Tom Clancy's Hunt for Red October created quite a stir for boys in the 1980s

US Army armored personnel carriers cruise
down the German autobahn in 1985 (US Army)

Tom Clancy passed away on October 1 at the young age of 66 (see the New York Times obituary). His death reminded me of devouring his early books during the mid 1980s at the time when the Cold War seemed pretty hot and my friends and I worried if our Selective Service registration might actually lead us to be deployed in the Fulda Gap (interestingly, I later met a friend who described learning to distinguish silhouettes of Soviet armor for his deployment in Germany). For my kids, this seems more than a far-fetched notion, but at that time we were inundated with entertainment and news that made it difficult to sleep at times (see the section at the end of this post for things I distinctly remember).

Clancy's first novel, The Hunt for Red October was more than just a great read for a boy my age. One of the coolest things about it was the impact it had on people involved with US defense issues. My father had spent part of the 1970s working on such things as the SALT I Treaty, and he and his colleagues were blown away by some of the information the book presented, such as the once mega topic secret SOSUS system designed to detect Soviet subs in the North Atlantic.

My second favorite book of his was Red Storm Rising, published a few years after his first. In THRO, the story was about a Soviet captain trying to defect and, during the process, giving the US a destabilizing stealth sub, the Red October. For his followup effort, RSR, there was no limit to the action. The Cold War goes melting hot, with conventional weapons destroying tanks and fleets of the US and Soviet forces. The conflict ends just before one side decides to go nuclear. The book was massive, but it never seemed to drag or be too long.

Plenty of books followed, but eventually, I lost interest in the Clancy formula of mostly wooden characters, the intense geeking out on weapons and military details, and conservative politics winning the day. Maybe that critique is unfair, but as I said, I moved on, and that's how I remember his later writings. Certainly, there were Cold War-era stories I ended up liking more, such as Nelson DeMille's The Charm School, but Clancy made a major impact on me and a generation of male, military-minded boys and men who grew up during the Reagan years. While I'm not sure a woman ever read more than the jacket blurb of a Clancy book, the teenage boy in me is happy he came along when he did.

Yikes ... things didn't look good back then

How to lose sleep as a male, nearing draft-age teenager in the 1980s while just trying to be entertained:

• Watch the movie War Games (1983) and see the US almost come to accidental nuclear (well, computer-driven) war with the Soviets
• Watch the TV movie The Day After (1983) and hope you never have to face nuclear fallout
• Watch the movie Red Dawn (1984) and cheer the high schools kids as they knock back the Soviet-backed Cubans that invade the USA
• Read the The Hunt for Red October (1984, Amazon) and hope that no side really has a caterpillar propulsion system
• Read Red Storm Rising (1986, Amazon) and cross your fingers that the fleet of US stealth fighters actually exists
• Read The Charm School (1988, Amazon) and rekindle all those Manchurian Candidate fears your dad might have had back in 1962

How to lose even more sleep while listening, seeing, and reading about world events in the 1980s (sorry, no Internet for most of us back then):

• Read about the Soviets invading Afghanistan (1979)
• Wonder what it means as martial law is declared in Poland (1981)
• Discuss if there are any good guys in the the Contras of Nicaragua or in the government of El Salvador (1981)
• Be amazed at the impact of anti-ship missiles as the British fight the Argentines over the desolate Falklands (1982)
• Shake your head as Reagan (sort of) calls the Soviet Union the "evil empire" (Mar, 1983)
• Find a map to figure out what's happening where as the US invades Grenada (Sept, 1983)
• Stare at the TV as news of the Soviets shooting down Korean Air Lines Flight 007 emerges (Oct, 1983)
• Gloat at the US medal count when the Soviets boycott the Summer Olympics in LA (1984)