Talk:Rainbow Six (novel)

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Contents

[edit] Flags on the cover

Any idea why there is the Isreali flag and not the French flag on the cover? Louis Loiselle has a larger part in the book than David Peled, at least from what I've read. Crisco 1492 01:21, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Not sure why...token Middle-Eastern state to cut short accusations of Western imperialism? 86.144.242.241 13:12, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ending differences

I didn't think there was a major difference in the ending of the book and the game (admittedly I havent played the game in a long time (lost the cd) or read the book in a while). THe main difference that comes to mind is at the Olympics in the book the person justs sits there until the terrorists walk in on him, while in the game you have to go out and do stuf, which I would view as done just because sitting there waiting does not make good FPS gameplay. Also, with the game being completed first, could the book not be written to follow the game ending. Plus when I read it there were plenty of differences from the book from start untill the end, which IIRC was one of the most similar pats.say1988 03:24, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reason for title?

Does anybody know why the book has the title "Rainbow Six"? The Rainbow part I understand, but I don't remember any particular reason for the Six. --NeuronExMachina 07:52, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

'Six' is military slang for 'commander'. I have no idea why, but that's what it means in this context; see e.g. [1]. --Calair 11:13, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Think of the clock system used, especially by pilots, to alert fellow soldiers to incoming enemies. An enemy coming up from behind would be at six o'clock; "watch my six" basically means "watch my back." And it makes sense to me that, in modern combat, a soldier's commander would be somewhere behind him. Don't know this for sure, but it seems plausible... just thought I'd share. --BDD 00:13, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
Nice guess, but the term actually comes from the designations of staff officers in American units of battalion size and above. At battalion and brigade level, these designations start with the letter "S" for "Staff" and at division level and above they start with the letter "G" for "General Officer". Anyway, looking at a battalion staff for instance, the S-1 is the personnel officer, the S-2 is the intelligence officer, the S-3 is the operations office, the S-4 is the logistics/supply officer and the S-5 is the civilian affairs/PSYOPS officer. Since numbers 1-5 are taken, we refer to the commander of the unit as the "six." The S-1, S-2 etc. or G-1, G-2 etc. designations also refer to the staff sections led by each of the officers. So when I was a battalion chemical officer in an infantry battalion, I worked in the "S-3" section, otherwise known as "operations." When we called some unit on the radio, if their coded designation for that day was "X3Z" we might ask for the "Z-3 element" if we wanted to talk directly to their ops officer. If we wanted to talk to the commander in person we would ask for their "Z6 element" or simply their "six."capitalist 11:25, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
I had assumed that "six" was a reference to countries that lent personnel to Rainbow in some way. Like the six main contributors (US, UK, France, Italy, Germany, Israel), colors on their flags (blue, red, white, yellow, black, green), or the number of continents. Radivil 07:50, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
Number of continents? Try seven buddy.
Antarctica wouldn't be counted because it doesn't have any native people.

User:Calair is correct. The title refers to John Clark. A quote from Chapter 1: "That was why he [Clark] was the Six of an organization called Rainbow." —Lowellian (reply) 04:28, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] ISBN

My Penguin Fiction copy from 1999 has the ISBN 0-14-027405-7, it's not in the article. Should it be added? kallemax 07:38, 11 November 2005 (UTC) Six in military speech is codename for command. 5 is military speech for second in command. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.189.230.196 (talk) 02:05, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Movie info?

I remember in 2003 that someone bought the rights to make the movie. IMDB has a listing for it, but I never believe anything there until I see a trailer. CardinalFangZERO 10:19, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] People-finder error

The book talked about a passive electronic person-finder that Clancy thought was real, which turned out to be a fraud. I don't have time to do the research, so could someone else write that up? Clancy discussed it in newsgroup/s. --Howdybob 22:21, 27 May 2006 (UTC) Done. SkoreKeep 06:49, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Here's a link to an LA Times article discussing the fraud. DarkAudit 02:43, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] changes to literary criticism

This entire section was based on one or two customer reviews from Amazon.com. I don't approve of the inherent bias, but since I could not find a better source I improved this section by only listing criticism that at least ten different customers wrote about. I also removed the paragraph about quantum computing, which criticized its plausibility based on no currently unclassifed quantum computers of the power listed in the book. Tom Clancy is well known for predicting classified technology in his novels (such as U.S. stealth fighters in the 80s); furthermore it is well known that many militaries are working on quantum computing because of its applications in cipherbreaking. Unless this speculation can be disproved evidently (and I don't see how you can disprove classified research), please refrain from mentioning what you "think" doesn't exist.

Along this line I have cleaned up the factual disparities and have added the "SOG" one. Feel free to critique. It would improve this article if we can discuss other factual disparities here first. The previous criticism section did not flow, with many different opinions (some contrasting each other) stuffed into one long paragraph. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Smartidiot (talk • contribs) 16:01, 17 December 2006 (UTC).

[edit] criticism

In France I have talked with some people about the book and we have many critics, especially about realism. The main is that all (or almost all) European countries have their own CT units since decades, and there is not need for such an international CT unit ; especially, we don't understand any reason about such an US leadership for Rainbow, and so few European members outside UK. These units (but GSG-9 and SAS) are never quoted in the book, which depicts a French operator coming from DGSE and a German one from mountain troops. Among the four countries where Rainbow frees hostages, three (Austria, Spain and UK) have their own national CT units (GEK "cobra", GEO/UEI, and SAS/SBS). The fourth, the Switzerland, has only regional teams because it is a kind of federal state, but the hostage crisis takes place in Bern where there are two CT/intervention groups : the "Stern" group of the town police, and "Enzian" of the Bern county police ; and in september 1982, "Stern" successfuly rescued hostages taken in the Polish embassy. The France is also concerned, because one Rainbow operator is French, and the terrorist act in Spain concerns French hostages. But Louis Loiselle is a DGSE covert operator, and French military speake about sending the "REP" (in reality, it is the 2e REP), an elite unit but not a special forces unit, especially not trained for counter-terrorism. In reality, France has two police or gendarmerie CT units, GIGN and RAID, held among the best world's CT units, and several military SOF trained in CT (1er RPIMa, Commandos-marines and ECTLO). Same problem for Israel : the lone Israeli contribution is an Israeli technician, in spite of the elite Israeli CT forces, famous after the Entebbe raid.

The unit's helicopter is a MH-60K Night Hawk coming from the 14th SOS. But the USAF SOS' are using the MH-60G Pave Hawk, the MH-60K is only used by Army's 160th SOAR. The pilot comes from the Marine Corps, which doesn't uses UH-60 helicopters but UH-1 series ones. The pilot is also able to pilots MH-6 (US Army) and MH-53 Pave Low (USAF), and he said he saved 4 downed pilots during the Gulf War, while in fact there were only 7 C-SAR missions launched during Desert Storm, and only 3 crew saved.

It is also said that Rainbow operators are using a Beretta pitol in .45 caliber, but I only found 9 mm and .40 S&W variants of the famous model 92. The weapon is the MP-5/10 SMG in 10 mm, but the 10 mm has largely been remplaced by the .40 S&W cartridge. The snipers are using powerful rifles : one 7 mm Remington Magnum rifle, one .300 Winchester Magnum WA-2000 rifle (famous but rarely seen weapon), and two .50 rifles. The 12-men teams have one M60 each, that seems a needless fire power for hostage rescue. Rob1bureau 18:12, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

It's also a complete work of fiction with factual errors....Tockeg 05:27, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fair use rationale for Image:TomClancy RainbowSix.jpg

Image:TomClancy RainbowSix.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

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BetacommandBot 04:44, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fair use rationale for Image:Tom Clancy - Rainbow Six cover.jpg

Image:Tom Clancy - Rainbow Six cover.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

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BetacommandBot (talk) 07:39, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Fair use rationale for Image:Tom Clancy - Rainbow Six cover.jpg

Image:Tom Clancy - Rainbow Six cover.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 02:26, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] A seperate Rainbow article?

I was thinking of writing a separate article named "Rainbow (Organization)", consisting of a list of the team's members, tactics, commanders and everything related to Rainbow in particular. The info would originate from both the novels and the games. Would anyone agree? --UNSC Trooper (talk) 13:29, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Plot Summary

I'm planning on cleaning the summary up - a lot of subtle subjective commentaries throughout. Tronner (talk) 17:53, 21 May 2008 (UTC)