SSG: Spy/Spec-Ops Group discussion
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In your opinion, what books kicked off the Spec/Ops genre in the first place?
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I would say that in the most simple form it originates from the adventure genre. Depending on the plot it might also fit in espionage/thriller the best. There are some elements in most spy novels of detective/mystery and suspense.
I think in some respect there has to be detective work, a mystery, and suspense to make up a spec op/spy novel.
I think the reason they are so popular, particularly among males is that most of the protagonists are "alpha male" badasses that most men respect and to some degree envy. Being tough as nails, smart, many times good looking, and having beautiful women at will just simply appeals to most guys. In the most simple form this is the James Bond formula, but you can also find it in Mitch Rapp, Garbriel Allon...ect.
I think that spy novels were influenced by earlier adventure novels like The Maltese Falcon but maybe more so influenced by Epitaph for a Spy by Eric Ambler.
Ambler's book seems to be the kick off for the genre. I think we own a lot to The Maltese Falcon and Epitaph for a Spy.
I think that Ludlum and Clancy probably elevated the interest in the genre the most given both resulted in huge movie franchises. I think if you are talking impact on the genre in print, I'd say Ludlum for sure.
Ludlum definitely elevated it. Graham Greene and The Quiet American certainly changed the game I think.
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Whereas, an author like Alistair MaClean was writing 'South by Java Head' in 1958; a book almost entirely action-based. Almost the anti-thesis of a more sensitive (and just plain better) writer like G. Greene.
H'mmm, I dunno..this question seems to me to still be wide open.
I do feel that in later years the genre really owes its ooomph to authors like David Morrell (the 'First Blood' franchise). This in turn, fed into the movies of Arnie, Van Damme, Norris, and Bruce Willis and thus the whole 'action genre' in books and films we have today.
Maybe not "changed the game," I see it more as a classic cold-war espionage story. I guess, we are talking "spec ops," here. Not as much spies and espionage. So in that respect Feliks you are correct. I think Greene "changed the game," in that he elevated the espionage genre. I'd imagine if you were to talk to guys like Ludlum, Forsyth, Follett, Clancy....they'd probably have homage to Greene somewhere in there.
As far as first spec op's books. I can't remember much before Clancy. Rainbow Six is really was far back as I go.
I guess it would really be the 60's comics wouldn't it? Robin Moore and co?
If you are talking straight Spec Op, Ambler doesn't fit. For that, I'm not really sure where the early sources start. Spec ops really were not popular until probably WWII era and probably not widely known to the public until Vietnam era. So, I'd suspect most of novels that fit today's definition of spec ops probably started somewhere soon after the Vietnam era.
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Earlier-era WWII and post-WWII movies occasionally featured commandos and commando teams ('frogmen') but nothing that really caught the public imagination. There just wasn't the sort of 'hardcore commando figure' yet (like Rambo) in popular culture, and wouldn't be for a long time.
Chuck Norris perhaps? His movie, 'Good Guys Wear Black'. Was a brief hit. Earlier, there had been something called 'Search and Destroy' (starring perry King) which had all the same elements, but didn't make people go ga-ga.
Not forgetting the huge phenomenon of 'Billy Jack' either; but still...
So I also am hard put to cite a 'specific beginning'. Maybe one will emerge the more we talk about it.
Good call on Chuck Norris! I'm not sure if this was before or after, but my first memory of seeing special forces in action was the movie "The Delta Force," where they rescue the hijacked airplane.
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"Good Guys Wear Black" caused a mini-sensation because of the scene where he makes a flying leap at an oncoming car (which is trying to run him down) and his foot goes right through the windshield breaking the driver's neck. Outlandish! Must be on Youtube somewhere.
Man I'm in Oklahoma...Chuck Norris is in our lifeblood here being a Tulsa boy! He had a sparring partner and good friend after Bruce Lee died, a guy named Bill Cagle. Bill is from OKC, and he had a martial arts studio(s) in the area. Chuck would show up from time to time. I never trained there, but I had friends that did and they would show up at school with an autograph or a photo. So yeah, 'round here ol' Chuck draws a lot of water ;). Especially to a boy who was a child in the 80's.
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bwaha haha.
hey maybe we can have some fun and swap in a diff image every month; or tie in with the book-of-the-month read, etc etc etc
Sure, I'm open to suggestions. If you have access as a mod, you go ahead and change it when you want. Could change for the book of the month or if there is a hot topic/book in discussions at the time.
Michael wrote: "If you are talking straight Spec Op, Ambler doesn't fit. For that, I'm not really sure where the early sources start. Spec ops really were not popular until probably WWII era and probably not wide..."While I agree about contemporary Spec ops stories,,,
the first Special ops story I am aware of was written circa 1150BC about the Myrmidons and a big wooden horse written by a dude named Homer...
that is why we use the Trojan Horse and Crossed Arrows as symbols of Special Ops units across the globe..
just out of curiosity ...
can you guys tell if the author is experienced in the field like Iam Flemming vs a completely research based story?
I am really having a problem with works that I can tell in the first 50pages the guy has never spent a moment in the field and I know I have discarded some decent novels as a result..
Combat and clandestine operations are hard to write about if you have never felt the fear, heard he cacophony of battle or smelled the chaos and death that comes with it..
on a different note. how does one get considered for the book of the month read?
Gideon wrote: "Michael wrote: "If you are talking straight Spec Op, Ambler doesn't fit. For that, I'm not really sure where the early sources start. Spec ops really were not popular until probably WWII era and p..."Considering most authors in the genre have no real experience in Spec Ops,I can't get too upset. Then again, I've never spent any time in the field so maybe I don't know what I don't know.
Granted, I've read a lot about the subject (non-fiction)so, I think I'm fairly well versed for no knowing anyone in spec ops or having been in spec ops.
Vince Flynn, Tom Clancy...among some of the other greats in the genre never really served in the military. I think Flynn was in the airforce for a short stint but not a spec ops guy.
I don't think the problem is having experience in the field or not it' more about good or bad research. Flynn had a lot of connections in the special forces/spec ops community as did Clancy. They also were known to be very extensive researchers.
Granted, I'm sure if you served some sort of spec ops role in real life you probably will still get annoyed with some things they write.
Michael wrote: "Gideon wrote: "Michael wrote: "If you are talking straight Spec Op, Ambler doesn't fit. For that, I'm not really sure where the early sources start. Spec ops really were not popular until probably..."Clancy and Flynn were both part of the DOD outreach program, authors were fed certain things to make the story one that DOD could exploit
The Green Beret, and "the bridge at Toko RI" are also good examples of that program..
"Act of valor" and "Lone Survivor" are just updated versions of the program. they just went to theatric retelling actual events rather than making it up as in the past..
good stories adapted for good use...
How do you think Clancy had the "Frisbee" program so accurate.. It was the disinformation for the Armadillo (I was on that project with LTV for the first 3 flights)
Yes, they were in on Red Cell program, along with Brad Meltzer and Brad Thor. However, most of these guys already had connections before they joined the program. That was part of the reason they got involved in the first place.
of course .. you recruit from the assets you already know you might be able to trust.. Recruiting is something I understand. (something the Reagan Admin screwed up bad when he eliminated foreign born operators in 88) We felt the sting of the error in 2001. they all had to also be somewhat accomplished in heir fields also or they would have no credibility..
but is was not called Red Cell that was Clancy's idea, to my knowledge that program is still running and theoretically it's designation is also
classified.
the VOA, RFE & EG-Fernsehen ops side of it was called "Newsprint" in the 70's but it was decommissioned in 90.
I have no idea what the whole program is actually designated.
Yeah, I don't know what the offial name is but Flynn (who I've talked to a few times), Meltzer and Thor all refer to it as "Red Cell". Maybe that's not the official name of the group, could be a cover name or something.
Just like we called the armadillo project "Armadillo"the actual name of such programs was usually "ADP-something-made up and irrelevant ", ADP stood for Advanced Development Project (all Black projects had that designation at LTV)
It had no connection to the B-2 and Raytheon and Grumman had different names for it so Red Cell could be as a result of the books or it could be a real term.., and the idea it is not the real name is disinformation...
I was not in that game so I can only speculate and the odds of me being right on a SWAG are very very low..
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Tee hee. I was talking about trends in modern publishing; but you knew that of course.
My opinion on the other question you raised: I think that when an author is good (whether he is purely 'research-based' OR whether he writes-from-experience) its not easy to tell which his background is.
But when an author is bad, its much more quickly apparent and its also easy to spot that it is the lack of detail which is one of the reasons why he is bad.
In other words, its almost a rule-of-thumb that lack of detail goes hand-in-hand with the 'bad espionage author'. But how much worse is Larry Bond than Tom Clancy, when writing about submarines? Not much. There's not a whole lot of difference. Both men provide ample and rich detail. Yet Clancy is far more well-known than Bond.
An example going the opposite direction: I can name one other espionage author who I'm sure everyone felt was going to be a big star: W.T. Tyler. Ever heard of him? I bet you haven't. He's an American-- and incredible as it seems to say--he writes very close to the style of John LeCarre. But he never made it big. Why? His books are elaborate with character and setting and atmosphere...the jackets of his books are covered with glowing blurbs. But he missed the brass ring. There was just something missing in what he offered. He had the technical ability and he may have had mission-experience...but he was just not that flairful.
Your question is a good one.
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Israel's Lightning Strike - The Raid on Entebbe 1976
Certainly not from the USA's failed attempt to rescue hostages during the Iran embassy crisis. I still don't know what the hell went wrong with that mission. Colossal balls-up.
Feliks wrote: "How about these? I submit it for your consideration. Big news story in its day. Like the Israeli raid at the Munich games. Is this where the sensationalistic aspects of--and modern admiration for--..."Do you mean the terrorist attack or the response?
There was no Israeli raid at the Munich games. That was Bayern Polezei. Just standard street cops with NO Training.
It was the Furstenfeld AAF disaster that resulted in BGS founding GSG-9 and letting Sayeret Matkal Train them. They had a sniper in place but no one looked at the field of fire and the HEER UH-1 landed in a slight depression and the sniper had no line of sight.
Col Harari responded over the next 5 years anyplace Harari could locate one of the players. There is only one left alive today and be does not show his face.
The Thunderbolt Mission was a classic, Mike Harari and Muki Betzer were the principles on the run up and planning. Harari liked to call it the luckiest day of his life because it almost fell apart when they encountered a roving patrol on the way to the terminal. One of the Paras fired with an unsuppressed weapon and initiated contact too early.
I think you are referring to the retaliation op, called “Gideon’s sword” in Israel and the “sword of God” in Hollywood and wik-pedia (orthodox Jews wont write the word God so it will never be part of an op name) but even it had issues serious problems, the Lillehammer sanction is still an embarrassment. I think it haunted Archangel till about 3 weeks ago when he went home. (יהי זכרו ברוך)
but in answer to your question it is the Insanity that appeals to most people… they see the excitement and adrenalin and the drive that gets the mission done.
Consider Thunderbolt, in a matter of days they had built an exact duplicate of Entebbe airport in Tel Aviv. At he same time they were manufacturing an exact duplicate of the cares in Idi Amin’s motorcade and selecting and training 120 paras to go in with Col. Netanyahu and Lt. Col Betzer. And deploying approx. 25 Mossad oprators to Uganda to set the stage. Then they actually flew through the hostile airspace of enemy nations both ways and Still they only lost Col. Netanyahu and one hostage.
Now if all that does not impress, there is something wrong.
as far as the Iran fiasco… it was simple attempt at political correctness that caused that to happen.
the original mission template called for a CAG squadron commanded by Col Beckwith and supported by a CH-47 unit (205th ASH) out of Finthen Germany. Political pressure made Carter turn it into a joint operation. He left 205ths birds as an alternate resource and took a Marine air wing with ZERO pilots trained in long range infils and aircraft known to have issues in sand, (they did not have the particle separators found on L-11 ASA engines like the Chinook Super-C had at the time.
The Marine command chose to remove all FOD screens from the aircraft. Resulting in the loss of one almost immediately and a lack of training and competence in low visibility resulted in a Marine Pilot flying his bird directly into a KC-130 that was setting up to refuel. You saw the result in the news that morning. I heard it as it happened over the speaker in flight ops.
At one point Charlie Beckwith tried to shoot the Marine commander in the face right after the crash at desert-One. One of his men, I was told it was SGM Allison, took him to the ground and prevented it.
those logistic issues were eliminated with the advent of the Night Stalkers 160th SOAR (NSDQ) they can infil you plus or minus 30 seconds ANYPLACE IN THE WORLD!
I’m thinking that isn’t what you were really asking but it is a
True story…..
Wasn't there also the issue of multiple commanders (strike force commander, helo force commander, tanker commander, desert staging point commander, etc) all having to argue together nearly every decision of the mission? The command chain of that operation was a real dog's breakfast!
there was one commander Charlie Beckwith but the two suprodinates had issues, the Naval command on the Carl Vinson was in on the planning but the Marine contingency was not included until the very end and there just wasn't any co-operation. It was not an individual at fault as many would claim..it was a simple matter of players not knowing each other well enough to really trust to the point of mission execution. The Corps pilots the sand and went blind. they were not trained to deal with it properly. Beckwith had his own pilots as PICs for the CH-47s. they knew the drill and had done it with CAG enogh times to get it right. when Beckwith was ordered to use Marine pilots he demaded 3 extra aircraft because he said he didn't believe they could get 2 of them into the stadium without problems..he wanted reserve assets.I will tell you something tht was classified until 2011..
We left 73 of our own on the ground to find heir own way home... They infilled in the weeks before by commercial carrier as various foreigners, Spanish, French, German, Greek, whatever language the operator spoke. and when the mission failed they had no ride home, think about that...
they were supposed to provide fire support then make the last exfill from the stadium or a secondary bus stop...
I was an expensive learning process.
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"The Peacemaker Colt has now been in production, without change in design, for a century. Buy one to-day and it would be indistinguishable from the one Wyatt Earp wore when he was the Marshal of Dodge City. It is the oldest hand-gun in the world, without question the most famous and, if efficiency in its designated task of maiming and killing be taken as criterion of its worth, then it is also probably the best hand-gun ever made. It is no light thing, it is true, to be wounded by some of the Peacemaker’s more highly esteemed competitors, such as the Luger or Mauser: but the high-velocity, narrow-calibre, steel-cased shell from either of those just goes straight through you, leaving a small neat hole in its wake and spending the bulk of its energy on the distant landscape whereas the large and unjacketed soft-nosed lead bullet from the Colt mushrooms on impact, tearing and smashing bone and muscle and tissue as it goes and expending all its energy on you.
In short when a Peacemaker’s bullet hits you in, say, the leg, you don’t curse, step into shelter, roll and light a cigarette one-handed then smartly shoot your assailant between the eyes. When a Peacemaker bullet hits your leg you fall to the ground unconscious, and if it hits the thigh-bone and you are lucky enough to survive the torn arteries and shock, then you will never walk again without crutches because a totally disintegrated femur leaves the surgeon with no option but to cut your leg off. And so I stood absolutely motionless, not breathing, for the Peacemaker Colt that had prompted this unpleasant train of thought was pointed directly at my right thigh.
Another thing about the Peacemaker: because of the very heavy and varying trigger pressure required to operate the semi-automatic mechanism, it can be wildly inaccurate unless held in a strong and steady hand. There was no such hope here. The hand that held the Colt, the hand that lay so lightly yet purposefully on the radio-operator’s table, was the steadiest hand I’ve ever seen. It was literally motionless. I could see the hand very clearly. The light in the radio cabin was very dim, the rheostat of the angled table lamp had been turned down until only a faint pool of yellow fell on the scratched metal of the table, cutting the arm off at the cuff, but the hand was very clear. Rock-steady, the gun could have lain no quieter in the marbled hand of a statue. Beyond the pool of light I could half sense, half see the dark outline of a figure leaning back against the bulkhead, head slightly tilted to one side, the white gleam of unwinking eyes under the peak of a hat. My eyes went back to the hand. The angle of the Colt hadn’t varied by a fraction of a degree. Unconsciously, almost, I braced my right leg to meet the impending shock. Defensively, this was a very good move, about as useful as holding up a sheet of newspaper in front of me. I wished to God that Colonel Sam Colt had gone in for inventing something else, something useful, like safety-pins."
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Gideon wrote: "can you guys tell if the author is experienced in the field like Iam Flemming vs a completely research based story? ..."Yes and this drives me batty. Plus my patience is fading as I get older and more crotchety.
Patrick Robinson is one of those authors. I'm glad you brought this up because I wanted to grouse about it somewhere.
I can tell he did some research, so it's not that he was lazy...but you can tell he's never been immersed in military culture.
When I finally read James Jones' fiction (not spec ops, I know), even though the setting was long before my time; much of the jargon was different; the technology, organization and S.O.P.s were a long ways from my experience...still, I just knew this guy had been there, done that.
Kinda' like when you watch Full Metal Jacket. All you need to see is a short clip of R. Lee Ermey(?) on a PT run, calling cadence to his platoon...and you KNOW the guy is real. All the other scenes of him just build upon that proof.
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And BTW, I always considered Alistair MaClean to be the pioneer of commando fiction.I could be wrong, but I think you can trace the subsequent specops fiction all back to his work.
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Naturally though, MaClean and company were only creating a new *wrinkle*. The initial "field" (intrigue) had been earlier carved out by guys like Eric Ambler, John Buchan..and farther back to pioneers like Phillips-Oppenheimer, Childers, Chesterton..Conrad..
What interests me are the 'lulls' in the genre. I mean, when 'First Blood' came along...it stunned the whole audience. That project came out of nowhere! Can you imagine the money that thing made?
Meanwhile, Clive Cussler..had just as much inventiveness as David Morell but because the movie version of 'Titanic' sucked, Cussler languished in ignominy for years longer..its mystifying just 'what makes a hit'..
Jeez, when did First Blood come out? I read it, but just assumed it was published shortly before the movie.The 1980s were full of SpecOps fiction. Seems like the obsession with "the Green Berets" went back to Barry Sadler's song. Even I had heard of them as a kid, but was completely unaware that we had troops fighting in Vietnam.
Until now I thought Don Pendleton was the guy who took what MaClean had done into a new era, but if First Blood predated the Executioner, then maybe that's where Pendleton got the idea in the first place.
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Pendleton was a 70s author; Morell appeared at the end of that decade. But the 60s were filled with many action-authors in the same style as Pendleton so I somewhat doubt he was the originator of the style he worked in.
Our bookshelves have all these guys; but I'm going to make a special bookshelf thread today which helps explain it all.
I have a feeling our shelves can make folks dizzy-if there were fifty Mack Bolan titles, I practically listed each and every one.
Spec/Ops books seem to be a very fine strand falling among the various genres of action, adventure, espionage, crime, detective, mystery, thriller, and suspense. Which is it most like? What is it NOT?
What drives it? Why are its fans loyal to it?
It didn't just spring out of nowhere, after all. Who is the father of the spec/ops novel? Alistair MaClean? John Hammond? Don Pendleton? Donald Hamilton?
Who elevated the genre and made it into the juggernaut it now is? Robert Ludlum? Clive Cussler? David Morrell? Tom Clancy?
Relevant tie-ins and influences from movies/tv?