Nijmegen Bridges

 Tim C put on a very entertaining and original game covering the attacks on the bridge at Nijmegen undertaken by the Germans after Operation Market Garden ended. OKW were very unhappy about having allied units sitting right next to the Rhine, and were determined to push them back across the Waal again, and to this end focused their efforts on destroying the two bridges at Nijmegen to isolate the troops on 'The Island' between the Waal and the Rhine.

This is one of the bridges, quite an imposing thing to try and destroy. The Waal is a big river, with big bridges to match.

The bridges were slap bang in the middle of Nijmegen, with both shores controlled for several km in either direction by the Allies.

The game was set between 25th and 28th September 1944, and we were tasked with destroying both bridges. Tim G commanded the Luftwaffe contingent, John got the Heer, while I ended up commanding a detachment of twelve Kampfschwimmer a.k.a. Nazi Frogmen, Oh yes.

These chaps were elite German Navy assault divers, trained initially by the famous Italian combat divers who had so much success in the Mediterranean.

This was essentially a planning game. The Luftwaffe and Heer had a certain resources (aircraft, artillery, ammunition) they could employ, while the frogmen essentially had enough mines to make a single attack. The frogmen would have to work in teams, as each mine required two divers to float to the target and then deploy (they split in half to wrap around each side of the bridge piers). As overall commander I organised the diver teams and allocated targets. The river had a strong current so I thought there was a high risk we'd miss the designated targets, so the teams designated to attack the road bridge upstream had secondary targets at the rail bridge further down.

We then had a good back and forth about the tactics to employ. I'd favoured motoring to within a couple of km of the bridge under cover and artillery barrage and swimming from there, but after some discussion and further research we decided the divers were fit enough and well equipped to swim/float the 10km from our launch point to the target  so we opted for a silent attack with the divers camouflaged as river debris. Then we'd mine the bridges, and float a further 5km downriver and back to our own lines. Simple!

Meanwhile the Luftwaffe planned a series of air raids at both day and night, which we carefully timed to avoid the diving attack, while the Heer analysed the chances of destroying the bridge with artillery fire and decided it was futile. Instead they fired Flak suppression missions  to support the Luftwaffe and harrassing fire missions to keep the defenders on their toes. Allied air dominance meant the guns had to relocate after firing a few rounds.

The 26th dawned with a Luftwaffe raid by 40 FW-190s. Unfortunately thick fog socked them in and they didn't get airborne until 10am. They had a decent run in and actually scored three hits on the road bridge, but as Allied commanders also discovered, it is really, really hard to destroy bridges with WW2 era airborne weapons systems. They jabos were bounced by the RAF on the way back to base and slaughtered, losing 30 aircraft. Ouch!

:Later than night, the frogmen entered the river 10km upstream at 2330, and once they were in the water it was pretty much each pair to their own. Five of the teams were run by players (me, Jerry, Mark, Tom and Pete) and one pair was non-player characters. At midnight the Luftwaffe tried again with night equipped Ju 87s . Once again, little damage was scored (the bombs mainly hitting the bridge upperworks and detonating prematurely) and the Stukas were bounced by radar equipped night fighters and shot to pieces. Tim now had little left to command and was offered command of the sixth diver team, but wisely declined.

At this point we switched to the scale model of Nijmegen and the Waal river.

Each diver pair is represented by a pair of dice. I'm red, blue was Pete, white was Tom, green was Jerry, black was Mark and yellow were the NPCs.

We all got a bit scattered going down the river. The current varied in speed and the banks were muddy and clogged with debris, which wasn't ideal when towing a large naval mine! Pete got hung up on the bank but got free again.

I ended up in the lead. As we approached the bridges we could see searchlights playing on the water so I opted to submerge. We had 30 minutes of oxygen. The red dice above are my team busy laying our mines around the southern pier of the road bridge. Tom's team in white are sweeping past en route to their target of the southern pier of the rail bridge. I'd allocated one team per bridge pier, with some doubling up against the road bridge (which only had two piers). 

Jerry (green) has caught up now and is also en route to the rail bridge (cente pier). Despite my misgivings, we didn't seem to have any problems getting to our allocated piers, although Pete heard a random rifle shot.

Mark (black) has caught up now and is mining the north road bridge pier. Yellow had the same target and is waiting for Mark to clear the area. I was finished and floating off downstream past Tom and Jerry, with us all still submerged.

Jerry, myself and Tom made good out escape downstream, but our air ran short and we had to surface a bit soon.  Mark also finished mining the road bridge, as did yellow, so we had three mines on the road bridge and two on the rail bridge. Pete (blue) was still heading for the rail bridge, but at this point a keen eyed sentry spotted one of the diver teams downriver and the alarm was raised. 

The three remaining teams tried to get away, but yellow and blue got hung up on a pontoon laid under the rail bridge and were taken prisoner. Mark (black) got away. Pete was captured, but despite being tied to one of the bridges by an over zealous Britsh officer, he didn't give the game away. Good man! Half an hour later the mines went off (albeit with two duds), which was enough to bring down a span of each bridge, Hurrah!

This was the rail bridge after the real attack. The bridge supports were far too thick to be destroyed by the mines, but the shock was transmitted up them and dislodged the bridge span from the top of the pier.

Irl the rail bridge was brought down (as indicated above) but the road bridge had a large section of one span blown out, which was repaired by putting a Bailey Bridge over the gap!  

That was great fun and a real change from our more normal games.