Bands of Brothers: D-Day Airborne and Rangers

By Mitch Reed

The movie Saving Private Ryan featured a group of US Rangers and Paratroopers working together to defend a bridge right after the invasion of Normandy. Now places the same forces at your command in their new D-Day book.

You will notice that like most V4 lists, these forces are focused more on the actual OOB of these units in 1944. This is due to the fact that if you wanted to play paratroopers in the past, you had to hope that they had the right support features you needed.

That is no longer a problem in V4, because now you have the flexibility to tailor your forces just how you want them.

You will notice that these forces are small in size and scope because they do not offer many of the support options some of the other units in the book have. This is actually historically correct, the Rangers and Parachute infantry were volunteers; highly trained and motivated assault troops that have very lean formations.

This is evident in the new book with the Paratroopers and Rangers having really good ratings for skill and morale. The Glidermen were not volunteers and wore the same uniforms as the rest of the US Army.

The Paratroops

Each airborne division had three regiments, with two being airborne and one being glider-borne. The lists included in the book include all four regiments that dropped on 6 June for both the 82nd and 101st Airborne divisions.

The Parachute Infantry list is very basic. You have your core infantry platoons, with 81mm mortars and 75mm howitzers for artillery support. Add to this a platoon of 57mm guns and some recce jeeps (which came in via the glider lift) and you have a small but highly skilled formation to push around the table.

The infantry platoons come with seven Garand Rifle stands, a 60mm mortar, and a bazooka in the basic platoon. You can add another bazooka or LMG for one point each.

What is neat about the artillery and ATG support is that that these troops too are rated like the infantry so they will have some good ratings for supporting units.

The recce jeeps have .50cal HMGs, which gives the paratroops the only organic AAA support they have.

Glider Infantry

 

As a young man, I got to go to airborne school and that was a thrill, but traveling to battle in a wooden aircraft without an engine is really crazy in my opinion. The thought at the time was for the paratroops to land and hold a landing zone so the glider troops who had much more support could land and augment the division behind enemy lines.Where parachute-infantry can take risks and drop on a town or bad terrain (not optimal) the gliders needed large open fields with firm soil to land. This is why many large glider landings tended to be in daylight by this time in the war. If one paratrooper gets hurt on a drop that is just one man gone, but if a glider crashes on landing you lose about twenty men. So you can see how the employment of glider forces was a delicate operation to attempt.

 

The glider forces in the book look at lot like the parachute formation. They lose the recce jeeps but add a HMG platoon. They can also substitute their 75mm guns for 105mm pieces which is a nice upgrade.

You will also note that the platoons are a bit larger, this is because the glider troops would land as an intact unit where the paratroopers can be scattered all over, much like how it was on 6 June 1944.

Rangers

If you thought the airborne and glider lists were small check out the Rangers. Two infantry platoons with a mortar unit in support and you are done. What these units do not have in size they make up for in skill.

In 1944 the Rangers were an elite unit styled after the British commandos, however, the army never really knew how to use these guys for the mission they trained for. Some of this changed when some of the Rangers scaled Point-Du-Hoc during the morning of invasion while the remainder of the Ranger units landed on bloody Omaha Beach.

The Rangers rally on a 2+ and hit in assaults on a 2+, so they are very deadly, the only detractor here is that they are hit on a 3+, even with this I would still take them in a list.

Add in that they can act as artillery spotters the question now becomes, why wouldn’t you take this small force?

Missions

What fans of these types of forces will love are the new missions and rules that add in the thrill of an airborne landing. For gamers who love the historical based narrative missions, this book now becomes a must buy for your collection.

Using “Special Forces”

Many of you know I do not play Americans in Flames of War, however, I did play my British Airborne and Commandos a lot and still have drawers full of these guys. The problem I had with these forces was that the lists did not have all the elements I needed to make a competitive list. Of course these guys killed whatever was in front of them, however most of the time they lacked the mobility and the weapons to defeat heavy armor that made them worth taking.

Version 4 changes all of this. With the ability to take multiple formations or a single platoon from another list these special units now become a real option every player should consider taking in a list. Now gamers may realize that the small org charts of these units now become a benefit rather than weakness when trying to build a force.

Overall I feel that this book shows that Battlefront really is taking these forces seriously and making them more viable for gamers to take. Even if you are a dedicated US tank of armored infantry player, I would get a platoon of these guys just in case.