Throwing Down the Gauntlet

On D-Day at 0100 hours, an advance party from the 3rd Parachute Brigade descended over the Normandy countryside between the Orne and Dives rivers – the Allied invasion of Europe had begun. One of the tasks for the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion was to neutralize a strongpoint near Varaville …

1944-06-06

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On D-Day at 0100 hours, an advance party from the 3rd Parachute Brigade descended over the Normandy countryside between the Orne and Dives rivers – the Allied invasion of Europe had begun. One of the tasks for the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion was to neutralize a strongpoint near Varaville which threatened the landing zones.

Varaville, France

Operation Tonga was the codename given to the airborne operation undertaken by the British 6th Airborne Division between 5 June and 7 June 1944 as a part of Operation Overlord and the D-Day landings during World War II. The paratroopers and glider-borne airborne troops of the division, commanded by Major-General Richard Nelson Gale, landed on the eastern flank of the invasion area, near to the city of Caen, tasked with a number of objectives. The division was to capture two strategically important bridges over the Caen Canal and Orne River which were to be used by Allied ground forces to advance once the seaborne landings had taken place, destroy several other bridges to deny their use to the Germans and secure several important villages. The division was also assigned the task of assaulting and destroying the Merville Gun Battery, an artillery battery that Allied intelligence believed housed a number of heavy artillery pieces, which could bombard the nearest invasion beach (codenamed Sword) and possibly inflict heavy casualties on the Allied troops landing on it. Having achieved these objectives, the division was then to create and secure a bridgehead focused around the captured bridges until they linked up with advancing Allied ground forces.

Canadian

German

Scenario Type = Standard