D-Day, 6th June 1944

Hello There! Now having finally caught up with many 'late' postings on my blog I have now to add the epic D-Day, Sword beach and Pegasus Bridge games which took place near the anniversary of D-Day itself. 

Here is an overview of both 'tables' which are both over 40' long!

Here is the start of the initial glider landing, after the paras had already landed and stormed Merville Battery 

Which is shown here.

This is one of the radar stations on the right of the Merville battery, not Douvre, which is elsewhere on the table.

This is the mouth of the Orne and Caen Canal. While there were no E boats in the harbour on the day the owner of this massive collection could not resist the E boats models from Airfix and Revell!

As you can see there was no skimping on the amphibious operation with TWO Matchbox Corvettes and masses of landing craft including LCI, LCT and LCA.

Here is the extreme left, (from the Allied point of view), with the observation bunker of Ouistram.

A anti tank WN bunker at Ouistram.

The first wave got to the barbed wire which protected a strong point on the beach.

At the far right of the beach were some Ost troops which did very well damaging the landing of troops on that end of the beach.

Here is an overview from the other end of Sword beach.

And the armada that it faced.

Here the first wave hit the beach but the DD tanks did not last long unfortunately. However one of the DD's did manage to put a shell through the slit of one bunker before it succumbed.

The beach is complete with obstacles, Belgian Gates and Rommels Rhubarb.

There are a fantastic amount of buildings on the board which had a definite French feel to them.

Here are some views of the Douvre Radar Station further in from the beach

The Complete glider force arrived and proceeded to hold off the Germans of 21st Panzer from the shortest route to the beach.

The eclectic mix of German vehicles where blocked from their shortest route to the beach and had to divert around Caen, as on the real D-Day.

Here is some of the glider force which was reinforcing the first wave on the assault on Pegasus Bridge.

The fist wave managed to land very close to the bridge!

By the end of the Saturday, (we set up on Friday and started playing Friday evening), the German armoured forces tried unsuccessfully to force their way across the bridge.

The town of Bennouville was represented along with the town hall.

Battle continued to rage over at Pegasus Bridge But the Paras held out.

Spectacular is a very inadequate word for this game and is all the collection of ONE club member who has been working on this for many decades!

I was acting as umpire for the beach assault so was unable to photograph everything happening over the course of this game.

Further photos from the New Buckenham Historical Gamers Facebook page here, here, and here.