Has anyone read Clancy's SSN?

[Red October1984]

I want to order it, but I don't know if I will yet.

[TLAM Strike]

Its rubbish. Can't even tell Clancy wrote it.

[Sledgehammer427]

I'm siding with TLAM. Its terrible.

[Red October1984]

Really?

[mookiemookie]

I stopped reading it after about 50 pages and threw it away (and I never throw/give books away). It was that bad.

[TLAM Strike]

Contrary to what the title says, this is NOT a Tom Clancy book. Some toolbag author supposedly cowrote it and then Tom Clancy passed by, took a **** on the manuscript, and called it "cowritten". I've seen Call Of Duty fanfiction that sounds more Clancy than this book

? Keep in mind that this was written back in the 90s... The result is pretty obvious. America triumhps effortlessly and rapes practically every piece of military unit that China has with just ONE submarine. It's so ridiculous at points you'd think it's written as substitute porn for hardcore military enthusiasts.

The story is centered on Captain Mack, who, unfortunately, is the only named person in the WHOLE ****ING AMERICAN NAVY...Everybody else is named after their function and their ranks, and possess personalities no further than that of their position in the submarine.

a good healthy portion of the book is practically a slightly embellished activity log of somebody who knows half **** about submarines.

From: http://redkinoko.blogspot.com/2011/0...ok-review.html


^QFT

[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.

[Red October1984]

SSN was a decent book. It could've been better but I liked it.

[Platapus]

And frankly, your opinion is really all that matters. If you got enjoyment out of the book, then it was worth you reading it.

It is OK to ask other people's opinion about books, but don't let anyone steer you away from a book you think you might enjoy.

Every book out there is liked by some and not liked by others. There are no "bad" books from an entertainment standpoint


Now about that U-571.....

[CTU_Clay]

Tom Clancy's SUBMARINE, A Guided Tour Inside a Nuclear Warship is another book that I found interesting too.

The softside book I have was published by Berkley Publishing Group, New York, New York 10014