 |
Blandford Camp Wargames Club
Presents
Guards Armoured Division in Operation Bluecoat
|
Who are the Blandford Camp Wargames Club?
A wargaming group open to the servicemen, civilians and their dependants of the Royal School of Signals at
Blandford Camp. Meeting in the Activities Centre on a Wednesday evening, many periods and interests are
covered.
Why the Guards Armoured Division?
Clearly Battlegroup South at the Royal Armoured Corps Museum is an ideal venue for an armoured
wargame. Of the three British Armoured Divisions in the Normandy Campaign of WW2 the Guards
Armoured Division (GAD) is of interest because of the amount of reference material recently published. It
was also the first armoured formation to successfully apply the lessons of combined Infantry and Armour
working together. Because of the unique nature of the GAD, all its armoured SNCO's and Field Officers
would have been experienced Infantrymen before training on tanks. After the lessons learnt from Operation
Epsom, infantry and armoured units from the same regiment or brigade were paired off together to provide
an especially close level of co-operation, which we attempt to reproduce here.
 |
Why Operation Bluecoat ?
After Operation Epsom had succeeded in drawing the bulk of the German heavy armour to the Eastern side
of the Allied lodgement, US Forces launched their dynamic offensive in the Western flank against
comparatively weaker opposition. The danger now was that the Germans would be able to use the ideal
defensive terrain of the Suisse Normande, particularly Mont Pincon, as the key to a new defensive position,
or as a hinge for withdrawal. The British XXX Corps launched Operation Bluecoat to unlock the Normandy
Campaign.
GAD were fed into the battle once the 11 th Armoured were exhausted, tasked with securing the Vire-Estry
road. Bluecoat was characterised by the channelling and canalisation of the British thrust in piece meal
actions, owing to the intensely wooded bocage country of the Suisse Normande. This offers unrivalled
opportunities for the kind of independent company/squadron actions, in close country, for which 1/76 is the
ideal scale. Progress was made on narrow fronts with little more than a dozen tanks and supporting infantry,
a precursor of to day's all arms Combat Teams.
In this scenario' A' Squadron, 1st Armd Bn. Coldstream Guards, are providing the armoured support to 'A'
Company, 1st Bn. Welsh Guards, who are tasked with taking the small hill to their front. Opposition consists
of small pockets of heavy armour and Panzer Grenadiers of the 9th SS Panzer (Hohenstaufen) Division.
What kit are we using?
The rules we use are WRG, which we find both authoritative and highly playable. At the 1/76 scale we find
a ground scale of 10 inches equals 100 meters works well for operations in close country such as the
Normandy Bocage. The soldier models we are using are AB Figures, and the AFV's are predominantly
from Cromwell Models' Combat Ready range. The terrain tiles are from Purbeck terrain, the trees from K&M
and the Bocage hedges from The Last Valley.
