Red Storm Rising

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Well, they'll never make a Hollywood movie of it*, but a bunch of computer types are using games graphics and the audiobook to visualise Red Storm Rising.
They've been at it for a couple of years, and I think it's a very fine effort. Here's Chapter 35



Obviously this will end up about 30 hrs plus long if they finish, but I like it it a lot.
Having flown these kind of training missions, protecting convoys way out over the ogsplosh by looking for long range missile launchers, including out of RAF Stornoway**, I find it highly realistic.
Of course, there are secret squirrel bits both Tom Clancy and the producers don't know, but the general gist of it is great.

*"Props, can you get me 16 Backfire bombers and 24 Tomcats for a couple of days?"
"Er, no"

**"Where are the Nissan huts we had to sleep in?? Revetments? As if!"

[Ex-Ascot]

Brilliant Fox thank you.

[Boac]

Gripping, but the continuity girl wants sacking

[OneHungLow]

Tom Clancy's books are always gripping on a technical level but often lacking in the wetware (human psychology, interest etc.) department, but once I started to watch that video I couldn't stop! Thank God for computer graphics/animation nerds with a military aviation bent and vivid imaginations!

I took the liberty of forwarding the link to my "verraaier" friend teaching the Russians in Moscow. Eat missile you Russian SOB's.

[Ex-Ascot]

Can't seem to get these episodes in sequence any where.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Most of them aren't done yet.
There's also another couple of Youtube channels doing similar things, including HaloSim.
I think they are just doing the big air battles to start.
I will post a list here as I find them.

[Pontius Navigator]

Fox, you are obviously too young to remember Embry's follies. That would explain our revetments - ( lack of)

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

I am, but do tell!

[Pontius Navigator]

Look at Google Earth and Coltishall. You will see pairs of blast walls on each dispersal. Sir Basil Embry's was CinC Fighter Command and presumably this was his idea. I was told that by the time they were built the aircraft would not fit in them.
However they appear to be 76 feet apart and even a Javelin should have fit.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Got it, thanks.

[Boac]

However they appear to be 76 feet apart and even a Javelin should have fit.

Story goes that they could also fit a Lightning at the bottom of a very hairy loop at Leuchars.................

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

The plan with the Tornado F3 was to deploy to obscure places. We could reliably land and take off in under 3,000 ft, which opened up the kind of airfield where the ATCO was the local postmistress "I'll be there in 20 minutes. I'm just with a customer." is something I've heard (Islay). And you could see her pedalling out to the tower on her bike. It was part of our regular sorties to bung in a Practice Diversion to just about every strip on the British coastline. The main problems were the weight limit on the tarmac rather than the length, and (in war) getting a skeleton groundcrew there with the missiles for a re-arm.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Chapter 17 - The Frisbees of Dreamland


Chapter 20 - Dance of the Vampires


Chapter 21 - Nordic Hammer

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Chapter 31 - Demons


Chapter 33 - Contacts (teaser)


The author appears to be working on a couple of other too.

[4mastacker]

...... and (in war) getting a skeleton groundcrew there with the missiles for a re-arm.

There was a cunning plan...several in fact.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

I figured there was.
The groundcrew were wondering how fast you could tow a missile trolley behind a Landie, for hours, so I'm guessing they hadn't been told any of them!

Probably a wise move - security!

[4mastacker]

T'was a bit of a complicated plot involving many agencies, but resources had been earmarked and would have been activated to get stuff to where it was needed once the relevant escalations had been declared and authorised. For reasons best known to people way above my pay band, these "arrangements" were not to be physically exercised under normal peacetime conditions.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

There was a lot of that, sensible I think. Some stuff was never practised to avoid giving things away, for other things like the airfields where practice was very useful, they had us go everywhere without telling us which had been earmarked. A couple of things they didn't even tell us for the Gulf War - not an important enough war! There were mutterings about the disadvantages of having clever graduates - we worked out stuff for ourselves from basic principles, and then had to be told to STFU.

[Pontius Navigator]

The plan with the Tornado F3 was to deploy to obscure places. We could reliably land and take off in under 3,000 ft, which opened up the kind of airfield where the ATCO was the local postmistress "I'll be there in 20 minutes. I'm just with a customer." is something I've heard (Islay). And you could see her pedalling out to the tower on her bike. It was part of our regular sorties to bung in a Practice Diversion to just about every strip on the British coastline. The main problems were the weight limit on the tarmac rather than the length, and (in war) getting a skeleton groundcrew there with the missiles for a re-arm.

In a way I started that. At Akrotiri each unit was well settled in there own little spot on the airfield. Any one type could have been destroyed by air or ground action.
Ten years before, I had seen the RAAF disperse aircraft after dark and return to normal dispersals at dawn.
I proposed that Akrotiri should use a dispersal system which they did.
At Kinloss I again won the flight line/dispersal argument.
At Honington, SLOPS, Jules Flood, one of the pilots on my sqn in Cyprus went one further and proposed the off base dispersal plan.
At Coningsby the plan was received in full NIH mode especially having come from a bomber puke (Jules now a Bucc man). A number of aircrew, imperfectly briefed, set out to locate suitable disused runways near adequate 4* accommodation. I barely jest.

[Pontius Navigator]

Following on from the above:

In 1964 East Kirkby was one of two promulgated emergency landing airfields. The other was in the west Midlands.

Our Copilot at the time was a model aircraft aviator and we went to East Kirkby to fly his aircraft. We went round the peri track and came to the main runway. There was an 8 inch lip from the concrete peri track onto a perfect, freshly laid, tarmac runway. It was painted with piano keys etc and no X. Down each side of the runway were paraffin goosenecks. Each was fully fuelled with paraffin. We beat a hasty retreat!

Just up the road from East Kirkby was Spilsby airfield. I don't know its state at the time but I think it was a B47 recovery airfield. It had several large square concrete dispersals and I think the plan had been land and park up.