From DaveD - hit the beach..and kaboom (370 points)

 Along with JamesM and MartinC I have been doing a number of Normandy themed games.  With this year being the 75th anniversary of the D Day landings I had a hankering to do something related. James and Martin already have Brits and Canadians so my natural choice is to look at the American army -it was also a revisit of one of my very early wargame collections. I settled on the Utah beach landing , the beach opposite causeway no2 , leading onto the Cotentin and it’s associated para drops.This is Uncle Red beach

So here we have the initial assault sections of the 2nd Battalion , 8th infantry regiment , 4th Division,  and the DD tanks of the 70th Tank Battalion. all 15mm

Uncle Red Beach - Assault section

I made up some specific decals for the LCVPs which were all launched from USS Barnett APA5 and added these - for interesting bit of history its worth reading about that ship - it participated in 7 major assault landings - and spookily it was built about 10 miles from me in the North East UK at Haverton Hill ..

2nd Battalion 8th Infantry Regt, 4th Division

ready to drop ramps!

Sherman Duplex Drive (DD) tanks swim to shore

Tanks of the 70th Tank Battalion appear from the sea.

Surprise! float skirts down ! 

6 Classic Higgins Boat LCVP  (18 crew) each with 2 x 12 assault section passengers (144 figures - they are actually about 3/4 size as they are knee to head and fixed on a base)

4 floating Duplex Drive Sherman’s
4 DD tanks float dropped (1 with crew)

Next up is some extra items for US forces  for later on
Sherman TRV32 Engineering vehicle ( 1 crew)
2 M4 Sherman 76mm Wet (1 crew)
1 M10 Tank Destroyer (1 crew)
2 M4 Sherman Crocodiles tanks + trailer (1 crew)

nasty nasty flamethrower tanks! x 2!

All 15mm 

#notanker

I have also made some additional blast markers - we used that last lot I made in a big game last weekend and they look really good . I have added another 7 of them. 5 I have turned into a Mk2 version by adding in some extra bit of explosion effect by using optical fibre strands which are hot glued to the LED itself..this transmits the flickering light to the end of strand. I applied a bit of heat to the end of the strand with a soldering iron that has increased the size of the end of the strand giving greater light distribution ...

7 new LED powered blast markers 

5 are the mk2 version with extra fibre optics stands added!

6 boats - 72 points
14 tank vehicles, 2 trailers  - 112 + 8 points
Infantry 144 - 144 points
Crew 22 - 22 points
Terrain - 10 points

I have really enjoyed doing this little lot last week - its made a serious dent on the 15mm lead pile - I even now have an empty drawer! time to go shopping.

I have more terrain works in progress ..


TamsinP:

My word, what a lot of little men in boats. Luckily for you there are more than three of them (plus dog) or Jerome K Jerome might have something to say!

Excellent work Dave. Luckily I didn't trust your calculation for points (366) in the post heading, you were diddling yourself out of two! I've added another two points for the extra work with the optical fibres in those blast markers - great effect.