Red Storm Rising - The Dance Of The Vampires (Naval Battle 105a) | DCS 

Modernized 2020's version: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-4nREdYN06ts.html

You ask whether Clancy planned it out on a huge map? He and author/game designer Larry Bond wargammed out the naval battles for Red Storm Rising using a board game called Harpoon. The DCS of its day.

This re-enactment from the book needed Kortana ferry flying that F-15 across the atlantic and spotting the Badgers flying NORTHBOUND, giving the game away that the radar blips flying south toward the carrier were drones.

CAP: I believe that Using the link 4 datalink E2C's could not just guide AIM-54s, they could literally take over the F-14, steer it onto target, and launch the missiles remotely. This is how massive simultaneous salvo launches could be accomplished even back in the 80s.(One of my subscribers just ran this by Ward Carrol- former F-14 RIO, Ward said E2Cs could fly/steer the F-14s, but the pilot had to hit the launch button. My subscriber told him about this video, hopefully he'll drop by and leave a comment :))

EXCELLENT - I was in AW Training with the Navy when the book came out, and some of my buddies and I would play Harpoon on weekends - huge macro-missions that took up 3-5 barracks rooms - one for Blue/Red and one for a group of umpires. Sometimes we would have the submarines with their own rooms (since comms between surface and subs is rare). Another interesting mission - update "Dance of the Vampires" by about 15 years when the Tico and Spruance class would have VLS launch systems rather than the 2 rail launchers. A CVBG IS spread out just like that - we could say with the group and RARELY see another ship UNLESS you were the Tico there in immediate support of the carrier (and that would be 0.5 to 1.0 miles off)

The first time I read RSR I was at Fort Sill, out in the field and sitting on top of my M113A3, at night. I was reading it under the light of my red lens minimag flash light, as MLRS missiles were streaking over my head every few minutes all night long. The good old days.

The Kelts were used not as decoys per se, but to simulate a multi-regiment Backfire attack. The Badgers operated as stand-off jammers. IIRC, the Backfires approached at low altitude, reducing the detection range of the E2s.

In the book there was also a flight of F15s ferrying to Europe with sidewinders that tore into the backfires and got some kills and gave early warning of the southern attack

Cap: in the book The Tomcats had two x 220 gallon drop tanks each. Yours appear to have no drop tanks and that is why they did not have the range to even shoot, when coupled with the fact that the AI launches at half the range as was quoted in the book. In the book the F-14s went to Greenland after the attack.

Former Forrestal sailor here. It hurts to watch it burn even though it’s long been scrapped.

Great vid, been waiting for this one. Isn't it crazy the number of ships the USN had in a CBG back then? Hell, in the book, Clancy's character Toland even remarked how they were technically one CV short, as NATO doctrine was to have 4 carriers per battle group to be able to fight and survive in the Atlantic. Nowadays it's one CVN, 1 CG, and 2 or 3 Destroyers, and if lucky, a support frigate from a NATO partner, plus an oiler....and that's usually it.

"Red Storm Rising" is one of my all time favorite books. Glad to see you all doing this. The attack on the air base was intense as well!

Also in the book there was a USAF ferry flight of F-15s, armed with one AIM-9 Sidewinder and full loads of 20mm, which encountered the northern group and destroyed three of them. They reported the kills to the Nimitz battlegroup and that was when they started thinking all was not as it seemed.........

Now CH needs to model the Megafortress from Dale Brown’s “Flight of the Old Dog”

One thing the book talked about was the fleet started radical evasive manoeuvring. Also they fired a lot of chaff, and the missiles were distracted by chaff clouds.

Dance of the Vampires was modelled, or rather wargamed in a naval tabletop wargame called Harpoon by Larry Bond over a number of sessions (the newest version V came out a couple of years ago). The actual results were a bit fudged for the book, because Clancy wanted some specific results for his narrative (like Nimitz surviving taking a couple of hits but surviving to make a Yorktown resurrection story later in the book). As I recall the badgers and Backfire formations were both spread out in arc-like formations, to deny the tomcats the ability to mass their fire.

Now THIS is what a I Call Quality Content. You Have a lot of Material to make a series of videos in Red Storm Rising Cap. I finished It a few months ago. You have the Iceland Invasion, the Keflaviks Raids, the Frisbees of dreamland, the airwar against the soviets in central Germany. Please Cap make it Happen!!!

9 seconds ago. Red Storm Rising was my dad's favourite book. I remember trying to mod the original red alert to do a soviet campaign for it. @cap in the book the point of following the decoys was to provide more radar signatures. You should re-run this, except allow the fighters to respond as they prefer - so have the backfires etc be detected at realistic ranges and things be dispatched to engage.

In the early/mid 80s the RAF had Jaguars, Buccaneers and Tornado GR1 (replacing Buccaneers) stationed in Germany loaded with WE.177s for QRA (Nuclear) purposes. There can't be many aircraft more underrated and underestimated than the Jaguar - they were rated to carry 2x450kt nukes.

Great video! I'd love to see the revenge match, "Time on Target". "Nordic Hammer" would be cool as well. Hell, any of the missions from RSR would be awesome!

Fantastic book, I was reading it in Berlin the night the wall came down, amazing how accurate it described the areas my regiment was to hold in the event of an attack and how low ( as a Chieftain tank reg)our life expectancy was.

Red Storm Rising has gotta be my favorite Tom Clancy novel. He even included the stealth fighters in this book years before they were known to the public.

Red Storm Rising and Hunt for Red October are still two of the best military books ever. I feel like Tom Clancy lost his touch with the Rainbow Six set of books but his original books are still the stuff of legends.

What a great job done simulating the most intense chapter in one of the best military novels i've ever read, especially considering the limitations of DCS. Now if only sub/asw combat could be improved to the point of being able to simulate "The Hunt for Red October".....just imagine all those subs racing for the US cost, or simming the close formation flare drops by A-10s over the Kirov....oh wait that's doable now!! There's my suggestion for the next Tom Clancy sim! Flare-boxing the Kirov without causing WW3!

This is one of my favorite books and my favorite chapters of that book. Not sure if it's mentioned in the video, but during the writing of RSR, Tom Clancy and Larry Bond (creator of the Harpoon wargaming system) played out 'Dance of the Vampires' scenario in Harpoon to create the battle.

The F-4Bs are way more heavily armed than the F-8s, but other than that it looks like a really close approximation - thanks GR team!

I first read it when I was in the Air Force in the late 80's. Pretty scary how accurate some of the minute details are.

Great video trying to emulate possibly one of the best ficional books written for WW3... now the errors apologies in advance... Starting with the Reds the Badgers dropped their decoy missiles at 250nm or so the only aircraft that followed the Badgers in where 6 Tu-16J Jammer types which where the jamming version as to the Tu-22's they where air refuelled on the way out and back which allowed them to circle round the fleet and they didn't have to worry about Icelands defences on the way back (also back in the 80's the range of the Backfire was further than what it could do in real life it was thought to be around 4000nm with weapons as they where thought to be able to fly out into mid-atlantic). And now the Blue side starting with the French they had FOCH CV and 2 MASURCA equipped ships Colbert Cruiser and Suffren Frigate, 2 Duquesne T47 class frigates with SM-1 Tartar, the MASURCA was equivalent to SM-1 with slightly better range. The US side had the CVN Nimitz and CV Saratoga the 1 LHA's only 1 Tico with Mk26 launchers 2 Virginia class CGN 2 California CGN and then a mess of escorts, which aren't really mentioned in the book apart from USS Spruance as the ASW command ship, so the best guess without Tom Clancy and Larry Bond who designed the scenario CF Adams DDG Mk11(first ship) Mk13 with SM-1, and Farragut class DDG's MK10 launchers with SM2ER, these where the main air defence destroyers available in the mid 80's. The rest of them Spruances armed with Sea Sparrows and a mix of Knox and Perry class frigates. I did the same scenario in Harpoon which was a computer game version created from the tabletop game and used the above and still got my butt kicked a fair few times even though I made it... The boardgame Harpoon was used by Clancy and Bond to game out the scenario though they did have some limits on fuel as stated it was slightly skewed due to thinking that the Tu-22's could fly nearly twice the range that they can in reality add in air to air refueling and that's how you get Tu-22's south of the fleet...

The whole point of the northern raid was to be detected - the reason the Badgers followed the missiles in (which were drones) was to make it look like a MUCH bigger raid, so the Tomcats went whole hog, wasted all their energy and missiles on the drones and a few badgers, and could nothing about the southern raid.

This is what modern surface naval warfare will be like. Not just a bunch of guns shooting at close range as if it were the Battle of Trafalgar.

I listen to this audio book nearly every night, to get to sleep. I've heard it hundreds of times. I watch GR for hours a day too. So this is a match made in heaven for me!

Clancy used the Harpoon tabletop minatures rules to model this attack and they did three run throughs trying different attack profiles before coming up with the attack he used in the book.

Im betting Clancy simulated his battle stats by rolling dice or just using Jane's data along with just how he wanted to have the battle go.Edit; just read the top comment...so he used harpoon.

Cap, this is your crowning achievement, I think. You long ago proved DCS is an able naval warfare sim. I've been waiting for this ever since.

During Praying Mantis US ships decoyed several Iranian missiles using only chaff. These missiles were very susceptible to chaff clouds that were bigger than the actual ship. The missiles always went for the biggest target and a big chaff cloud was easy to create. Plus jammers can make the ship itself look very small on radar, so the only thing the missile sees is chaff clouds. This is why the Nimitz was presumed to take only two survivable hits, and a handful of escorts along with Foch and an LHA got smashed. I think Clancy’s scenario emphasized the importance of land based interdiction from the UK before moving carriers too far north, and this is something the US Navy was aware of. You needed F-15s with tankers constantly over the North Sea to dissuade naked raids like this.

As i recall(its been a few years) the Nimitz (although I thought it was America, but again its been a while) took 2 hits, sailed to Southampton for repairs then supported the invasion/liberation of Iceland

If I could make a suggestion for a scenario, in the same book in a further chapter Time On Target, a OHP Frigate and a British Frigate along with a US SH-60 and a British Seaking fooled soviet missile by sailing in close formation and splitting up to fool the missiles.

Red Storm Rising...first Tom Clancy book I read, as much as I love Jack Ryan character...overall RSR is my favorite Clancy novel. Harold Coyle - Team Yankee is a good author / novel as well.

From what I recall, after the battle, the F-14's diverted to Scotland along with the A-6's and KA-6's and EA-6's that had been airborne

Red Storm Rising is a great book. Amazing simulation, thank you!

I just finished this book for the second time and was going to request this. Perfect timing!

I was stationed in Iceland with my father (retired Air Force) from 1972 to 1974. I remember intercepts against Russian Bear and Badger bombers would happen very often.

I spoke to an old Canadian CF-104 pilot a few years ago. He was stationed in Europe and was assigned to drop American nukes from his plane. He said they all knew it was a one way trip. They were supposed to fly in super low, drop the nuke, ditch there plane, and find cover. Absolutely no time to fly out of the EMP or turn around to go home.

They are spread apart to mitigate a tactical nuke.

Wonderful replay of a Great Book battle. I remember reading 500pages of that book over the course of one day I was so engrossed. As far as suggestions to dial back the vampire breakthrough, the Ticos can be closer in, as well as the OHP's. Only a couple were needed for far off ASW. When Raid 2 is spotted, since they know Raid 1 is a feint, have all Ticos and OHP's go to flank speed to match bearing on Raid 2, to push the SAM envelope further to the SW.

Simply wonderful. The Grim Reapers have been doing some amazing war game simulations. Cheers!!

As a repeat reader of Red Storm Rising, I've gotta say; "WELL BLOODY DONE"". Mind you never mind what that Southern E2 was doing missing all those Backfires on radar, surely anyone within about 200 miles would've heard all those sonic boombs!

Favorite book as a kid, read it first @ 11, a bit young for the rape scene, but not too young for the sheer volume of badassery. Red Storm Rising is still unequaled but man i'd love to see a modern remake. You could absolutely do a full series showing these engagements and me and every RSR fan would be enthralled.

Great video!!!! One thing about the SPRUANCE-class DDs, they didn't have Mk 13 launchers. They had a single octuple launcher for Sea Sparrow point defense missiles, which did not provide the area defense of a Standard SAM. My first ship was the USS JOHN HANCOCK (DD 981) and I was her Gunnery Officer from January 1991- January 1993.

I remember something about a chapter in which an AF Colonel on the lamb from the Soviets in Iceland calling in the contrails with a satellite radio. Must have looked like a WWII B-17 formation. Awe inspiring.

Be interesting to see this scenario. But with a modern CSG

INCREDIBLE JOB!!! I recently re-read the book and I'm still amazed at the quality and accuracy of TC's writing, it was just as good today as it was when I read it in the 80's. ANy chance you'll post the .miz file?

I can't think of any off-hand, but if valued viewers have any more book and movie suggestions for naval/air battles, this type of video was really cool.

Clancy and Larry Bond was playing Harpoon the board game.

I loved "Red Storm Rising" when I read it in high school, as I loved many many Tom Clancy books. "Without Remorse" is probably my favorite. I don't think there's anything applicable for a DCS mission from that one though lol.

37:07 That's actually a interesting question. I assume that the response would be F-117 nighthawks, but Tom Clancy wouldn't have known about that while writting his book where this happens in 1985. The nighthawk was released to the public in 1988. So... 🤷‍♂️ Regardless, excellent content as always! Been subscribed for the last year and always enjoy these wargames!

I've played HARPOON IV games with Larry Bond running the game a few times. Larry talked about writing this chapter. I will forward this video to him.

I’ve been waiting for this forever and you exceeded my expectations immeasurably. Thank you Cap!!!

This was a great scenario from a fantastic book. Great job Cap.

There is a passage in the book in an earlier chapter where the Airboss describes how he will fight the battle. As they had raid warning from iceland they had an approx time on target for the bombers. The Airboss juggled his fighters so that at the time needed he had all 48 Tomcats in squadrons (not just flights) '200 miles out and we will kick their ass", ripple firing. The kelt swarm did not need a precise target location. But the Kingfish did. So a Bear-D had to light up the carriers with its radar (which had all been kept silent). This was the first detection of raid 2 and as i remember the Backfires were never seen on radar, only the missiles were. So the carrier was pantsless with the Toms out of missiles and a fartsack of Kingfish headed to your floaty base. Even though you have just done this scenario a Mk2 might be in order..... Love your work....

15:32: If they were not spread out, a single tactical nuke would've been able to knock out the whole CVG.

Great job Cap and co! The large formation is probably due to nukes. Spread out and one nuke won’t get the whole fleet. Also back then there was no CEC to coordinate SAM ships so spacing them out made it easier to avoid interference and issues with missile guidance.

What a coincidence! I'm listening to the Red Storm RIsing audiobook and was listening to this chapter last week. Yesterday I found out about your sea battle simulations and today you release a video on this battle. Really cool video, seeing it all play out in real time and with those stunning graphics on top

This is amazing. Great work GR!

Classic WW3 book...huge scope and scale.

HEY! I was one of the requesters, excited to see you guys do it! *Edit Going off memory here, but I swear that the carrier group only had 2 Hawkeyes up at the time of the raid. NW and NE? Thought the Bears used their emissions to triangulate the Carriers locations.

Cap, so much respect. This is such a good idea that I wanted to pause and say that before watching.

Great simulation, if I remember correctly after the attack in a later chapter there is comment that a carrier force like that should have had 4 x CVNs to operate that far north. Would be interesting to see the result with the additional 48 Tomcats, additional E2-Cs and extra SM2 ships. Feel it would be a very different result.

Love this! One major thing though - the F-8 could only carry four AIM-9's, and I don't think it was capable of Sparrows, as only later models had more than a ranging-radar for their guns. The only other guided missile I know it ever did carry was the air to ground Bullpup, on the "J" variant (question mark?), so those F-4's were FAR more capable of intercept (still only at 32 minutes in, just wanted to make the observation)

The super wide fleet arrangement makes sense given the very real possibility of attack with nuclear tipped torpedoes and/or nuclear armed missiles (for example, the AS-6 Kingfish could be equipped with a 350 Kt warhead, and the older Kitchen had a nuclear option as well).

Flight of the Old Dog by Dale Brown is a great book worth checking out

Yes! I have been waiting for this ever since I found your channel years ago. Thank you.

As always, very thorough cap!! Loved this one!!

i absolutely loved this book! i hope to see more recreated battles from it, by you guys.

Wow!! That was epic. Well done Cap for modelling all of this, and a great job by all of the Grim Reapers as well. I'm off to watch the updated version to see how it turns out.

omg this is so cool!! loved watching this & being able to visualize the chapter that I loved so much and reread so much! I’m sure other people have said this, but you forgot about the F-15 ferry flight - that pilot used to be one of my role models

Fantastic work putting this together!

Best Chapter in the book, so damn good

LOVE THIS BOOK. I read it on my own in high school, THEN it became required reading for a social studies honors class my senior year. So I read it twice by '92. I am read it again since then plus I have listened to the audio book multiple times. GREAT BOOK! It was ahead of its time.

There has always been a high profile unit within the U.S. Military who wore the cross of the Templars...which I think started first with the British Crusaders Mark I during WW2 , In Iraq 2 were working at the same time, as the Crusaders' Tank unit was packing up to leave , SEAL Team 3 with Chris Kyle were the Crusaders' and wore the cross , while searching for the Syrian Olympic sniper , the tank unit had to unload tanks and bring them to a wall that was being constructed , that we were losing a man a day from that sniper...as SEAL Team 3 set up on a roof top to find his nest .

Great video, enjoy them all. The O.H. Perry Class Guided Missile Frigates did not utilize the SM-2 missile in the 1980's, or ever that I know of. The missile utilized in these Frigates was the less capable SM-1. I was a USN MK-13 GMLS technician back then. The Australian Navy, did obtain some ex-US Perry Class Frigates, and eventually upgrade in them in many ways, including utilizing the SM-2 missile with the MK-13 GMLS. Great job on the videos, keep em' coming!

One of my absolute favorite books. The other one is, and I don't remember the author, is "Piece of Cake" about a WWII RAF Hurricane squadron from the attack on France to the Battle of Britain. It would be interesting to revisit this video with Tu-160s , F/A-××, and Rafael especially with Meteor and AIM-260s.

I want to say one of the big cause in difference of outcomes was how much secrecy was around AEGIS at the time. Since it was just coming out Clancy likely only had so much to go on and most of that said it was the bees knees. OSINT was basically whatever you could get leaked to you or read in magazines like Popular Mechanics. That said I don't think it would matter much if it had really happened. That many missiles could likely cause the system to panic. Can't remember wear but I think at one time near there it was a limit of 96 or 100 objects could be tracked and engaged at a time. So 400 missiles/decoys, plus friendlies, plus bandits and all in two different directions with jamming support to burn through. Isn't hard to see how the system tries it's best but can't endure this. Still a great scene to see played out. Shows how the Convoy War in the Atlantic is different in the Modern age of missiles and bombers versus WWII U-boats.

GJ on the script. No faulting that. GJ Cap.

I read Red October and Red Storm Rising as a Midshipman, and was actually on my First Class cruise, reading Storm again, when news broke of Red October being made into a movie. I was excited by that, but have always thought they should have followed up with Storm.

Great simulation...loved every minute...I would love to see other battles from books reenacted by my favourite gamers...especially with the cap commentary

Thanks for my daily GR fix.

One of my favourite books and that was a fantastic video. Thanks.

Brilliant mission setup Cap. Truly amazing. I agree, those ship positions from Clancy were far too spread out to take on any ToT swarm attack. The CAP were also too spread out, the AWACS would have detected at those ranges as you said, the Tomcats on the southeastern flank wouldn't have turned for the northern bombers as their fuel wouldn't allow for an intercept of anything at those ranges. I think I agree with pretty much everything you pointed out. If you know me, I'm going to ask you to re-run this using a normal modern CSG and closer formation. Hell, even a re-run of this same mission with the ships closer together would be cool. I'd enjoy three or four replays of this particular mission to test what works and what doesn't, so I hope you do at least one or two to get more value from your hard work setting it up. Thank you!

Great show. General comment on tactics... If you're setting a trap you will want your quarry to see whatever they would expect to see. Play into their biases and avoid doing anything that will make them wonder about what's going on. 👍

Excited for this! thank you!

Must replay this with a modern CSG to see the difference.

I’ve been wanting this sim for years now! Thank y’all for doing it

Spectacular episode lads, well done!

Love the channel and thanks to this scenario loving the Red Storm Rising Would not have read it if not for this video.

The reason for ship dispersal is defense against nuclear attack. If the USSR has used a nuke they would have killed part of the formation, but not all of it. Depending on the size of the warhead and the spread of the ships it is possible that a nuke would only kill a single ship. It might damage some others but only kill one.

Some of the chapters from this book would make great ARMA missions, too 🤔

Just about whether the Soviets would have the fuel for this or not - in the book, they tank somewhere around Iceland, I think. Certainly it mentions Soviet tanker operations later in the book, supporting raids against convoys, so I guess they’d be here for this too

My memory is a bit hazy, but shouldn’t there be a ferry flight of F-15’s. So glad you did this GR, maybe the Frisbees of Dreamland chapter at some point?

The reason for the numbers of fighters, is Clancy was basing the numbers off of standard operating procedure and naval load out of the day. So carriers only had a limited number of interceptor aircraft. Also, at the time the book was written, F14's hadn't started carrying bombs. That didn't happen until 1992. So to do strike bombing, the carriers needed a supply of A6-intruders for that kind of work. They also had a limited stock of F-8 crusaders, though those were well on their way to being replaced in favor of the better F14. Also, the reason the ships were so spread out, was because the Soviets had nuclear torpedoes designed to destroy surface ships. However the yield was limited on those, so it only made sense to spread ships out. That way if one ship gets hit with a nuclear torpedo, the entire carrier group isn't lost.