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This was one of many battles in a an excellent Spanish Civil War campaign.
Bilbao
nestling on top of the hill surrounded by trenches and bunkers..and a few
gaps !
Chris, Basque commander sits behind the table contemplating his troops
dispositions.
The city of Bilbao, Basque Capital. Showing signs of the heavy naval bombardment
it has endured since early in the war .
Looking along the first line of Republican trenches.
Nationalist forces storm the last house in a chain of three machine gun strong points.
Two Republican armoured cars can be seen knocked out on the road. These
cars were scratch built by Sean using cardboard, much like the real thing !!
The battered remnants of the first wave of the Nationalist
attack finally occupies the first line of Republican trenches.
German artillery starts to move forward to support the Fascists attack on the second Republican trench system.
Sales of earplugs have been very good in Bilbao today.
Phil's 'summer car' can be seen cowering at the back. He looks concerned
that 7 batteries of artillery may be too small a personal bodyguard.
The state of play after the first evening. The Nationalists have taken one of the first line of trenches and are now
advancing towards the hill.
Aerial view of the end of the first evening.
NB. the cup is not to scale.
NB2. Whoever said Phil's painting looks good at this distance should be
ashamed of themselves.
The following are taken from the second evenings game. It took a third week for the Nationalists to finally take the position with extremely heavy losses.
Phil demonstrates the 'Wigan's' technique.
This involves moving your troops around the edge of the battlefield keeping well away from any fighting and then making a point of having lost very few casualties.
The Nationalist slowly advance past the knocked out armoured (ho ho) cars.
The figures by Peter Pig look great against the Victorian sweater background.
Nice close up of the Nationalist rearguard.
The Fascists set up yet another massed battery to pound the last line of trenches.
Nationalist forces finally enter the first line of the inner trenches.
As you can see they concentrated all their efforts on this one spot. This resulted in heavy casualties but achieved the final aim.
End of second evenings play. Masses of dead Nationalists. The third evening resulted in all the Nationalist armour being destroyed and a good 75% of the infantry. However, a small amount of infantry made it to the town resulting in a strategic victory.