As Luck Would Have It

After a mediocre drop, the 12th Battalion of the 6th Airborne Division assembled barely half its fighting strength and headed for their first day’s objective, the town of Ranville, where they were to help protect the southern flank of Pegasus Bridge. Digging in at 0400 around the town and …

1944-06-06

WO30

After a mediocre drop, the 12th Battalion of the 6th Airborne Division assembled barely half its fighting strength and headed for their first day’s objective, the town of Ranville, where they were to help protect the southern flank of Pegasus Bridge. Digging in at 0400 around the town and the main high ground, the paratroopers engaged a few German patrols as dawn broke. They positioned their meager anti-tank assets and awaited the expected counterattack. At 1100, their wait was over as grenadiere from Major Hans von Luck’s Panzergrenadier-Regiment 125, along with SP guns from Sturmgeschütz-Abteilung 200 and a few tanks, delivered the blow.

La Bas de Ranville, 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.

German

British

Scenario Type = Standard