Last month, author Tom Clancy died of heart problems at the age of 66. Clancy was a prodigious novelist and father of the modern “techno-thriller.” His works are known and enjoyed for their close attention to detail, and for their pre-9/11 glimpses into the veiled worlds of the intelligence community and military special operations. Clancy obviously took liberties with his spy teams and commando units, but they feel plausible even today, when SEAL Team 6 is a name so well known that Disney tried for a piece of the “brand.”

Fictional Counterterrorism that wasn’t all fiction

Consider perhaps Clancy’s most popular black operations unit: Rainbow. The fictional counterterrorism force took its name from the very real “Rainbow” war plans of the 1940s. Previously, the United States assigned a color to every country in the world with which we might do battle. Great Britain, for example, was assigned the color red, and War Plan Red was our contingency plan to wage war against them. (For the record, the plan assumed that Britain would use Canada—“Crimson”—as a staging area. Accordingly, the U.S.—or “Blue,” as we were always colored—would preemptively invade Canada and seize key ports. Meanwhile, though the Royal Navy would give Britain the short-term advantage, the U.S. would work to starve Britain out with a naval blockade.)

By 1939, it became clear to everyone involved that if the U.S. really would go to war, it would do so on many fronts, alongside many allies and against many enemies at once. For that reason, War Plans Red, Crimson, Green (Mexico), Yellow (China), Orange (Japan) and so on, were replaced with five Rainbow plans. Rainbow 1 was a defensive war in the western hemisphere in which the U.S. could count on no allies for support. Rainbow 5, which would become our planning foundation for World War II, assumed that Britain and France would be our allies, and that we would fight together in Europe and Africa.

Though the U.S. eventually outgrew the Rainbow plans, Clancy bought the name back, plus one, in Rainbow Six and conceived of an international counterterrorism unit made up of the best commandos from the United States, England (where the unit was based), and other countries from NATO. Even here, there is something to be drawn from recent history. From the start of the war on terror, special operations forces from the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and England—to name only a few countries—have worked closely together in task forces and on missions. Task Force K-Bar, for example, one of the initial and highly decorated special operations forces on the ground in Afghanistan, had U.S. Navy SEALs, Australian SAS, and members of Canada’s Joint Task Force 2 crawling around the Arma Mountains in the south.

From the start of the war on terror, special operations forces from the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and England—to name only a few countries—have worked closely together in task forces and on missions.

Such ongoing multinational operations are nothing new. U.S. Army Special Forces itself traces its lineage to the 1st Special Service Force of World War II, which was a joint U.S.-Canada commando outfit that fought in Italy and France. (The unit’s insignia—a red arrowhead—remains the defining symbol of SOF today, and when the Special Forces “long tab” was created in 1983, combat veterans of the 1st Special Service Force were awarded it retroactively.) Much later, during the Vietnam War, a Special Forces captain named Charlie Beckwith served with the British 22 Special Air Service Regiment as liaison officer. He was astonished by the competence and capabilities of the SAS, and upon returning to the United States pushed for the creation of a comparable American direct-action unit. In 1977, his request was acceded to, and Delta Force was formally established.

From SAS to Special Forces

But even before that, Beckwith took the lessons that he learned from the SAS and applied them to Special Forces. To earn a tan beret with regimental crest, members of the SAS were forced to submit to a grueling selection and qualification course that tested their minds and bodies, and an interview process that tested their character. (An example question he cites in his book: “You’re off on a four-man patrol and one of the troop disobeys an order and you determine that you will, on returning to base, report him. But on the way back, something happens: you are discovered and during the firefight he saves your life and is the most heroic individual in the troop. While they’re pinning the Victoria Cross on this chap, do you report him for being insubordinate?”) Beckwith soon lamented that to earn his green beret, he had to do no such thing. “I got assigned to Special Forces and put the hat on,” he said. That would change in a big way, with Beckwith establishing what would become the modern Special Forces Qualification Course, and its challenges that few mortal men can overcome.

Such is the history that Tom Clancy brought to his fiction. His units, their training, and their missions all had the fantastical elements of any good thriller, but were given depth by the real lessons learned by the U.S. military, and grounded with the gritty details of modern warfare. The literary world is the poorer to have seen the last of his novels. As for his plots: let’s hope they never come true. But if they do, the units whose stories from which he drew will be there on the front lines.