1:72 Scale diorama of Pegasus Bridge on D-Day 6th June 1944

These Italeri sets are absolute gold dust for scale modellers wanting to build a historic diorama and when ever I see them I feel my wallet hand twitch with excitement!

I've built two of these back at the beginning of my rekindled interest in scale modelling: the Vietnam War "Operation Silver Bullet" in 2020 and this "Pegasus Bridge" for the anniversary of D-Day in June 2021. The combination of 1/72 scale vehicles, figures and detailed wood cut buildings is sublime and amazing value considering what's in the box.

In 2021, having previously had a go at creating basic 'action videos' for my cycling club, I had the idea of trying something similar using my model of Pegasus bridge to the sound track of scenes from the film "The Longest Day". Lockdown did strange things to some of us!

I had never intended to share this diorama to the wider world. I had built it on a repurposed Scalexrtic base board in my loft for my own amusement. With limited space (the whole board was filling up with dioramas and vignettes using the multitude of models I had started building in 2020) and liquid water costing a small fortune, I had decided on a portrait shaped scene to include the cafe, bridge and a slice of the canal. As time when on, as with most infrastructure projects, scope creep took over and I needed to expand West, towards Caen and the Beaches and East for the glider landing ground and the deployment of the French Resistance. With this now covering probably a 2m square area, there would now have been no physical way of ever removing it, not without perhaps lifting off the roof and using a crane.

So that I could share this little experiment with friends and family I loaded it up to this YouTube channel, especially not expecting anyone else to be interested in it. This video is now the only evidence it ever existed and so despite its nieve production qualities, the lack of a steady cam for one, and the water appearing to be more like a pond than a canal (as pointed out by a good few 'rivet counters' over the years), taking it in the spirit intended, I at least enjoy revisiting it, spending time to remember not only WW2 and D-Day but also my own war with Covid and our D-Day in 2021 when it looked as though we may get to beat the virus after all.

Anyway, enough of the sentimentality, these kits are great and I hope you enjoy this short video showing how I made use of those little bits of plastic and wood that Italleri squeeze into their stunningly decorated 'come buy me' boxes! Naturally, if this in any way inspires you to reach out to your local or on-line model shop to pick up your own set, please share how you get on.