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Subject: Cold War Gone Hot WW3 Books
TrustButVerify    6/19/2006 5:31:52 AM
I have a nagging little itch I'd like some help scratching. I'm scrounging for the title of a well-received novel, probably from the late 1980s, dealing with a NATO-Warsaw Pact conflaguration. It's not Hackett's The Third World War, Clancy's Red Storm Rising, or Peter's Red Army. (I've read all of those, sure, and enjoyed them to one degree or another.) But there's a fourth book out there, one I picked up once in a used book store many years ago but never read. But I can't for the life of me remember the name or even the author. Here are the only two clues I have: 1.) A web page or magazine article I read about five years ago mentioned it in something like this fashion: "There were three well-known novels about a third world war. Hackett's Third World War was the most well known; Clancy's Red Storm Rising was the most exciting; and (authoer)'s (title) was the most realistic, with its armored battles and political manuevers..." 2. The blurb on the inside dust jacket mentioned that NATO had been politically fragmented, and contained a line about "tanks do battle like fire-breathing dragons across the face of Germany" or some such. That's all I remember. It certainly isn't the book about a Canadian armored brigade, or Team Yankee or that multi-book saga, or anything by Larry Bond or Eric Harry.
It's driving me nuts. Somebody, anybody, halp!
 
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Ehran    RE:Cold War Gone Hot WW3 Books   6/19/2006 1:16:04 PM
there's a book about a canadian armoured brigade? if you could front up a name author etc i'd appreciate it. alas i cannot help you with your own quest.
 
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TrustButVerify    RE:Cold War Gone Hot WW3 Books- Ehran   6/20/2006 12:52:05 AM
Sure! It's First Clash: Combat Close-Up in World War Three by Kenneth Macksey, ISBN 0425107566 and you'll find a few dozen used copies for sale on Amazon. I have a copy at home but have been saving it for a rainy day; there's only so much Fulda Gap (or in that case North German Plain) fiction to go around.
 
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Ehran    RE:Cold War Gone Hot WW3 Books- Ehran   6/20/2006 1:36:19 PM
thank you kindly.
 
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Carl S       12/22/2006 6:42:41 PM
I'll toss up a obscure title for consideration.  Called 'Show of Force'.  Cant recall the author.  It is set in the very early 1980s.  The Soviets attempt a coupde main against Diego Garcia to help secure their various adventures in Afganistan ect...  The Satelite comm links are imeadiately taken down leaving the opposing naval commanders to sort things out guided by bothched policy from home & contradictory/incoherantmessages arriving too late by secondary channels.  An interesting historical look at the antiquaited military capabilitys of my mid career.  Strangely the prose style anticipates Tom Clancy by several years.

Another called 'Mismatch' from the later 1980s has the a pair of social dysfunctionals, a American computer hacker and a frustrated Soviet sleeper agent, propelling the superpowers towrds nuclear war.   The ending turns the entire novel into a wickedly subtle joke. 
 
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joe6pack       12/23/2006 7:49:51 PM

Sure! It's First Clash: Combat Close-Up in World War Three by Kenneth Macksey, ISBN 0425107566 and you'll find a few dozen used copies for sale on Amazon. I have a copy at home but have been saving it for a rainy day; there's only so much Fulda Gap (or in that case North German Plain) fiction to go around.

I picked this up from amazon, I thought it was an ok read.  The author seems to have taken a different approach of half trying to explain cold war training and doctrine and half fiction.  He even included photos of gear and troops.
I definetly prefferred Hacketts "The Third World War" and for more fun fiction "Red Storm Rising" and "Red Army" certainly topped it.
 
With the whole North Korea thing, there have been a few along those lines.  One called "Proud Legions" is about a US armor team (sort of a Korean Team Yankee).  Can't think of the author off hand.  I've reas through a (so far) 3 book series by Pete Callahan called armored corps. Mostly tank action in Korea, I'm not thrilled with the series but there it is.  However, my favorite "modern" Korean war fiction is "Red Phoenix" by Larry Bond. 
 
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Mike_R       12/23/2006 11:29:26 PM
The War That Never Was. It is a story about a reporter interviewing a Russian General about the Soviet Plan, in the guise of a discussion about a wargame. A pretty good tale, but a bit dry. I know this is not the one, but one worth reading is "The Alternative Third World War" also be a British General, about a war much like we are in today. Harold Coyle wrote several books, Team Yankee was his first, but none were about WWIII, although The Ten Thousand was written in Europe and is about the fighting withdrawal of a US Corps from Germany, opposed by the Bundeswehr. Hackett's book was also followed up by "The Third World War: The Untold Story" Hope this helps
 
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BasinBictory       1/17/2007 5:16:49 AM
joe6pack,
 
the book "Proud Legions" is written by John Antal, an Armor officer in the US Army. I believe he commanded an armored battalion in Korea and so his writing about a potential war there was necessarily skewed to the doings and deeds of a fictional American armored battalion. The book was pretty good, although not nearly as intricate or detailed as a masterpiece such as "Red Storm Rising." I also enjoyed Antal's multi-choice books in which you decide the outcome of the story.
 
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joe6pack       1/17/2007 10:50:49 AM

joe6pack,

 

the book "Proud Legions" is written by John Antal, an Armor officer in the US Army. I believe he commanded an armored battalion in Korea and so his writing about a potential war there was necessarily skewed to the doings and deeds of a fictional American armored battalion. The book was pretty good, although not nearly as intricate or detailed as a masterpiece such as "Red Storm Rising." I also enjoyed Antal's multi-choice books in which you decide the outcome of the story.


Yeah, I enjoyed "Proud Legions" but I certainly wouldn't rank it as one of the greats.  He went to some trouble to more or less write out other factors so as just to show the battalion in action.  For instance, he simply wrote off air power due to days of bad weather.  This isn't so bad in just wanting to show an armor task force in action, although I think it takes away from the general "realism" of the entire scenerio.
 
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Desertmole       2/4/2007 5:34:12 AM



Sure! It's First Clash: Combat Close-Up in World War Three by Kenneth Macksey, ISBN 0425107566 and you'll find a few dozen used copies for sale on Amazon. I have a copy at home but have been saving it for a rainy day; there's only so much Fulda Gap (or in that case North German Plain) fiction to go around.


I picked this up from amazon, I thought it was an ok read.  The author seems to have taken a different approach of half trying to explain cold war training and doctrine and half fiction.  He even included photos of gear and troops.

I definetly prefferred Hacketts "The Third World War" and for more fun fiction "Red Storm Rising" and "Red Army" certainly topped it.

 

With the whole North Korea thing, there have been a few along those lines.  One called "Proud Legions" is about a US armor team (sort of a Korean Team Yankee).  Can't think of the author off hand.  I've reas through a (so far) 3 book series by Pete Callahan called armored corps. Mostly tank action in Korea, I'm not thrilled with the series but there it is.  However, my favorite "modern" Korean war fiction is "Red Phoenix" by Larry Bond. 


Red Clash was actually written as a textbook for the Canadian military.  This was the reason for the paragraph at the end of each chapter outlining the teaching points for the chapter.  The chapters could also be used to develop wargame scenarios for Dunn-Kempf or Tractics miniatures games.
There was a series of books by an author whose name escapes me (Ian something, I think) that were, in a word, terrible.  I tried to read the first book and gave up in disgust.  It was clear he knew almost nothing about the military and had picked up a few books on aircraft, tanks, ships and such and just started writing.  Somebody must have been reading them however, as he wrote several.
 
In the late '70s and early '80s there was a fellow named Charles D. Taylor who did a number of novels about naval combat in modern times.  One was about a confrontation in the Indian Ocean between a US CTF and a Soviet group including the Kiev and Kirov.  He was a former naval officer and did a pretty good job. 
 
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ens. jack       2/6/2007 2:34:21 PM
This isn't about any armored brigade, but it was a good ww3 read, Tidal rip by joe buff. follows a sub through several conflicts with Germany. seires of 4. great technology, and weird political maneuvers. but im only a high sckooler, my opinion may be uneducated.
 
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