British airborne operations - Pegasus Bridge and the Merville Battery

Spent the morning visiting two very special sights that highlighted the skill and daring associated with British Airborne operations during D-Day. The D-Day beach-heads are protected in the east by two barriers - the River Orne and the Orne Canal. They were also threatened by a not-so-natural artillery battery located on eastern side of these water ways at Merville. The strategic plan for D-Day required the Orne river and canal crossings to be denied to the enemy so they could not bring up reinforcements. A plus would be to allow them to be used by the British to expand the beach-head after D-Day. It was also considered imperative to take out the Merville battery to protect the landings. The chosen solution for both was a combination of glider landings and parachute drops ahead of the main forces being deployed to seize certain bridges and to take out the battery at Merville. I'm simplifying both stories here - for the incredible full story check out the following Wiki links.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_Bridge

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Deadstick

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_Otway

This is the current Pegasus bridge over the Orne Canal. It looks pretty much the same as the original one (I know because the original is over the road in the museum!). The troops landed in their glider to the right of where I took this picture from. Landed as in coming in at 100 mph , pitch black and with lots of nasty obstacles put in your way to make it hard. They were 50 yds from the bridge! Complete surprise was achieved, the objective taken and held until Commando troops that landed on the beaches linked up with the glider troops later in the morning. Real 'Boys Own' stuff.

This is a replica of the glider they used (but no helpful stairs for disembarking). The museum has a section of a real WW2 glider too - but behind glass so could not get a good shot. It's behind glass because it is so fragile - it looked like thin plywood. Not sure I would fancy crossing the channel in one and dropping out of the sky from a few thousand feet.

This shot is of a couple of the casements in the Merville battery. The plan for this was even more nuts than the Pegasus bridge one. Drop a small force by parachute , wait for a big air-raid on the battery to divert attention, attack and at the same time have three gliders land ON the battery itself.

Needless to say it all went pear shaped - half of the 'small' force were lost somewhere in the dark, the bombers missed the target and so did the gliders. But Colonel Otway attacked anyway and somehow carried it off! The battery took no part in the landings but there was a counter-attack the day after that saw it briefly retaken before the Commandos took it back again for good.

There are other great stories about the airborne landings to capture or destroy other bridges in the area too - unfortunately I ran out of time on this trip to get to see them.

The result was incredibly useful - the reinforcing Panzer divisions had no way to get accross the obstacles and therefore could not be deployed against the landing zones in the first few critical days.