 8”. I looked up all the VP squadons and detachment listings, found a det that was at Keflavik in 1985 (as opposed to the dets going to sunny Rota). Kit doesn’t have those markings, so I will probably bash some markings together, I have a ton of spare decals.

If I can find a decent 1/350 Knox FF, I’ll build the Pharris, after getting it’s bow torn off.

7

You could probably put me in as a mabe.

I do have several aircraft that could fit the Cold War erea (and possibly the time the book covers) but I’ve never read Red Storm Rising, or any other Tom Clancy novel, so I got no clue what aircraft/ vehicles were used .

I’ll try to get myself a copy, and read it over. Afterwards, I’ll make my choice of kit (if I have any that will work) If I don’t have any kits in my stash that are mentioned in the book, I’ll choose another kit and plea my (it’s) case.

8

GASP!

Wow…

It’s far and away Clancy’s best work, next to Without Remorse…

Red Storm Rising is basically World War Three… Arab Terrorists manage to destroy the USSR’s largest Oil refinery, which in a few months plunge the Soviet Union into darkness, no electricity, no gas, no harvests, anything that needs oil, is gonna be outta fuel or un-makeable leaving Ivan in big trouble with a starving population. So they decide that in order to keep that from happening, they must take over the oil fields in the Middle East by invading Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia, et al…

In order for this plan to be successful though, they must first eliminate all NATO Forces in Western Europe, and do it before the US can mount REFORGER. So they launch an elaborate maskirovka (masquerade) which involves unrestricted sea, air, and land operations in Western Europe and the Atlantic Ocean, although they pull ALL their ballistic missile subs (Boomers) into port, so they’re out of the fight. They don’t want to go nuke or, on land,chem/bio…

In the beginning, they’re pretty successful, going through the Fulda Gap into West Germany, and they put a damn-damn on the US Navy’s Atlantic Fleet as well, invading Iceland with little resistance after a surprise attack on the USAF there, leaving the SOSUS line with huge gaps in the North Atlantic, through which Ivan’s attack subs can go through undetected. They, along with the Red Air Force, raise hell with the merchant shipping trying to make it to port in England and France, and the US is stuck doing REFORGER and about the same speed it used in WW2, while the forward-based units of the US and NATO are getting their collectives azzes kicked, and it looks like NATO is gonna lose this one…

Not to write an entire synopsis, but if you can build whatever was “painted green” and shoots at you when the Cold War goes Hot in the mid-80s, that’s the deal…

It was one helluva scary book if you were a Soldier, Sailor, Airman, or Marine in the 80s… It also should have been the FIRST Clancy novel made into a movie, but there’s no way it could have been done in 100 minutes… It’d have to have been done, at a minimum, af a trilogy, like Star Wars was done initially… Would’ve taken 12 years to make, and would have actually covered a time-frame of about a real-world month, which is about how long the novel-time lasted, not counting the initial terrorist attack and the ramping-up to war… That took about six months, IIRC… But the actual “shooting war” was less than a month…

Anyway, US armor would be without "A"s anywhere, except for M60s and M113s, lol… New armor, it would be mostly Bradleys and Abrams’ without an “A” anything, and not a lot of them… The Stealth fighter in the book was based on the Testor’s F-19 and called a “Frisbee” in the book by the pilots…

The fictional “Soviet” Testor’s Stealth Fighter, the “MiG 37B Ferret-E” didn’t show up in the book…

Tamiya’s “Modern Armor Boom” of the late 80s was due to that book too, IMHO…

Basically, you can build anything that would have been floating, flying, or rolling in the early 80s, NATO or Warsaw Pact… But no F-15Es, no F-117s, B-2s, Challenger IIs, or that kind of stuff… Just 70s and early 80s military stuff…

Maybe someone will do the “Order of Battle”, lol…

It’s probably the easiest route to just ask that, yeah… Rather than listing what CAN be done, just pick some kits out you want to do and ask if they can “play”…

9

The curse of two of my favorite books being on the third world war in the 80s is that I can’t keep them straight (the other one is Team Yankee, by Harold Coyle; a MUST READ for all modern period modelers).

I will most definitely be in this one, with at least one, possibly two kits (one would probably be the Testors F-19 mocked up as one of the ‘Frisbees of Dreamland’) If I do a wingy-thing, it would be a definite break of the mold, because I simply don’t build planes. I can’t remember, are there any western or soviet air defense weapons in the book? I know that there are some air defense weapons at Keflavik (American? but Soviet for sure.) I know Shilkas, Stinger MANPADS, and Vulcans appear in Team Yankee, but its escaping my memory for Red Storm.

10

All participants up to now have been added. Now, for housekeeping traffic…

Yep, Norwegian. One of them jumped the MiGs sent to Iceland and some others tried for the retreating Backfires that mauled the Nimitz battle group.

BTW, as for those burglars…I hope they hang the bastards.

Railfan-- Hans is right…it’s probably more efficient to just ask. However, just off the top of my head we have the F-14, F-15, F-16,F-18, F-8 (French Navy), B-52, P-3, Jaguar, Tornado, MiG-29, A-10, F-111, F-19 “Ghostrider” stealth fighter, IL-86, IL-76, Hip, Hind, A-7, Blackhawk, Seahawk, Sea King, Lynx, Backfire, Badger, Bear.

Beav-- I’m really, really hoping for an F-19.

11

Ah yes the F-8E (FN)… I have one of those…[^o)]

12

Ditto on Harold Coyle’s Team Yankee …

A must read for fans of DATs…

13

I’m sure I remember ZSU-23-4s at the bridge site the Frisbees took out, and I think there was more than one reference to the M247 Sergeant York DIVAD…

!(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v233/HansvonHammer/Army Pics/M247SgtYorkDIVAD.jpg?t=1294899149)

Any of you ADA guys here remember THAT white elephant? Tamiya sunk a bunch of money into that kit, followed by Academy, and then the Army axed the program… After the Army sunk about 6.5 billion (with a “B”) into it for 12 tracks (with 41 more in the pipeline) in it as well… Back then, “What if” builds didn’t get done as much, so when the Sgt York “died”, so did the kit sales… Wish I’d grabbed a couple now…

Seems that when it was demonstrated in front of all the Pentagon Brass and key members of the SenateArmed Services Committee, the automated fire-control system, which was designed to home in on the spinning rotors of a hostile helicopter, decided that, rather than engaging the drone helicopter target, the whirling blades of a latrine exhaust fan about a half-mile away was a more enticing target and the twin 40mm Bofors turned the latrine into kindling… One gun also engaged a tree after evaluating its threat level and picking it as a target rather than a another drone.

In Red Storm Rising, the Sgt York lived up to its name though and blotted some Yak 28 Brewers and Il28 Beagles from the sky, although those were some Soviet-satellite country’s aircraft, and not USSR…

14

At the Soviet bridging site I do recall ADA assets being listed, but not the type (got an SA-6, SA-13, and ZSU-23-4 in the stash…). I need to pull the book off the shelf and read it again. Sounds like a good excuse to me.

Did Clancy mention the Sgt York in the book? I dont remember that part…[^o)]

15

Hmm, well, SGT YORK is still our misfit baby (as are all of our developmental systems see: THEL, SLAMRAAM, MEADS, and some of the more archaic anti-ICBM systems, SPARTAN, SPRINT, etc.) My personally favorite SGT YORK story is that they couldn’t get the computer to transition from tracking a high speed jet to tracking a stationary hovering helicopter. Besides, by the time SGT YORK was even really conceived gun AA systems were definitely on their way out. Vulcan and Chaparral only came about as quick fixes before a more permanent SHORAD system, Avenger could come into play…which in itself was an interim until SLAMRAAM could be fielded. 20 years later and we still haven’t got something from that program.

I think you can definitely put me down for an F-19, but I’ll need a full reread to pick out the ground system that I want to build (maybe a soviet truck of some sort that would figure in the scene where the Frisbees blow up the Western Commander’s column after bombing the underground POL site.

16

Thanks for giving me a little background on the book, Hans. I’m hooked now. I’ve got to get myself a copy soon.

Now knowing what I know about the equipment used in the book, I can say definately that I’m going to be in for this build. I’ll find a good kit to build this weekend.

17

Yep. That was the book that got me hooked too. I just picked up Clancy’s new book…“Dead Or Alive”. I have a Tomcat that i’m using in another group build that I can use here. Been a while since I read the book. Was there specific Tomcat squadrons mentioned?

18

For F-14 Tomcat squadrons in the mid-80s for Red Storm Rising, use either VF-84 or VF-41, as they were the 2 F-14 squadrons on CVN-68 at the time. Could possibly use hi viz (late 70s/early 80s) markings but by that time most squadrons had been ordered to tone down markings (gray on gray blah schemes).

If you can’t find those, any kit with a tail code starting with an “A” is good for an Atlantic Fleet F-14. PACFLT squadron tail codes all start with “N”. Hasegawa’s long OOP “F-14 Atlantic Fleet Squadrons” was awesome, as it had decals for 8 or 9 different LANTFLT squadrons. Might be able to find it on ebay quite cheap.

Here’s a set of pretty definitive VF-84 markings through the years, from Afterburner decals… not worth $20 in my opinion, but a good reference. You’ll see low viz to hi viz and switching back and forth through the years.

19

Hmmmmm. Doesn’t look like my Tomcat will work then. I’m doing a VF-1 Wolfpack Tomacat. And I really don’t want to do yet another “Bones” F-14. Not that I don’t like the markings (I love them really), it’s just that everyone has done that squadron too many times.

20

VF-1 had a long association with USS Enterprise. She was transferred from Alameda to Norfolk in 1989 so potentially she could be a game player. I dont recall her being in the book.

Carriers I recall off the top of my head are Nimitz, Saratoga, Foch, and IIRC America. There are probably more listed.

Here is a link to the Wikipedia article on the book for those who have not read it. Spoiler Alert!!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Storm_Rising