Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!dptg!ulysses!andante!princeton!njin!rutgers!att!cbnews!military
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: The Novels of Thomas Clancy
Message-ID: <8802@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 4 Aug 89 13:06:30 GMT
Sender: military@cbnews.ATT.COM
Lines: 27
Approved: military@att.att.com



From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
>From: hjohnso@hubcap.clemson.edu (Barry Johnson)
>I was wondering what the net's opinion is on the quality and accuracy of  
>the books written by Thomas Clancy ...

(I assume we're mostly talking about THFRO and RSR, as PG isn't very
military.  I haven't read TCOTK yet.)

The books are good and are *mostly* accurate.  He made some guesses from
published information that were good enough to cause some unhappiness in
security circles.  I am reliably informed that he also made some errors.
I spotted a few myself, without benefit of classified knowledge, and there
are probably more.  Considering the non-trivial number of military
training establishments that make the books required reading, it's pretty
clear that he does a very good job on capturing the atmosphere of things --
what it would be like in general.  I'd be very wary about taking his word
for specific technical details, though.

My one serious beef about Red Storm Rising is that the equipment almost
always works.  It fails once or twice for plot reasons.  A real major war
would probably be a nightmare of failures, poor performance, and patchwork
repairs on gear that has never seen sustained combat before.

                                     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
                                 uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu