Team Yankee - The Novel

 In between painting the O8 1/600th tanks and actually doing the work that I get paid for I have just read the 1987 Book 'Team Yankee' which (I assume) was the inspiration for the game system of the same name.  The last World War Three story I read was The Third World War by General Sir John Hackett.  Team Yankee is a much easier read.

The story focusses on a re-enforced M1 Abrams Tank Company based in the Central Sector and follows their involvement in the initial defence and ultimate counter offensive.  The book ends with the Soviets having captured most of Northern Germany and parts of Holland but struggling to stay resupplied.  At this point I realised that the story is set in the same world as Hackett's tale as the Soviets drop a single nuclear weapon on Birmingham and are then subjected to a return equivalent counter strike on Minsk.  This leads to a change of regime in Moscow and a cease fire.  Exactly as happens in Hackett's version of WW3.  I double checked this against Wikipedia and the article there comes to the same conclusion this is the same war from a different perspective.

It's not a heavy read and focusses on small unit combat which from a wargamer's perspective is a sweet spot for on table action.  American forces are no more than battalion level with assets from Brigade in support while the Warsaw Pact forces are Battalion to Regiment sized.  The only thing which seemed odd was the lack of T-80s in the Soviet forces the most modern tanks described are T-72s but that may reflect the lack of clear information on Russian Tank Forces when the book was being written.

Reading it has given me some further insight into Soviet tactics (or lack of them at times) and spurred me on with my painting of the Russian troops sat on the painting table.  Its worth a read for an insight into how a serving US officer thought the Soviet forces would be handled.