Air Support Heads To Flames Of War’s Team Yankee
August 23, 2015 by brennon
Breakthrough Assault have looked at another preview of the models for Flames of War's upcoming 'Cold War Gone Hot' game, Team Yankee. See what you think of the air support coming in for a bombing run...
Soviets
The Russians are up first with both a plane and helicopter to check out. Their plane, known as the Sukhoi Su-25 or Frogfoot is still used to this day. The ever iconic Hind is the helicopter in question and comes armed to the teeth as you can see.
It's neat to see these vehicles coming to life for the game and the aircraft are certainly one of the areas of Team Yankee that I'm interested in the most.
Americans
On the side of the USA we have the plane known as the Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II and another iconic helicopter, the Cobra. Once again while the planes are neat it would be great to see the helicopters in action.
If you'd like to learn a bit more about these vehicles then you can head over to the Breakthrough Assault blog where they discuss their armaments and a little of their history.
Are you liking the models so far for Team Yankee?
"The ever iconic Hind is the helicopter in question and comes armed to the teeth as you can see..."
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The more I see of team Yankee thee more I want, even ducked into the local model shop yesterday to see what kits they had to start building lol, did spot a few boat and ship kits that are the right scale…..
I could image Gate: And So JSDF Fought There game using Thunderbolt II and Cobra as part of JSDF force. After all JSDF brought mostly older tech beyond Gate which is pretty much enough fighting enemies riding dragons and using medival weapons and tactics.
Love the Warthog, worth playing this game just for the A10.
hell yeah warthog’s are awesome!
Brrrrrrrrrrrrrtttttttttttt!!
Just what I was thinking! They should include the rule that you have to go BRRRRRT! when the A-10 attacks.
…that’s what she sounds like! You should see the mess they make though.
Yup, could turn on a dime too. Fifteen seconds after a pass it would be in your face again. Got umpired out of a few wargames because of them. Glad they were on our side!
Too right – ugly and beautiful!
Count me in the group of people who couldn’t find a lot of excitement for Flames of War, but are extremely interested in this era.
I also belong to that Group
While the first three selections are spot on (Sukhoi-25 Frogfoot, Mi-24 Hind, and of course A-10 Thunderbolt II), the last one is a little fishy. AH-1 Supercobra? Really? By the mid 80s the Army had switched to the AH-64 Apache. The only NATO forces still using AH-1s were the USMC, which wasn’t deployed in Germany at the time.
I’m pretty sure this is Battlefront recycling stuff from Tour of Duty Vietnam, where AH-1s actually fought.
I’d agree, except it’s not the same miniature as in ToD. Canopy and other details different to Vietnam version, so has to be a different sculpt for the body at least., so unlikely to be a recycling driven decision. I’d rather see the AH-64 also personally.
Cool, @dropship , thanks for the heads-up. Except now the inclusion of AH-1 in theoretical NATO-Warsaw Pact 1980s makes even less sense. 🙂 I saw the AH-1 and thought “okay, that must be why . . .”
UNLESS . . .
Team Yankee will include “scenarios” from the early 80s / 70s? That would actually be great if it means BF will be coming out with a T-64 miniature. Truly an overlooked tank design among the Soviet lineup, in a “popular imagination” ruled by T-55s, T-62s, T-72s and of course T-80s.
Well, Wikipedia says that the AH-1 was still used by US Army forces in the late 80s and early 90s, like during Desert Storm.
They cite an Osprey publication about the Cobra as their source, so that one seems pretty legit.
Were the National Guard using them in later years?
Yup, I want some Apaches here! 🙂
Amen, @olliep
Hi
AH-1 variants didn’t fully cease service with US Army and National Guard air units until late 90’s, and were Operational during desert storm. Agreed the USMC fairly adopted the AH-1 as its primary gunship through the variants to W and Z supercobra and Viper. The USMC also deployed them to Afghan.
I can’t argue with what anyone’s saying here. All I was trying to say is that if you want “Team Yankee” / Red Army / Red Storm Rising / Third World War . . . i.e., US Army VII Corps standing against the Soviets Cat 1 divisions at Fulda Gap circa 1985 . . . the AH-64 (the older ones, not the new Longbow) is the far more “accurate” choice for the American ground-attack tank buster helicopter . . . at least for the FIRST chopper rolled out.
** although of course we’re talking about alternative history here, so the word “accurate” needs quotes. 🙂
I’m sure we could research and find ANG or Army Reserve units still flying them in the mid-late 80s and 90s. I just don’t think these are the units that would have been standing in front of Wurzburg and Frankfurt if you know what I mean. I mean the US Army also operates the Cessna 208 . . . I just don’t expect it to be one of the first two aircraft rolled out for Team Yankee. 😀
I remember USMC having AH-1 in Desert Storm. I was with the USMC at the time. And yes, they still fly them now, for a whole host of engineering, doctrinal, and even political reasons that we’ve already hashed through in other threads. 🙂
The Ah-64 wasn’t introduced to active duty until 1986. Of course once the system was on active duty units would have to be trained up to standard which can be anywhere from a few months to a year until they would be deemed combat ready. Most often that training would have been conducted stateside and once combat ready the unit would swap places with another unit in the AO. I’m still researching, but the earliest I have been able to find AH-64 Apaches being deployed to Germany was 1988 with 5th Squadron 6th Cavalry.
Your guys love anything that makes lots of noise!
I recently got a panzergrenadier company started to learn FoW mostly so I could be ready for Team Yankee. Now with the A-10 and the Hind I really can’t wait for this to come out. Even if I don’t play painting these up will be awesome.
love them all.
Lynx all the way, faster and more agile, happy to acknowledge TOW targeting system a bit wobbly. How about a bit of challenger 1, Harrier GR1 – lots of them Russkies but the armour wasn’t up to much! Old school. AFV 432 – 50% breaking down 1km out of Verden. Happy days!
At least my 432 could make it further than our troop of CETs, most never got out of the garage! Also the chance for armoured engrs to have Centurion 165 AVREs and Cent 105’s running protection for them, proper old school.
…you have to love the MoD!
Our DND wasn’t much better. A slight upgrade from Centurions to Leopard 1’s in the 70’s, and we trundled around in M113’s that were 10 years older than I was. But they were still better than the 6-wheeled Mowag crap we got after that. Attack helicopters? We’d be lucky if our tac hel squadron could get a Huey into the air.
There was all kinds of lethal sh*t in the skies at any given time of time, but none of it was ours. There was a saying in West Germany: if you wanted to own a CF-104, all you had to do was buy a piece of land and wait.
Well if ye wanted to be ‘accurate’ you would have to question why the fixed wing assets are there as they were slatted for rear area interdiction not CAS.
Not to mention no Soviet T72s in the region either.
But I think you just have to mark it up to being a game rather than anything more in much the same way as FOW plays a little fast and loose with WW2 at times.
…i’ll wait for the Battlegroup version!
Can’t argue with that, especially the T-72 mention. This is why I was “hoping” for T-64s in a comment above (unless they will eventually have T-72s with Polish / Czech Warsaw Pact units?)
There were definitely enough T-72’s opposite us during the Reforger and Fallex concentrations in the mid-80’s, when Cat B and Czech units were running around near the frontier. Plenty of everything, actually, including older vehicles in the independent tank battalions.
See, I always thought the T72 was strictly export, hence the mention of Czech, Polish, and East German (??) units. Just a supply poag, though. I defer to intelligence. 😀
It was all about numbers at the time, if memory serves me (and of course it might not). T-72’s filled in until enough T-64’s were produced, and then they got packed up and sent to the B and maybe even the C formations. The Cat D divisions, with a cadre of only 10% strength, were still using T-62’s in the 80’s if I’m not mistaken. I guess the idea was, that if you still had tanks, and your enemy didn’t, it didn’t matter what kind it was. The independent tank battalions in the MRD’s were actually kitted with T-55’s. Never saw one rolling around on the other side of the border, though. It was more of a last ditch reserve. In short, you could have expected to see almost anything in the Soviet inventory eventually, in the event of an attack… it would have only been a matter of time before the more obsolete kit got rolled out.
The export version of the T-72 was, of course, inferior to the one produced for the Soviet Army. You don’t want to give your best kit to some tyrant you may have to fight one day!
We didn’t have a sense that the T-72 was technically or physically inferior to the T-64, although we used to joke about the auto-loader, and its tendency to load a crewman’s arm, rather than a round. We often speculated on how much armour an arm could penetrate, traveling at 1800 mps. What it came down to was whether it was an open hand or a clenched fist 🙂 .
I forgot to mention the other reasons for exporting lesser kit: First, it’s cheaper, and second, you don’t want your best and most technically advanced kit to fall into enemy hands!
Oh, and a great techno-geek site for all things East Bloc armour:
http://thesovietarmourblog.blogspot.ca/2015/05/t-72-soviet-progeny.html
Dude, that site has some seriously kick-ass photos. 😀
It was once my job @oriskany , but I’m all right now 🙂 . We used to eat, breathe, and sleep this stuff, and I still like to poke around the sites, to see how accurate our assessments were back in the day, but I suspect I’m a few years away from gaming Team Yankee scenarios. Surprisingly, a lot of photos on the site look a lot like some of the old attache snaps from the time.
Note: T-72’s were used as recently as the Chechnya campaigns, so they weren’t strictly an export… although they may be now.
I’m confident your military knowledge surpasses that of most G2’s I worked for Jim, and seriously buddy, one of the more grievous errors of the Cold War was not recognizing your potential as a “spook.” 🙂
Thanks, @cpauls1 . My OIC once told me I’d make a great staff officer, and a horrible commanding officer. I guess she was right, I have a head for detail and organization but no charisma and certainly no “commanding” presence.
Back in the day we used to have these “flash cards” for armored vehicles, where Marines would have to identify “friend or foe” (I always wish I’d kept a set). Once a year we’d get re-trained and tested on all this stuff. People didn’t take it very seriously. I remember one table where the Testing NCOs had a series of these cards out, with an M1, and M60, a Challenger, a Chieftain, a Leopard, and a T-55 . . . and the test was “point to a friendly tank.” Nice of them, I thought, to stack the deck in your favor. 🙂
Of course, these were in the good old days when “friendly” nations used US/UK/German/French gear, and “bad guys” were issued Soviet / Chinese knockoffs along with their black hats. 🙂 Nowadays even M1A1s can wind up as “enemy” tanks, especially if things in Egypt go pear-shaped (or Kuwait, or Saudi Arabia, etc).
I would love to see some British stuff from this era.
For some reason Brits from WW2 don’t really interest me so much, but Cold War gone hot I would definitely be interested.
One reason may be the British have kicka$$ gear in “Cold War gone Hot” – where as their gear in WW2 was comparatively sad and/or borrowed from the Americans. In the Cold War, that’s almost the reverse, our tanks were driving around with British-designed L7 105mm rifles for almost 30 years. 😀 Then the Abrams comes out, with British-designed “Chobham” armor . . .
Yep I think you nailed it. I want Conquerors and Centurions!
How can you not love the Vickers MK VI?
Vickers Mark VIB, @torros ? I think you’re on the wrong article thread (just kidding).
Indeed a terrifying piece of British equipment. 🙂
Cringing behind Rheinmetall 120’s we are! 🙂