Thank you @oriskany for taking the time for your truly great reply.

First off thanks for sending me the explosion graphics plus extras. They will do the job just fine and much appreciated.

I am a little amused at the moment that hexes are appearing on my table and now soon computer graphic will be on it as well. What kind of altered reality is my table top slipping into? Computer print out units??! I think I am losing it. 😉

What I liked about the opening of this PL game is that it demonstrated just how easily things could have gone for the British and Canadians. Just one or two oops things go wrong and your paying the ferry man.

Just like on Omaha there were several oops events. In on way you dislike what your reading, the careless waste of precious life. On the other hand I keep reminding myself that these poor hapless people are in the unfortunate position of having to write the text book while having to get on with it. So it looses blame and just becomes sad with the terrible choices that had to be made on the spot.

The documentary was a real eye opener. On a slightly lighter not there its a story about a Scottish DD tank commander while still swimming was taking firing. He lost his temper and ordered his gunner to fire the main gun, instantly flipping the tank. For years this had been taken as one of those stories. I even have heard it out hear in Australia. In the documentary in the British sector, sorry I do not remember the beach sector, they did find an upside down DD pointing not at the beach but is the only sunken DD tank facing England. This alone does not prove the story fact, just that it adds possibility to it.

SPI also made a second mega game, The Film’s Fulda Gap. It was down to platoon level and set in the late 70’s which was near future back then. We never managed to buy a copy of it to much regret. However it was just bad timing. They cost about an average weeks wages back then at $89 a pop. It must be remembered the oil crisis had bitten, high unemployment with few hiring and interest rate had just fine vertical, around 24%.  There was a rumor of a third mega game but SPI folded before it’s release. However Mega D-Day gave us many evenings and weekends of fun and it is a pity we only got to play the full game once. It remains one of my gaming highlights.

It was via this game we got to known the beach sectors well, Easy, Red, etc. Each beach for the allies had cardboard invasion boards were you placed your units in waves but had to be placed in a beach sector box.

You know me by now that I am attracted to things that don’t quite fit together properly. Utah for me is one of them. Another Omaha is too often quoted by historians if Utah had landed in the correct sector. I have wargamed this beach many times thanks to SPI’s mega game and other tabletop games as well. As you point out it is not overwatched from either end by enemy fire from the bluffs. Nor does it have as many fortifications and the quality of German troops is as high. Finally far more pockets of airborne are operating closer to the beaches in Utah. Another Omaha, absolute head lines garbage. Yes the casualties would have been higher. However I believe at best higher than the British but less than the Canadians. However the only way to get a clearer idea is to wargame this several times.

What do you mean that the US had issues using them dam fangled, Wizard of Oz jalopies the god damned British call funnies, that’s a joke in itself. 😉

I have read a bit on this and the amount of things that float to the surface is anywhere between amusing to shocking.

First a point of view of one paint brush paints all. What more could these specialist vehicles could achieve above the standard issue. That covers all the funnies and as you say the US has wading kits used in Sicily, Italy and the Pacific. After all you go with the devil you know. The US had a number of standard issue vehicles that could do the job nearly as well as an almost one use only over specialised vehicle. I will not go into the list of the as you and I have gone over these massed mass produced vehicles. This statement holds water when you consider that total wars are won in the factories not the front. Lose 10 Shermans for 1 tiger, not a problem (unless you a crewman of one of those 10 M4’s). While achieving a lodgement at Normandy is a one off event it remains one hell of a hurdle. So slowing down the factory lines just long enough to make these throw away vehicles might have been an investment and a bonus if someone else was happy to make them for you. As it turned out these vehicles came in very handy several times after D-Day. That is on one side and by some of those involved it came down to hatred of the British, Kennedy was not by himself on this feeling. These are the boundaries but there are many objections in between. It remains a friendly taunt from the European Historians over the years. At the time I see it as reasonable the reluctance of the US to embrace the funnies.

Yes over the next two wargaming seasons there will be a focus on doing the mid war Eastern Front properly. I would be happy to find a Russian play who can tell me what a Direction is. I would once like to be able to tell the difference between a mid war and late war players army other then looking for KVs rather than JS tanks.

I am not deriding Russian gamers here, I just mourn the loss of history. You are quite right about Moscow blinding out Rzhev. I think of this as Flash-Bangs as in the grenade, they blind and disorientate us from truly great history. They also do not fit well in the A-B-C storyline historians like to give us for “The Russian Campaign”. To be fair if the tried their story lines would look like spaghetti on the plate leaving the reader confused. But battles like Izyum where the Russians had a victory in the field where army corps and front go toe to toe. It was clumsy but has the beginnings of Russian offensive doctrine. Voronezh is almost unheard of nor is its strategic loss understood. Yet time and again truly important battles have been side lined by the Flash-Bangs of Moscow, Stalingrad and Kursk have done. Look how often the strategy of using Rzhev and the Caucasus are used to strip Stalingrad of German reserves for Uranus to go ahead. I admit Hitler kicked a own goal here by trying to hold Tunisia. Like one of the battles I am looking forward to is lost as part of the battles of 2nd Kharkov is the