The Battle of Pegasus Bridge – D Day 1944



The Battle of Pegasus Bridge was the very first battle on Day Day (6th June 1944).
A glider landing by British airborne troops successfully captured 2 bridges, securing the eastern flank of the D-Day invasion.

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related WW2 (World War 2) videos:

Richard Todd at Pegasus Bridge
https://youtu.be/GA8cBcS4Eyg

The D-Day Weather Forecasters
https://youtu.be/ON8om9B1sOA

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Chapters
0:00 Intro
0:49 Operation Deadstick
2:06 Major John Howard
4:04 Ham and Jam
7:14 Horsa Gliders
10:03 Glider Landings
13:12 Attacking the Bridges
16:20 German Counter-Attack
19:30 Richard Todd
20:28 Holding On
24:17 Relief
26:36 Pegasus Bridge Today

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My name is Chris Green and I love to share stories from British history. Not just because they are interesting but because, good or bad, they have shaped the world we live in today.

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32 thoughts on “The Battle of Pegasus Bridge – D Day 1944”

  1. That was a really first class episode, well done, the whole thing started on the right foot due to the excellent pilots. Good show, and the later conduct of the excellent troops. Britains best.

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  2. That was absolutely fantastic. I have had the postcard of Pegasus Bridge since I was a kid on my wall & I have never heard the story behind it till now. It is truly humbling to learn of the immense bravery and skill of those amazing young men. Thank you.

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  3. If anybody wishes to learn about the Normany campaign, I thoroughly recommend Max Hasting's book "Overlord." It takes the reader the planning and training for the landings (including Operation Tiger), the landings themselves, the battle for the bocage, Wittman's rampage at Villers Bocage, the breakout from the bridgehead, the battle of the Falaise pocket and the advance to the Seinne. It's a highly detailed, weighty tome, but well worth a read.

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  4. I was there in 1974. Our French guide told us that the XXIst rounded up 180 civilian hostages and shot them as a warning to the population not to engage in acts of sabotage or to aid the Allies in any way. If this is not true, I do not know why he would say that.

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  5. Hello Chris, My father must have piloted the third glider. Frederick J R Stevenson. He told me he was the only one to land intact. I read his report which I found on line. He also told me of French farmers mowing the field in the late evening.

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  6. In 1988 I was working at a small photographic shop in Guildford. A little old man, walking with the aid of two sticks, brought in a single negative of a painting and asked us to print it for him. We did so, thinking little of it. When he came in to collect it he said we had printed it the wrong way round. “Are you sure?” I said. “Yes” he replied “look, the magazine on that Sten is on the wrong side”. “And” he said “that’s me, there, in the painting”. The little old man was Major John Howard and the painting was of the assault on Pegasus Bridge. An extraordinary man and an extraordinary operation.

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  7. If the survivors were still alive today, they would wonder why. Evil gnostic cultists as the enemy and evil gnostic cultists in the UK/US establishment. Who won? The evil gnostic cultists!

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  8. The attack on Pegasus Bridge is one of those classic moments of the entire D-day campaign, just like the Paratroopers at Set Mere Egilse, the British at Caen or the Americans at ”Bloody Omaha” – But one seldom gets to hear about it as eloquently or elegantly as here.

    However, there are a few pieces missing from the whole picture. What of Hans von Luck, head of his own Kampfgruppe, who later would fight a successful delaying action against the Brits during ”Operation Goodwood” and the Caen Breakout, the retreat from Falaise and who would soldier on at the Eastern front as well ? Was he really that inept as a commander ?

    Surprisingly enough – as you can learn from English language Wikipedia, Von Luck survived 5 years in a Soviet GULAG-style camp in Georgia, enduring the freezing cold of the Kaukasus region, but returned to his native Hamburg, Germany in 1949. He gave several annual talks – until the beginning of the 1990's (von Luck passed away in 1997) before the British Staff College, and he eventually became a persona friend of Major John Howard as well as Brigadier David Stilleman, and many other British commanders on the opposing side – despite all the bloodshed, all the losses of human lives on both sides.

    And that’s not all.. At least ten yearly classes of Cadets from the Karlberg War Academy in Stockholm, Sweden did take part in trips to Pegasus Bridge and the very café mentioned here – with von Luck present as an unofficial tour guide. The Battle of Caen, rather than other events in Normandy became a ”set example” on how to defend against a combined air and seaborne invasion in Swedish War Colleges during the 1970’s and 1980’s – and so you might say that the spirit of Von Luck and his Panzers – and of the Green Howards – a noted British Tank regiment – lives on to this day… Von luck also wrote his own memoirs, on request by American historian John Ambrose, Swedish edition titled ”Pansarchef under Erwin Rommel”, ISBN 91-518-4718-3 – The English title is ”Panzer Commander” and the book is said to be one of the most balanced first hand accounts from a German commander in WWII, if we are to believe the Swedish rewievers…As of yet, I haven't read Hans von Luck in his own write, but one day, I will…

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  9. Went there on rugby 🏉 tour in the early 90s.
    One of the Ox’s and Bucks men think 🤔 he was named Wally was sat outside the cafe being plied with free grog from the daughter of the French owners who was just a little girl when Pegasus bridge was taken.
    Whenever the soldiers who fought there drank for free when they visited.

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  10. I read somewhere that Sgt Thornton, shortly after DDay applied for parachute training. Upon completion of the course he was transferred to the 2nd Parachute Battalion and was at Arnhem Bridge. The only man apparently to be at both bridges. I suspect there’s some truth to this as the picture of Thornton was him wearing a para badge.

    Jim Walwork was one of only a handful of the Glider Pilot Regiment to participate in Sicily, Normandy, Arnhem and the Rhine Crossing.

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  11. "THE GREATEST FEAT OF FLYING". No modern flying equipment, GPS, Radar, night vision Just a stop watch. "the greatest feat of flying " would seem to be a bit of an understament.

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  12. I first learned about this operation in the 1960's when the movie, "The Longest Day," was televised. I was in third or fourth grade at the time and had limited library access, had limited history lessons in school, so television was a major window to the rest of the world–and to history. Crashing a glider almost onto the bridge impressed me because I had experienced a bicycle accident and woke up wearing my bike. Crashing in a canvas and wooden glider?

    Thanks for your presentation on this glider assault. You explained why gliders were used despite Rommel's Asparagus instead of parachute infantry. Two other options were relying on the Maquis to capture those bridges and sending commandos in motorboats up the canal and river from the ports–both were rejected in the planning stages as unlikely to succeed. I liked the speculation over using gliders during Market Garden. Gliders landed airborne troops as a unit and they were pre-assembled, didn't need to shed parachutes and hunt around for weapon containers and for other paratroopers. All the glider infantry's weapons and equipment went with them on the glider, which made it much easier to find in the dark. Crashing through the barbed wire obstacles and skidding to within fifty feet made it possible to take over the bridge before the alarm could be raised, before anything more than piecemeal resistance mounted.

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