Tanker Books/Novels

[Crusty]

Thanks, nice find, it looks good and has gone on my lost of books to buy :thumbup:

[12Alfa]

Just went crazy at Amazon (Chrissy gifts for the kids to give me!). Enjoyed First Clash so much I just bought second-hand copies of Red Army by Ralph Peters, The Third World War by Sir John Winthrop Hackett, and The War That Never Was by Michael Palmer.

Looks like I'll be having nuke nightmares for a while!

If you liked FC, the Counter Stroke is a good follow on.

[smithcorp]

I wish I could find it!

[AKM]

Standing about in a Chapters the other day when I saw a M2A2 on a cover. Gave Carnivore a quick skim and I'm not sure what to make of it. Seems to be sanctioned by the US Army. The tone of how it's written is distinctly different from all the other memoirs I've read.

I wouldn't pay full price for it, but it's probably worth giving a read prior to some Bradley'ing in SB Pro PE.

[Invader ZIM]

I know it's not a novel or anything, but a buddy of mine gave me the following as a Christmas present the other day.

My first hint was that he told me he didn't have much of a present to offer, but he presented me with a Cheese Danish on the 24th. (I have to admit, I was perfectly satisfied with the Cheese Danish and honestly expected nothing more.)

Then he gave me this really great book for Christmas entitled:

"The Danish Leopard 2A5" by Thomas Antonsen. (Yea, my friend has a unique sense of humor.)

http://www.leo2a5.dk/index.html

It has the best photos and such attention to detail, it was a perfect matchup with SB 3.0 using the Danish Leopard 2A5A2, as it's featured in this book as well.

[smithcorp]

On Panzer Leader's recommendation, I picked up In the Eye of the Storm: Commanding the Desert Rats in the Gulf War, from Amazon, for one pence! Arrived yesterday. Look forward to reading it. Thanks Rhys!

[Agiel]

Reading "Yellow Green Beret" which is about a an Asian former Army Special Forces operator. He initially served in Armour before moving on to Ranger School and finally to Special Forces, so here's a relevant passage:

--------------------------------------------------------------

In tank warfare, there’s a concept called an “IV line,” and I can’t remember for the life of me what it stands for, but it basically refers to a hill and its horizon, which you’re hidden behind. So, you have to remember that tank warfare is on big masses of land because tanks can drive really fast and stuff, so to hide behind a wall, or a tree, like how an infantryman would, doesn’t really work for seventy-ton tanks. Instead, you have to hide behind really big land formations—like hills and sand dunes. So, as a tank, you don’t really want to just willy-nilly cruise right up a hill in order to peek over it and see if there is an enemy tank or attack helicopter on the other side, because you’re exposing yourself to get shot, right? And when you crest the hill, you expose the underbelly of the tank to the bad guys, and they even get to shoot you in your tummy, which is where you, as a tank, are weakest and softest. Bad juju. So, what you do is you find the most expendable guy in your platoon to jump off his tank, run like two hundred meters up the hill, peek over it like a ninja, and see if there are any dragons or bad guys over the hill. Then, he can run back, report to the platoon leader, and he’ll decide what to do next. At least you know. Of course, the idea of enemy tanks coming across the hill as this lone expendable peon is running up to check it out crosses everybody’s mind, which is why you find the lowest-ranking dude to sacrifice. In this scenario, that happened to be me, because I was Asian (just kidding, it was a rotating position).

Still feeling pretty pissed off, I grabbed a rifle and the binoculars and in a huff, jumped off of the M1A1 Abrams and started full sprinting at the hill like I was Matthew Broderick taking that hill in the movie Glory. I was so mad I was just like, I’ll show you. I’ll run really hard! Anyway, I never said I was that smart. But it just felt good to do something energetically and kind of violently. So, maybe sprinting isn’t descriptive—I was “running violently.”

Well, a funny by-product of tank training is that since tanks are seventy-ton behemoths with giant treads and can turn on a dime, the ground that tanks train on gets churned up quite a bit, and soon, it becomes a giant mudpit. The entire area is a giant mud cesspool. If you can imagine female giants in bikinis, this would be their mud-wrestling pit. Well, just as you might have thought, without planning a good non-mud route, I basically ran directly into the deepest mud, and even as it got deeper and deeper, I was so flipping out in my own mind that I just keep charging through, trying to power through. Soon, I successfully got myself stuck about thigh-high. Just as I was desperately trying to free myself, all the while knowing that four tanks were about 150 meters behind me and everybody was just watching me through various optically enhancing viewers sprinting like hell into a pile of mud, of course, the enemy tanks start rolling over the hill. So, in a real-world tank battle with the then-dead Soviet Union whom we were still training to fight in 2001, I’d probably be dead with ruptured eardrums from being caught in between supersonic 120-millimeter uranium-depleted rounds being fired back and forth at two-hundred-meter distances between M1A1 Abrams tanks. But since they were firing lasers at each other, which also worked less than 50 percent of the time, I was totally alive.

Remembering what that jerk head instructor said about “no heart,” I aimed my rifle and started trying to fire at one of the tanks. First off, just so you know, even an M1A1 Abrams 120-millimeter sabot armor-piercing round—pretty much the best in the world—won’t even pierce an M1A1 Abrams’ armor, so you might imagine what peashooter-like 5.56-millimeter rounds would do from an M16—nothing. I don’t even know if you could hear 5.56-millimeter rounds hitting the tank from the inside, to be honest. Well, on top of that, I was at least expecting to be shooting blanks that make loud noises, but our instructor had secretly unloaded our M16 before we went out because he didn’t want to do the thirty-second paperwork for any expended blank 5.56-millimeter rounds (like I said, bottom-of-the-barrel professionals at this school). I fired, but just: click, click. So, I elected to add my own vocal sounds to simulate firing, which was what they told us to do at West Point since we never really had the money for blank rounds there:

Me: Pow! Pow! Pow! Pow!

When I got tired of yelling that, while stuck in the mud with the enemy M1A1 Abrams just cruising around back and forth in front of me firing nonworking lasers at my platoon’s tanks, which were probably also firing nonworking lasers back:

Me: Bang! Bang! Bang! Boom? Ka-boom? Bang, bang, bang!

Of course, this gets tiring, yelling “pow” and “bang” over and over, and definitely since nobody seemed to be noticing my Medal of Honor actions, the tanks just kept maneuvering back and forth, firing those silent, nonworking lasers at each other. I remembered somebody at West Point basic training saying that you could grab any object and yell “grenade” (this turned out to just be a West Point thing and maybe just with that particular upperclass cadet), and then it would “count” as a grenade. I happened to have eight or nine oranges in my cargo pockets because I really liked eating them in the field to help pass the time, and those seemed like pretty good grenade substitutes. So, I started pulling out oranges and yelling, “Grenade!” and hurling them at the nearest enemy tank. I thought maybe I could get them to drop just inside the turret.

But, of course, they were all falling well short of the nearest tank, so, basically, I was just stuck in the mud throwing oranges into the mud about thirty to forty meters away, while yelling “Grenade!” each time to absolutely no discernable effect. Finally, an instructor mercifully called the end of the mock battle, and my buddies cruised over pretty close to me and pulled me out of the mud onto the tank—a little embarrassing. But what was more embarrassing was that I had calmed down from my little flip-out, and my instructor had recorded all my “irregular behavior” in that scenario and sent me immediately to report to the commander, a captain.

Captain: Let me get this straight—the instructor has written here that you jumped off the tank, sprinted into the mud, and immediately got stuck, began yelling gun noises while pointing a rifle at a tank, and then basically just threw several oranges around you?

Damn straight that’s what I did. That’s what Hell Knox will do to an Asian man.

[TankHunter]

Almost done with "Take These Men" by Cyril Jolly and its pretty damn good and picked up "By Tank Into Normandy" by Stuart Hills, possibly for after I'm done with Jolly's book (or finish off something by Pat Lang). Again thanks for the recommendations Crust and Gibson.

[Gibsonm]

Another good one if you are a "Ronson" fan is "Warriors for the Working Day"

Brit Sherman crew from pre D-Day to entering Germany.

Lots of crew rotation / battlefield promotions.

Covers Goodwood, XXX Corps scenic drive in Market Garden, The Northern part of the Bulge, etc.

[smithcorp]

Picked this up today - was 50% off as I was passing local book shop:

Fighting to the Finish: the Australian Army and the Vietnam War, 1968-1975

http://www.awm.gov.au/histories/seasia/fighting-to-the-finish/

$50 - pretty good price for enormous and professional-looking tome.

[SuperSerp]

Not sure if it was mentioned, but Chieftains was a good one. Follows a British tank crew in the '80s, during a Cold War turned hot. Fiction, obviously.

[Panzer_Leader]

A couple of new publications on the market which will be of interest to Challenger 1 fanboys like myself:

• Challenger 1 Main Battle Tank, Volume I - http://www.shop.kagero.pl/en/09-challenger-1-main-battle-tank.html
  
• Challenger 1 Main Battle Tank, Volume II - http://www.shop.kagero.pl/en/challenger-1-main-battle-tank-vol-ii.html
  

I've skipped Volume I, which covers the Challenger 1's development, which I'm not so interested in, but just ordered Volume II which covers its service history, which I am very interested in. I previously purchased the companion publication covering the Chieftain and can recommend that too: http://www.shop.kagero.pl/en/07-fotosnajper-07-chieftain-main-battle-tank-development-and-active-service-from-prototype-to-mk-11.html

Another great title on the Challenger 1, and well worth having in your library, is: http://www.tankograd.com/cms/website.php?id=/en/Challenger-1-Grossbritanniens-letzter-Kampfpanzer-des-Kalten-Krieges.htm. And this one's not bad either, though not quite as good as the previous publication: http://www.amazon.com/Challenger-Squadron-Europa-Militaria-Dunstan/dp/1861263015

Hopefully one day we'll see a Challenger 1 in Steel Beasts :bigsmile:

[Hedgehog]

A couple of new publications on the market which will be of interest to Challenger 1 fanboys like myself:

• Challenger 1 Main Battle Tank, Volume I - http://www.shop.kagero.pl/en/09-challenger-1-main-battle-tank.html
  
• Challenger 1 Main Battle Tank, Volume II - http://www.shop.kagero.pl/en/challenger-1-main-battle-tank-vol-ii.html
  

I've skipped Volume I, which covers the Challenger 1's development, which I'm not so interested in, but just ordered Volume II which covers its service history, which I am very interested in. I previously purchased the companion publication covering the Chieftain and can recommend that too: http://www.shop.kagero.pl/en/07-fotosnajper-07-chieftain-main-battle-tank-development-and-active-service-from-prototype-to-mk-11.html

Another great title on the Challenger 1, and well worth having in your library, is: http://www.tankograd.com/cms/website.php?id=/en/Challenger-1-Grossbritanniens-letzter-Kampfpanzer-des-Kalten-Krieges.htm. And this one's not bad either, though not quite as good as the previous publication: http://www.amazon.com/Challenger-Squadron-Europa-Militaria-Dunstan/dp/1861263015

Hopefully one day we'll see a Challenger 1 in Steel Beasts :bigsmile:

Dammit Panzer Leader!

Now I have to save my money for TankFest.

[Panzer_Leader]

Dammit Panzer Leader!

Now I have to save my money for TankFest.

Try to think of it as an investment

[Gibsonm]

Dammit Panzer Leader!

Now I have to save my money for TankFest.

What do you mean save your money?

Its not like its an overseas trip or something?

[Tjay]

I am certainly no expert, but from what I've read of the CR1 while doing research on the CR2, it was a horrible tank. Overweight, slow, unreliable and ineffective. The CR2 appears to be regarded more as a new model than an update on the original.

[Crusty]

I am certainly no expert, but from what I've read of the CR1 while doing research on the CR2, it was a horrible tank. Overweight, slow, unreliable and ineffective. The CR2 appears to be regarded more as a new model than an update on the original.

But I think it was still a great improvement on the Chieftain in terms of mobility and protection, and I think reliability as well but happy to be corrected.

[Crusty]

A couple of new publications on the market which will be of interest to Challenger 1 fanboys like myself:

• Challenger 1 Main Battle Tank, Volume I - http://www.shop.kagero.pl/en/09-challenger-1-main-battle-tank.html
  
• Challenger 1 Main Battle Tank, Volume II - http://www.shop.kagero.pl/en/challenger-1-main-battle-tank-vol-ii.html
  

I've skipped Volume I, which covers the Challenger 1's development, which I'm not so interested in, but just ordered Volume II which covers its service history, which I am very interested in. I previously purchased the companion publication covering the Chieftain and can recommend that too: http://www.shop.kagero.pl/en/07-fotosnajper-07-chieftain-main-battle-tank-development-and-active-service-from-prototype-to-mk-11.html

Another great title on the Challenger 1, and well worth having in your library, is: http://www.tankograd.com/cms/website.php?id=/en/Challenger-1-Grossbritanniens-letzter-Kampfpanzer-des-Kalten-Krieges.htm. And this one's not bad either, though not quite as good as the previous publication: http://www.amazon.com/Challenger-Squadron-Europa-Militaria-Dunstan/dp/1861263015

Hopefully one day we'll see a Challenger 1 in Steel Beasts :bigsmile:

Thanks for the heads up Panzer_Leader, that's another one added to the library

[Tjay]

But I think it was still a great improvement on the Chieftain in terms of mobility and protection, and I think reliability as well but happy to be corrected.

If the stuff I read about the CR1 is correct (it was the prelude to an article about the CR2 development programme, but I can't remember where I read it), the Chieftain must have been truly horrendous!

[Panzer_Leader]

I'm just wondering if my French comrades have come across these publications?

Leclerc from Tankograd: http://www.barbarossabooks.eu/tankograd-no-8001-leclerc-p-5044.html

AMX-30 from Kagero: http://www.shop.kagero.pl/en/amx-30-char-de-bataille-1966-2006.html

They're not on my reading list but if I was French they probably would be! :sonic:

[DarkLabor]

I'm just wondering if my French comrades have come across these publications?

Leclerc from Tankograd: http://www.barbarossabooks.eu/tankograd-no-8001-leclerc-p-5044.html

AMX-30 from Kagero: http://www.shop.kagero.pl/en/amx-30-char-de-bataille-1966-2006.html

They're not on my reading list but if I was French they probably would be! :sonic:

Yes!

One is on my tank related bookshelf, the other is nearly on the way (In fact I'm saving money to order more than just the one on the french tank )

Thanks Panzer_Leader for the reminder! :bigsmile:

[Panzer_Leader]

For anyone interested in Australian or New Zealand army vehicles (I'm not sure how many there are outside BG ANZAC...) I can highly recommend the Tankograd publication 'ANZAC Army Vehicles': http://www.tankograd.com/cms/website.php?id=/en/ANZAC-Army-Vehicles.htm

It's a comprehensive but sufficiently detailed look at all the major vehicles of the Australian and New Zealand armies, as the name implies. It covers a number of vehicles represented in Steel Beasts including the New Zealand Army's NZLAV and Unimog and the Australian Army's M1A1 AIM SA, M113AS4, ASLAV family, Bushmaster, Unimog and G-Wagen.

If you're keen, I'd recommend buying it here: http://www.barbarossabooks.eu/tankograd-7028-anzac-army-vehicles-p-19990.html rather than from Tankograd to avoid printing and faxing a paper order form (:c:).

There's also the earlier, though not quite as good, 'Australian Army 1st Brigade' which I also have, for those with a borderline obsessive interest: http://www.tankograd.com/cms/website.php?id=/en/Australian-Army-1st-Brigade.htm

[Panzer_Leader]

Osprey is publishing a New Vanguard title on the T-64 authored by Steven Zaloga: https://ospreypublishing.com/t-64-battle-tank-pb

There aren't many English language titles on the T-64 (I've looked) so this is a welcome addition. You can pre-order it in advance of its planned 20 October publication - like I have.

[TSe419E]

Cruel man. Bought that one and a bunch of others.

[TankHunter]

Not tanks, but a good one none the less is

Stryker: The Siege of Sadr City

by Konrad R.K. Ludwig