Matrix Games Forums

Heya guys,

for me nothing is more stimulating and intensifying my gaming experience with new and old games than having a good read about the era and the conflict itself. I always try to find novels and non-fictional books which are "close" to the game.

It would be great if you grognards could post your favorites down here. I would paste your info into this post to condense the info a bit.

I think it would enhance the immersion for us all (and the newbies)!

THE LIST:

Fiction:
"Team Yankee" by Coyle, Harold

"Red Army" by Peters, Ralph

"Red Phoenix" (ISBN:0446359688) by Bond, Larry

"Red Storm Rising" by Clancy, Tom: has some nice tank warfare scenes

"First Clash" by Kenneth Macksey

"Armor Attacks - The Tank Platoon" by John F Antal. an interactive narritive.

"Infantry Combat" by John F Antal, second book, also interactive

"The War That Never Was" by Michael Palmer.

Non-Fiction
"Armored Cav: A Guide Tour of an Armoured Cavalry Regiment" (ISBN:0425158365) by Clancy, Tom

"The Third World War". (ISBN:0425044777) by Hackett, John. (could be fiction, too, because it's more like a scenario with a detailed analysis of what could have been.

"Third World War: The Untold Story" (ISBN:0553236377) Hackett, John

"Black Hawk Down" by Mark Bowden

"The Eyes of Orion" by Alex Vernon, the war diary of five tank lieutenants in DESERT STORM

"Vipers in the storm" by Keith Rosenkranz; a F-16 driver's report on the air-to-ground war in DESERT STORM

"How to Make War" by James Dunnigan. fourth edition

Two large format softcover books that provide interesting assesments of Soviet Equipment and Doctrine are:

• "Soviet Military Power " Published by the U.S. Govt. Printing Office in updated editions from 1981 - 1987.
• "Soviet Military Power: An Assessment of the Threat 1988" published by the U.S. DOD.

/list end

Cheers,

Coffeemug

Sticky, please!

There is a fascinating book called "First Clash" by Kenneth Macksey. It was written in the form of a novel for the Canadian Army in 1984 as a training aid. The author of course is a British tank officer and a famous military historian. The book is very detailed and full of pictures and maps. There is a summary of "controlling factors" at the end of each chapter. It covers three full days of combat and would make a perfect scenario for this game some day. A very interesting and educational read.

I think the best book on 'being there' is "Black Hawk Down" by Mark Bowden. Obviously it is set in Somalia but the description of the street fighting and the problems of commanding troops in battle is incredibly vivid.

A completely different book is "Armor Attacks - The Tank Platoon" by John F Antal. The book is an interactive narritive where you are a young platoon leader of M1 tanks. There are a few pages of description and then a 2 or 3 way decision to be made. Depending on what you decide you jump to another section of the book. There are 3 missions altogether but I wish there were about 20! At the end of each major path there is a critique of all the errors made. A very interesting learning experience indeed.

Cheers, Rob.

Gen John Hackett wrote 2 books on the third world war the second one is the third World war the untold story both are great

list is updated

Could somebody who has read both books from Hackett please post a synopsis or some remarks about the content? They are hard to get, so I could use a little guidance which one to hunt for.

Cheers
Oliver

ORIGINAL: D_ploy

Could somebody who has read both books from Hackett please post a synopsis or some remarks about the content? They are hard to get, so I could use a little guidance which one to hunt for.

Cheers
Oliver

I have in years ago read both books. And most remember I me that:

About The Third World War I can say is most of the story writing from the sight of the Nato.

About Third World War: The Untold Story I can say is most of the writing from the sight of the Warsaw Pact. And there then most about a Soviet platoon Commander.

An interesting book is "The War That Never Was" by Michael Palmer. It covers WW3 around 1989 and looks at the whole globe (Pacific, Med, Norway, North Atlantic, Germany, and the Balkans). While it has a heavy emphasis on naval war and is written in a fairly dry manner (which I prefer to the Clancy stuff), it gives much food for thought and is probably one of the best WW3 books I've read (and I've read Team Yankee, Red Storm Rising, stuff by Larry Bond, and the Hackett books).

Two large format softcover books that provide interesting assesments of Soviet Equipment and Doctrine are:

"Soviet Military Power " Published by the U.S. Govt. Printing Office in updated editions from 1981 - 1987.

" Soviet Military Power: An Assessment of the Threat 1988" published by the U.S. DOD.

Both come up on EBay are are usually very low cost.

Even in retrospect and in light of infomation from former serving Soviet/WP Officers, they are objective, both on Soviet intentions and equipment, as well as the Economic base that created it and well worth reading.

ORIGINAL: Black Cat

Two large format softcover books that provide interesting assesments of Soviet Equipment and Doctrine are:

"Soviet Military Power " Published by the U.S. Govt. Printing Office in updated editions from 1981 - 1987.

" Soviet Military Power: An Assessment of the Threat 1988" published by the U.S. DOD.

Both come up on EBay are are usually very low cost.

Even in retrospect and in light of infomation from former serving Soviet/WP Officers, they are objective, both on Soviet intentions and equipment, as well as the Economic base that created it and well worth reading.

I've seen those. I also saw a book that was basically a re-write of those books by an independent group (since the originals were government books they couldn't be copy righted) that showed serious flaws in these books. They basically overstated the abilities of Soviet systems and understated those of the west. I tend to believe the re-write as the info in that was corraborated in several other independent sources. The originals weren't really objective either, they were basically marketing by the Pentagon for increasing the defense budget and tended to be propogandistic in nature. Interesting stuff yes, but not really all that accurate. The re-write came out sometime in the 1980's.

I`d be very interested in the name of the re-write, as well as the politics of people behind it and where their "information" came from.

Also who or what were your " independent " sources ?

list is updated

ORIGINAL: Black Cat

I`d be very interested in the name of the re-write, as well as the politics of people behind it and where their "information" came from.

Also who or what were your " independent " sources ?

You can usually find it on Ebay, typing "Soviet Military Power" often nets both. Unfortunately I can't remember the title.

I'm sure the politics of the re-write was more left wing than the military's version. And no doubt it was probably a propoganda piece to some degree (as well as the military's version was). In a way, having the re-write was useful because if you took the official values and the re-writes and averaged them, you probably got closer to the truth.

Some of the critique was just commentary. Like the Soviet Military Power book would say the USSR had about 53,000 tanks (assume it's true). What the re-write would point out was that while they had that many, X% of those wouldn't likely go to Germany because they were facing China or would go to the Persian Gulf or were obsolete, etc. One thing they also noted was when Soviet Military Power compared weapons platforms, like tanks they would show all of the Soviet equipment and then maybe 2-3 NATO tanks, even though NATO often had closer to a dozen types in service at any one point (at least in the 80's). The other sources are a bit hazy to me, primarily because it was almost twenty years ago but it seemed clear that the Pentagon was cooking the numbers to paint a certain picture.

Though it is not as relevant to this game John F Antal wrote a second book called "Infantry Combat" that obviously focuses on infantry, like "Armor Attacks" it is an interactive fiction, like a "choose your own adventure" book where you choose strategies.

VIPER

The single best book that I think I have and relied on extensively was "How to Make War" by James Dunnigan. It is currently in the fourth edition and should be widely available still. This is the link on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/ ... 29-7244618

I should have mentioned this one a long time ago.

Cheers, Rob.

thanks guys. List above was updated.

Cheers,

CM

ORIGINAL: D_ploy

Could somebody who has read both books from Hackett please post a synopsis or some remarks about the content? They are hard to get, so I could use a little guidance which one to hunt for.

Cheers
Oliver

I have a copy of "The third World War - August 1985" here. I might borrow it to you, if you're interested.


***Wie gesagt, ich leihe es dir gern. Dann kannst du ja entscheiden, ob du auf Jagd danach gehen willst.***

ORIGINAL: RobertCrandall

The single best book that I think I have and relied on extensively was "How to Make War" by James Dunnigan. It is currently in the fourth edition and should be widely available still. This is the link on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/ ... 29-7244618

I should have mentioned this one a long time ago.

Cheers, Rob.

Thanks, Robert. Bought it a week ago - very good book and very readable (even for a poor, old german [;)] ).

Not long ago I got a really good book called "The Soviet-Afghan War: How a Superpower Fought and Lost" this is actually a translation of the Soviet General Staff report on the war with alot of extra information. Along with a good discussion of the history and movement of the conflict itself it is great as a resource for Soviet tactics and force compilation; everyhting from full motor-rifle attacks to artilery planning is coverd in great detail. The reading is a bit dull (very college textbook like) but also worth it.

It would be very interesting to see this kind of combat modeld in FPG 2.0 since it is close to the timeframe of the first game (1985ish) but we would need alot of dismount and ambush type units.

Somebody's been peeking at my bookshelf. [:-]

I own 14 of the 18 books mentioned. [:)]

First of all, the two Hackett books shouldn't be listed as non-fiction. They are fictional accounts of a third world war that never happened.

The alternate book on Soviet military power is: SOVIET MILITARY POWER - The Pentagon's Propaganda Document, Annotated and Corrected by Tom Gervasi. [@Amazon] You have to read that book with a grain of salt. I am sure that the "corrected" data is just as slanted, albeit in the other direction, than the original data. You have to understand that there is no such thing as a disinterested third party in things like this. Consumer Reports never put out a ICBM Buyer's Guide.

Somewhere between Team Yankee and Armor Attacks is The Defense of Hill 781 - An Allegory of Modern Mechanized Combat by James R. McDonough (ISBN: 0891414754) [@Amazon] It does not have the "Make Your Own Adventure" format that Armor Attacks has, but it is several chapters, each with it's own learning objectives and AAR. And it is written in more of a narrative style, like Team Yankee.

If you like the How to Make War book by Dunnigan and are looking for good reference material on the Soviets that is more than just a bunch of pictures with numbers and figures, check out David Isby's Weapons and Tactics of the Soviet Army. [@Amazon] There are a few editions out there, any of them is worth getting.

Many of the US Army field manuals from that era are available for purchase online. Some of the field manuals that were issued during the Cold War era are still the most recent version. You can find many of them at the Federation of American Scientists website FAS.org. Try starting here.

[8D] You might also be interested in:

• Fire and Steel: Israel's 7th Armored Brigade by David Katz [@Amazon]
• The Arab-Israeli Wars : War and Peace in the Middle East from the War of Independence through Lebanon by Chaim Herzog [@Amazon]
• Six Days in June: How Israel Won the 1967 Arab-Israeli War by Eric Hammel [@Amazon]

P.S. If you are looking for a good OOB for Desert Storm, you can see me recommendation in this book review.