Has anyone read Clancy's SSN?

[TLAM Strike]

Originally Posted by Kaye T. Bai

Bad in what sense?

Bad as in terrible storytelling or bad as in an inaccurate depection of USN SSNs and the submarine force?

I've been interested in it as well, as I'd like to read a book that goes into detail of the daily life of being on a USN SSN post-1990s.

The characterization is horrible. The crew is made up of cardboard cutouts that do nothing but give canned responses like in a computer game. Almost nothing about the daily life of the crew is mentioned.

The book reads like a run down of battles between the SSNand a progressively more dangerous series of enemies. The technology and tactics described are rudimentary in detail.

The most telling part is where the US SSN takes on five Russian Akula SSNs manned by Russian "Advisers" and wins mostly because the Russians use the absolute worst weapons in their inventory. Most of the book is a series of battles between US and Russian submarines not Chinese ones as advertised.

This book doesn't read like any Clancy book that I've read (and I've read all the Ryanverse books from Red October to Red Rabbit). I doubt he really wrote it as it says on the cover.

[Red October1984]

i.e. The Hunt For Red October

[Krauter]

Originally Posted by TLAM Strike

The characterization is horrible. The crew is made up of cardboard cutouts that do nothing but give canned responses like in a computer game. Almost nothing about the daily life of the crew is mentioned.

The book reads like a run down of battles between the SSNand a progressively more dangerous series of enemies. The technology and tactics described are rudimentary in detail.

The most telling part is where the US SSN takes on five Russian Akula SSNs manned by Russian "Advisers" and wins mostly because the Russians use the absolute worst weapons in their inventory. Most of the book is a series of battles between US and Russian submarines not Chinese ones as advertised.

This book doesn't read like any Clancy book that I've read (and I've read all the Ryanverse books from Red October to Red Rabbit). I doubt he really wrote it as it says on the cover.

Yeap.. I bought it and after reading through the first encounter I left it on my shelf. Terrible terrible dialogue. It got to a point when I tried to pick it up again that I could guess what the dialogue would be three pages up.

[Kaye T. Bai]

Originally Posted by TLAM Strike

The characterization is horrible. The crew is made up of cardboard cutouts that do nothing but give canned responses like in a computer game. Almost nothing about the daily life of the crew is mentioned. The book reads like a run down of battles between the SSNand a progressively more dangerous series of enemies. The technology and tactics described are rudimentary in detail. The most telling part is where the US SSN takes on five Russian Akula SSNs manned by Russian "Advisers" and wins mostly because the Russians use the absolute worst weapons in their inventory. Most of the book is a series of battles between US and Russian submarines not Chinese ones as advertised. This book doesn't read like any Clancy book that I've read (and I've read all the Ryanverse books from Red October to Red Rabbit). I doubt he really wrote it as it says on the cover.

Thanks, that's what I wanted to know.

[Kazuaki Shimazaki II]

Originally Posted by TLAM Strike

The book reads like a run down of battles between the SSNand a progressively more dangerous series of enemies. The technology and tactics described are rudimentary in detail.

Or at least that's what it was supposed to be, but the Han (ancient Chinese sub) in Chapter 1 arguably gave the best fight in the whole book.

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by Red October1984

What I want in a sub novel is a storyline. Nonfiction bores the hell out of me, but, I loved The Hunt for Red October.

If you are looking for WWII fiction, I can recommend Final Harbor by Harry Homewood. Homewood started out in the S-boats and made 11 war patrols during WWII.

The main character of the book is the submarine itself as this book recognizes that crews change.

Anyone else read Final Harbor and can give an opinion? I think it is a good fiction book but I would be interested in other opinions about it.

I have not read any of his other books though.

[Red October1984]

I guess we'll see about SSN. Has anyone read Scorpion Down? Sounded good for nonfiction. Got both for a total of 7$

[Subnuts]

Originally Posted by Red October1984

I guess we'll see about SSN. Has anyone read Scorpion Down? Sounded good for nonfiction. Got both for a total of 7$

Toilet paper would have been cheaper.

I reviewed Scorpion Down for this site around the time it came out, but these two reviews on Amazon basically sum it up:

http://www.amazon.com/review/R1GHNHP...tag=&linkCode=

http://www.amazon.com/review/RTOGWK2...tag=&linkCode=

[Red October1984]

I thought Scorpion Down sounded good so I picked it up. SSN was just there and cheap so.....

Originally Posted by Red October1984

I thought Scorpion Down sounded good so I picked it up. SSN was just there and cheap so.....

It matters not what the Community thinks, although I suspect that Ed Offley was on drugs, delusional or hopelessly paranoid (perhaps all three) when he wrote Scorpion Down. Read both and form your own opinion.

[Red October1984]

The community hated U-571. I personally loved that movie. Bought it on DVD and everything. I don't know everything about subs. When people talk about figuring out the TDC, I have no idea how to manually do the TDC. I play on automatic. I'm not extremly technical because I know that I don't know it all about subs. I look forward to learning a lot more here, in my books, and in my subsims. I just might like SSN. I might like Scorpion Down. I'm not a stranger to being apart from the group. So, to sum that up, I love this website and forums and look forward to being the greatest Skipper to ever be in my basement.

I will admit to being a nearly fanatical U-571 hater but that does not translate to thinking less of Forum Member's who might enjoy it for whatever reasons. The topic comes up almost quarterly around here so be patient and you will see usual arguments for and against.

Submarines represent a fascinating aspect of naval warfare and it's probably not unreasonable to say that they were high amongst the decisive weapons of the 20th Century. There's millions of printed words and hundreds of websites with submarine content so you suffer from a abundance of data and putting things into their place can be challenging.

A couple of reasonable primers on the subject are:

Thomas Parrish - The Submarine

Peter Padfield - War Beneath the Sea: Submarine Conflict 1939-1945.

Both are reasonably objective, written for general audiences, are well researched, readily available and should be held at better public libraries. With a relatively unbiased background of the submarine at war you might move into reading about the post-war era and so can better understand the submarine in the Cold War putting works like SSN and Scorpion Down into context. You may come to share other's disdain at these particular works or perhaps not.

Anyway, Good Hunting on the search for more submarine knowledge.

[Skald]

The style of writing in this book is terrible, it is very stiff and formulaic.

It is essentially a non-fiction factual reporting of submarine warfare dressed up as a fiction novel.

[Popeye the Salior]

yes love it. Follows an actual submarine.

Say what you will about the book. It is nevertheless, the prime reason that I came to be a member of this forum.

I bought the PC game SSN back when it came out. Then a friend bought me the book. There was a particular scenario on the game that I was unable to affect a solution for. A friend at work was an ex-Navy E-3 Orion crew member. When I diagrammed the scenario out to him on the wet-board, he told me I was screwed and there was no place to hide. He told me that any solution in the game was extremely unrealistic.

Since I was extremely fond of that PC game, and being a veteran of the Falcon 4.0 flight-sim and F1 2002 racing sim, I searched for something suitable WRT submarine simulation. That search lead me to Sub Command.

That has brought immense enjoyment in and of itself. That being said, what I've worked on off and on is developing a Sub Command campaign that plays out SSN within the purvue of the realism afforded by Sub Command. I'll concede that the SSN story is an extreme fantasy and the SSN PC game is kindergarten in contrast to Sub Command.

SSN begins with the first mission as being tasked to transit from San Diego Naval Base to Naval Station Pearl Harbor. I spent some time at www.marinetraffic.com and generated a list of normal traffic near San Diego. My Sub Command campaign generates random entities out of this extensive list.

The Los Angeles skipper must exit undetected, i.e., run the gauntlet of USN and CG vessals that are on training excercise or outright running interdiction for DHS, in addition to the overwhelming majority of traffic that is of commercial - tanker, cargo, cruise, fishing - and to smaller degree private craft. The fact of the matter is San Diego and vicinity is a hornet nest of activity. Not overlooking inbound / outbound traffic to HI & Asia. The skipper can either ignore the entirety of it, or get points for each vessel ID'd, remaining undetected, receiving ELF transmissions notifying enemy contact established W of Los Angeles postion by E-3 on ASW excercise, detecting the incoming enemy Han, and based on ROE - weapons hold / weaponss free - as received from ComSubPAC in response to LA sitrep pertaining to enemy contract relayed to ComSubPAC, address any threats that impugn the mssion of transit to PHSB.

That's just egress from SDNB. Ingress to PHNB is another matter completely (albeit merely a beehive in contrast to SDNB). Again, I've spent time at marinetraffic.com and logged normal HI marine traffic which the inbound LA must contend with as adjunct to enemy contacts scripted by SSN storyline.

The LA skipper must be intimately familiar with all aspects of driving LA class SSN, e.g., SOP, sonar, TMA, weapons systems, environmental conditions, tactics and strategy, etc.

From that perspective, I find SSN to be a usefull template for my campaign. That notwithstanding, the storyline of SSN itself is pure fairytale.