An INFURIATED Historian Reacts to CoD: Vanguard's D-Day Mission 

✅ Install Raid for Free Mobile and PC: clik.cc/qHq7p and get a special starter pack with an Epic champion Knight Errant 🎉Log into the game for 7 days between now and July 24th and get a free legendary champion Artak 💥Check out Raid’s new limited animated series Call of the Arbiter here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-H32dvyCVkfk.html&pp=iAQB Hey guys, me again. Good lord I am tired of this game. Seriously I can't wait to finish the series so I can move on to another target. But quite frankly a journey begun must be finished and so we carry on. Will I survive to the end? I have no idea but we shall see. Support the Channel on Patreon: www.patreon.com/Animarchy

For anyone who cares, Gustav Schwarzenegger was home in Austria at this time. He was part of the Panzer Group 4 in Operation Barbarossa and the Siege of Leningrad. He was wounded in Leningrad in August '42. He suffered dealt with recurring bouts of malaria, which eventually led to his medical discharge in February '44. He must've trained dud on the 88.

A few things I’d like to point out: - Arthur Kingsley is heavily based on a real black paratrooper who participated in Operation Tonga named Sidney Cornell albeit that he did not take part in the assault on the Merville Gun Battery IRL. - Pretty sure the opening cutscene was inspired by Overlord (2018). - Arthur’s kit had an M1 Garand in it. - 6:49 That patch is that of the 1st Allied Airborne Army which was established in August 1944. - It was still nighttime when the paratroopers stormed the Merville Battery. Also, the IRL Merville Battery was never located on a cliff side. -51:35 Sdkfz. 251 half tracks were never used during the real battle of the Merville Battery - 56:16 British paratroopers didn’t use thermite to destroy the cannons. They used a mixture of Gammon bombs and C4.

13:18 "He jumped into the icy blast, his static line unhooked." That is why you check your gear first, because they'll make a song out of your death if you screw it up. And it is a helluva way to die.

The thing with dog tags killed me, damn. They only took 1, the other was supposed to stay on the body for Identification.

this mission feels like watching "the longest day", while drunk, unconscious and also disney made it.

I'm a British 6th Airborne reenactor, and I cannot emphasise enough how much this mission annoys me. Let me start with some of the more important things, namely the position of the battery. It is right on the coastline in Vanguard, but in reality, it's quite far in-land in comparison to a lot of what was happening. Also, the ships and landing craft in the cutscene suggest that the battery is right in front of Sword beach, or any D-Day beach for that matter, but no, its a two hour walk from the closest point of Sword (of course you have to go down to Pegasus and Horsa Bridge to get there) to Merville Battery. Second thing is a part in the mission you mostly cut out, which is the part with a bridge crossing. This part really annoyed me because I reenact the 2nd Oxf. & Bucks. Light Infantry regiment. The only bridges anywhere near Merville was the Caen Canal (Pegasus) and Orne River (Horsa) bridges. In fact, the one in the game looks suspiciously similar to Pegasus bridge. This pissed me off because the parachute regiment were no where near the bridges until much later, it was the Oxf. & Bucks. ALONE who captured the bridges. This completely erases an already under-represented group who did one of the most dangerous missions of the war, at least in terms of what the British did. Now I wanna talk about the uniforms, because while the ones on the random NPCs might look alright, the ones for the actual main characters are so bad, especially Richard Webb. First of all, he's wearing his beret in a combat zone, one word for that: idiot. Secondly, he's got First World War webbing on, not even all of it is late First World War, he has an early war rifle bandolier. and then, on top of all of that, he is wearing his shoulder title on his smock. It should be on the battledress, he doesn't even have it on both sides, and the text on it should be a blue shade. He also has no scrim scarf, his toggle rope is tied up and hanging off his webbing (somehow, they never made a way to do that) when it should be wrapped around him, and finally, a STEN bandolier (why) around his leg (how). More generally with uniforms: Airborne insignia, like the Pegasus (which was worn by both the 1st, and 6th airborne by the way) should not be worn on the smock, rather on the battledress (so unlike you said you were, I am not happy to see the Pegasus insignia), Mills bombs were not worn on the straps like American grenades, they would be in pockets, and in one of the BREN magazine pouch (which pretty much (if not) all of them should have at least two of), none of them have blue epilate slip-ons to indicate regiment, some of them seem to be missing important equipment such as canteens, those knives you see a few with (with the brass knuckles) weren't used, reserve shoots weren't used, and goggles like Kingsley has weren't used (apart from by dispatch riders, who did wear the same helmet as the airborne). There is much more wrong with this mission, but as I said, I do Oxf. & Bucks. not the para, so I'm not as knowledgeable on anything expect general British Airborne stuff.

As a paratrooper, he had way too much time in free fall. He should have pulled his reserve the moment his main burned away, instead he waited till the last minute so he'd have hit the water like it was cement. Also too much water. The animation made it look like he landed in the ocean. You can argue cause it's dark, but it should be only over 6 or so feet deep. Also love how they animated two peoples shoots not opening and burning in when he looked up after landing.

In reference to the weirdly fast Flak crew, I think we knew where all the panzerschocolade went.

Paratroopers sumed up, we got a 5 rounds and a kar98k, two knives and a shovel *proceeds to take down all of Normandy*

I just love the contrast around 35:00 for the negatives vs positives. On the one hand, we've depicted the British paratroopers as passive and insubordinate. On the other hand, gammon bombs and correct ammo...

I would like to apologise for missing a lot of important details on this one. But the fact is that A. I recorded this at like 4 AM after writing all day so I was flaked. B. CoD Vanguard has so much wrong with it in this mission there is too much to list. I was so overwhelmed with all the stuff I was seeing that I completely neglected to mention that the battery was entirely in the wrong spot. So I missed some stuff that I really shouldn't have. However it's called reaction for a reason its basically what I personally notice off the bat. I should do better on the Tobruk mission (obviously) Also, reserve chutes, it wasn't until after I uploaded that it clicked and I slapped myself really hard for missing that detail. I was so focused in on their procedure and the calamity of aerial carnage around them (and the fact that the planes were wrong) that I completely blanked on that. My bad. Don't worry though, properly researched and edited video for D-Day. See y'all then!

57:15 It depends on who you ask. The German officer is adamant that the guns were reactivated and not destroyed while the British veterans of the battle say the opposite

Animarchy, it is a myth that the transport pilots were bad on D-day. WW2TV had a speaker on (Airpower in Normandy, Jun 29, 2020, start at about 9:20) that went over what happened. But cliff notes, the planes were very heavy due to all the Paratrooper gear compared to training so they had to go faster to stay airborne. Also they had to came in high to go above a cloud bank, so in only a few miles before the drop zone they had to bleed off a ton energy from descending to drop height. So that is what caused the erratic moments and abnormal sounds that the paratroopers experienced, not inexperienced pilots being scared of the silly AA from the Game.

To be fair about the BAR, the Germans did have the Wz.28, which was a BAR chambered in 7.92 Mauser, captured from the Polish army in 1939, I'm pretty sure the model is still inaccurate as hell, (I'm pretty sure they had a different handguard and fluted barrel.)

Even older artillery guns weren't useless. They just had a shorter range and slower rate of fire. But they could still kill you.

16:40 when I realized the same moment you did my reaction was just about the same. "holy SHIT THAT LOADER IS ON FIRE!"

If i took a shot for every historical inaccuracy, i'd finally be in the perfect mental state to make a game like this.

This is going to epic , he should do more ww2 games reviews

I remember reading that the British paras in D-Day didn't carry reserve chutes, due to supply shortages

I was about to call EQUIPMENT CHECK before your pause. One of the most rehearsed and crucial parts of jump just thrown out because, like everything else in this game, it feels like no one bothered to check ANYTHING with professional or just a basic research check. This feels like a barely passable D history report for a high schooler when it comes to the cinematics Also thank you for the rant at 30 minutes because that really irked. Paratroopers are morbid people hand picked and train to simply attack attack attack. That’s the mindset. Even during training they are given the mentality of their lives ending at any moment during an operation so it’s best to keep pushing the enemy, keep pushing forward

If you want to know how important a rig check is, the U.S. Airborne have an entire song about it and let me tell you the results of forgetting are NOT PRETTY.

To quote a friend of mine: The positive thing about the messing up of operations in the night assault is that you now have a bunch of unsupervised soldiers carrying high grade military weapon.

24:00 He loads three out of five rounds on a clip, despite the rifle being empty, and tosses the remaining two instead of loading it in

British ship: gets a few hits on target and is considered to be doing better than usual American ship: casually floods ballast tanks to elevate its guns to keep engaging the enemy like its normal

The absolute best way for paratroopers on a night drop to get wiped out immediately is to stop and dig in, which eliminates all of their inherent advantages. Also talking back to the ranking NCO in a sideways combat situation in 1944 in the BRITISH military of all things would be a good way to get a Webley pistol whip across the back of your skull.

I guess that loader has a little too much of his chocolate ration before battle

The other thing that perplexes me about COD is that the c47 you are on is destroyed yet when you get to the ground and look up, the AA passes through the allied planes (Literally, they'll get hit and nothing will happen, no fire nothing, not even an explosion). COD1 for example, despite being hit more than enough times, all that happens is one random plane catching fire and all the others unaffected. Also, for whatever reason, no more troops jump out over your position, I even cleared the area and waited. Really, it breaks immersion. Great intro then...nothing. Medal of honor Airborne is in the same boat. AA fire lights up the sky yet not a single plane is shot down. It irks me that developers and programmers can't get that one detail down. At least it gets the reinforcements right as they parachute down to you. It's irritating but is a cross we have to bear

Why the hell does a British Paratrooper have a M1 garand?

The British did not use reserve parachutes in WW2. The main justification was they jumped low, so there would be no time to pull a reserve. The Germans did not use reserves either. The British paras appear to be using US parachutes. The British wore special jump smocks over all their other uniform and equipment with their pack on their belly, making them look very fat.

I learned it from another video pointing out inaccuracies in Vanguard. The patch is one for the first allied airborne army, which was formed after Normandy. So that 1 patch should not exist yet.

Going out on a limb here but those ships on the right at the end of the mission, i wanna say look like Wyoming-class Battleships in their 1944 configuration. You can see the 6 center line superfiring turrets which only Wyoming-class and Ise-class Battleships had. As well as the Tripod mast above the bridge. What's even funnier is there 9 of them in the line when only 2 Wyomings were built

Germans did use both Polish "BARs" and FN was making multiple variants for other countries like Sweden that Germany would have taken over. That is definitely a US BAR model, but seeing something similar wouldn't have been out of place. Poland also used them as anti-aircraft MGs too, so seeing reflex sights on them wouldn't have been completely unheard of if Vanguard wanted wacky attachments included.

At this time I think the Paras were more on the Mark V Sten rather than the Mark II, but there was probably still a mix TBF. And some paratroopers did supposedly just hunker down for the night, though seems to have been single guys completely lost rather than groups.

The lack of Historical oversight on this game was laughable!

32:00 The previous games like Brothers in Arms, Medal of Honor: Spearhead, Company of Heroes 1 (82nd airborne missions) and heck even CoD1 did it better because they were designed and portrayed airborne units as the aggressors when the plan goes entirely wrong. They didn't sit there twiddling their thumbs and say "Oh well, let's just dig in and hope for the best." Wrong, they carry out their objectives and hunt down the enemy until they manage to link up with other allied forces. It's just as you say in the video.

So the response to the paratroopers was literally an unintended case of "the enemy can't know the plan if we don't!" Fascinating. Most fascinating.

What pains me the most about the little details that Vanguard gets wrong is that these are exactly the type of detail that the old WWII Call of Duty and Medal of Honor games got right. It's why both series got so popular back in the day before people got tired of WWII shooters and everyone moved onto modern warfare and more scifi/alternate history themes. It's insane to me that what's ostensibly a return to old roots would be so careless about these things.

seeing AH (not the angry moustache man ) angry is a meme at this point

34:00 - This whole scene feels like "Black man strong, white man coward" situation to me. 54:50 - That man wasn't burned from the grenade, while the rerst of the bunker is.

I just recently replayed Brothers In Arms and jesus saying night and day would be an understatement.

Jerry cans is one of the best German invention that was popularized in ww2. There is also a 40 minute video on the history, features, and advantages of jerry cans against the allies fuel containers during ww2.

Oh lord, this will be something...

Animarchy doesn't even have to give a commentary, he just has to loop the "jonathan frakes telling you you're wrong for 47 seconds" video over the gameplay footage for an hour

17:40 ish. There is a pretty good video of a flak crew actually getting about this rate of fire in a mobile gun, with the full loading crew. Good crew could certainly sling the rounds

As the grandson of a combat veteran who was part of the glider infantry (American), I appreciate the attention you pay to gliders right off the bat here. (grandpa wasn't dropped into Normandy; southern France a little later, then Belgium several months after that, unfortunately)

*HOORAY* What a wonderful video! Insightful and educational, whilst being entertaining! Thank you for uploading content!

This is the only way i will see all of vanguards missions tbh

What's truly horrific to me is that apparently Sledgehammer is in charge of MW3 reboot 2023. After Vanguard? They deserved to be never put in charge of any CoD ever again.

Definitely didn't know about the reason Thunder and Flash were used in regards to native German speakers having problems pronouncing it. Always wondered why so many pieces of media used "thunder" and "flash". Always kind of wondered if it switched up or something. Love your videos man, definitely learn a lot!

One thing i do like about vanguard. Is how impactful these guns feel. The kar 98 feels like its a big bullet. Some games just dont have that umph.

after that jump sequence opening I want to see animarchy react to medal of honor allied assault spearhead's jump opening.

I feel like Paratroopers would rather charge you with knives than just sit there and dig in.

We can't forget about the f2000 and laser gun in the multiplayer As well as the 80s drug lord, alt-modern-day south american commando, and middle eastern dictator all being playable characters.

Just out of curiosity, were there many (if any) Black British Paratroopers? And for that matter, were Black Brittish really integrated like this, or were they segregated like in the US Military? I've tried to find more info, but I always get redirected to pages on the Black soldiers of the British Caribbean Colonies.

I think the patch is the one of the First Allied Airborne Army (7:12) . Which wasnt formed till the 2nd of August 1944.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on the cod United offensive bomber mission. Its the beginning of the British levels and is super cool.

@animarchy you said around the 54:00 tmi mark that you weren't pausing the video seeing an stg 44 because it was already in service, back in normandy the stg44 wasn't issued yet, it was still the mp43...

I wouldn't call a 150mm howitzer useless, even if it is old. Thats still a pretty big amount of boom it can bring to anything its in range of

Also : The older watches were FAR less resilient and by having the face on the inside of the wrist, it would be less likely to be subjected to shock, damaged, destroyed, or having the glass crystal broken or dirtied.

1:02:06 I could be wrong, but from the general side profile and what looks like a main battery of 6 turrets, I’m pretty sure those are supposed to be Wyoming-class battleships. But there’s a slight problem if that’s what they are: There we’re only ever *two* of those, USS Wyoming (BB-32) and USS Arkansas (BB-33). And Wyoming had been converted into a gunnery training ship by late 1941. To be fair, Arkansas *was* still in frontline service, and she *did* participate in shore bombardment missions at Omaha beach. But she was the only one of her class present, and I count *NINE* on screen right now. FFS, Vanguard, you’re *terrible.*

45:24 I also like how (not sure if it’s just my eyesight) the water canteen seems to be floating an inch off the table.

One thing that I have recently noticed in not just video games but movies as well. Is that you wouldn't be able to hear conversations, let alone hear yourself on these ww2 aircraft. Hence the hand signals in band of brothers. I have ridden on a B25J and you can not even hear your own voice. We had to communicate using hand signals because of how loud the engines are and how much general noise from the inside of the aircraft. Bolts rattling, seats bouncing, cables and what not. The only way you can hear conversation was having headsets on with a mic. So having general conversation is not possible.

White phosphorus grenades scare me. Grandpa was a doc on Iwo Jima and gave detailed descriptions of what they did to people.

Those MP40 mag pouches were for large bars of Panzerschokolad

15:23 anybody else notice how this BRITISH paratrooper’s sporting a Garand?

I visited the Merville Battery in 2014, and as others have already pointed out, it was inland, and the beach was flat. The overall look has more in common with the Longues-sur-Mer battery further west, but that one wasn't assaulted by Allied troops on D-Day. Also, by the time it was that light, the assault had been over for some 40 minutes. At 51:35, the German defenders leave their positions and charge downhill - why? And that sign: "Halt! Militärische Kriegszone" must be the lamest ever. "Halt! Military war zone"...

Hey man idk if you’ve heard but there’s a group of people making historically accurate mods for cod waw would love to see you make a video of what you think. Great video again animarchy

I would not mind a highlighting video of these Animarchy rundowns. Like the most agregious missteps and best anger moments.

One thing that stuck out to me was the Opel Blitz truck with its regular lights on, this would have been a big no-no for the driver even in the middle of an allied invasion. It would have had its blackout lights on to avoid giving away any locations to scouts.

His first reaction to weapon attachments was the magazine-fed Kar98k but not when the player picked up a Kar98k with a shorter barrel assembly

43:52 Ah yes "Cpl. Nguyen" didn't know the Vietnamese were in on this op too lol 😂

The historical inaccuracy of this game is astonishing lol. From the fact that only two planes were shot down instead of the entire battalion being shot upon, to the British having a reserve parachute when the British never had one, no leg bags, the jump master saying only three commands instead of eight, the M1 Garand being in the battle when it has no buisness being there, the paratrooper badge being heavily innaccurate since it came out two months after the mission, the water being extremely soft instead of hard as concrete, and so on and so forth....

Theres one thing about the Merville battery that inaccurate, the real Merville battery was never located on a cliff side of the beach, it is farther away from the beach and it was close to a town

just noticed something: The ships at 1:01:37 ... they kinda look like USS Texas. Alot of her too. The smoke stack and the 5 guns battery, 2 forth - 1 mid - 2 rear kinda gives it away

When I saw the webbing I was like: “Hold up, did this guy steal a Kar or did he lose his MP40?”

Sarge counter: 13 Sarnt counter: 0 These are British troopers, they say Sarnt, not Sarge! There's onlt two sarges in the British army. A massarge and a sausarge. And you dont want to confuse those two!

That's also incredibly accurate. The British had a strap that could just be pulled with an emergency release so they lost less troops in the Americans did 15:29

I think Cpl. T. Jones is wearing a set of the British MRC body armour, how it was issued is afaik pretty irregular so it isn't impossible but I think it typically went to medical units and sappers/pioneers.

To think the OG COD had a more accurate British para mission

Man being a historian and playing COD don’t mix…. Thanks for making these videos they are really funny

Ah shit. Here we go again

31:44 that’s always bugged me in CoD. So from the 29 officers and several warrant officers and staff sergeants they were all dead and missing so some random sgt lead the Btn?! I know the layman is unlikely to know rank structures but it takes me out of games so hard, can’t you just make him an officer or at least RSM?!

The canadians got their own beach and managed to secure it quicker and more efficiently than everyone else.

17:40 he's not even loading them in he just throws them at those planes with two bare hands simultaneously. The sound you hear is his biceps ripping through the sound barrier

On the gameplay side... even though the overall mission is different, everything in it looks like any other COD game. I mean, how many times have we done exactly this: Come across an enemy MG, flank it through a very convenient pathway, kill it because no enemy is covering it. Not only is there no enemy covering it, there's nothing at all happening behind this set piece, because it's waiting for you to hit a checkpoint before presenting another generic encounter. It's all very safe and contained.

It's interesting to note that the 101st Airborne had many complaints and criticisms of their Skytrain crews, but the 82nd Airborne was not nearly as critical and also praised them.

Biggest gripe with simple military procedure, the usge of headlights on all vehicles at night during combat. Personal flashlights mke sense. But masses of vehicles with headlights on during an air raid/ para drop are massive targets for bombers or strafing fighters.

Something I just noticed while watching this, probably missed it because it was just one bit of dialogue, but Richard Webb, the guy that wanted to dig in and hole up for the rest of the unit, is apparently a sergeant as well. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-cA5a4RUs3Ak.html He calls him sergeant here. But he's got the double lines on his right arm, marking him as a corporal. So apparently they got the uniform wrong there.

24:00 Notice how his ammunition counter says 3 rounds but when he loads the bullets, he has 5 rounds in the stripper clip.

In the cutscene where he's calling down, you can count around teb ish of the c47s getting shot down. in real life, for the brits, the germans only shot down two of them

23:00 what was the line i think it was "you cant prepare for the American's doctrine because they dont even follow it themselves" or something like that

Around 17:00 you correctly ask about Flak fire rate, yet you should ask how the hell flak crew did not noticed multiple paratroopers landing like 20 metres from them. Also im surprised that you did not pointed out that Merville was not a shore battey, it was in some distance from shore. I think that you should also give sins for logical retardation like those Germans leaving fortified position to charge at paratroopers through completely open terrain, or those trucks detonating like 2 anti-vehicle mines out of whole minefield, and soldiers appearing right after them (must have charged at insane speed)

Note, that the accidental discharge of sten happens when you have the weapon OFF safety. Though "sadly", the safety is that big nook for the bolt handle to go into. And if you dropped it hard enough for the bolt to unlock itself from that, I'd think you have bigger problems, like your knees protruding from your ears xD

...just in that first cutscene, I have concerns about the survivability of deploying your reserve chute and then hitting water like a second, MAYBE a second and a half later. Or at the very least, concerns about anyone's ability to walk after doing so. Seems to me your entry speed would be *juuuuust* a little on the fast side. Maybe reserve chutes really do slow your fall that much, that fast, but at least to my untrained ass that does not seem like nearly enough time for it to do its job.

When they look at the battery through binoculars it’s on a cliff, overlooking the channel. I pretty sure the whole battery was set back from the beach, on flat land

A very tiny thing, no one ever says Sarge, it’s strictly Sergeant. When i was a air cadet, the first sergeant I spoke too i called sarge and immediately got a bollocking for it.

my great grandfather was in the 82 505PIR and he was one of the miss drops he broke his leg on landing and was taken in my a french family and lived and fought though the whole war

1:02:22 I can ONLY assume, judging by the placement of the turrets and my limited knowledge on naval ships, that THAT is an American Wyoming-class battleship. Two of them. Because apparently Kingsley is American now.

59:44 "There seems to be something right with our bloody ships today."