Work in Progress

Atlantic Wall

Posted by John Simmons on 14 Oct 2024, 16:26

Although I primarily wargame 18th- and 19th-century battles, I've always wanted to do a D-Day game (ever since Airfix first produced those wonderful little gray-blue WWII Germans). I was aiming to be ready for the 80th anniversary of D-Day, but I failed pretty miserably. Maybe I'll make it in time for the 81st! I've built some suitable terrain and accumulated a reasonable collection of beach obstacles, landing craft, vehicles, and troops. Now I'm working on the Germans' Atlantic Wall defenses. Many of these were simply too large or too hard to reproduce in scale on my table, so I'm settling for some more "impressionistic" German fortifications. I'm by no means an expert on any of this WWII stuff, so please forgive any naive errors. I'm mostly just aiming for things that will look the part.

I started with the available hard plastic kits and tried to turn them into something more interesting (and possibly more realistic). Italeri makes two bunkers, one of which is actually a pretty accurate model of the H677 bunker. Both have no interiors, of course, and skinny little plastic walls. So I had to add thicker walls to make the interiors look less odd. I also added some infantry positions to the H677:

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The other Italeri bunker is a strange, figure-8-shaped thing, which resembles no actual bunker that I know of. Here's what I did with it:

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Most will remember that Airfix also made a couple of "big gun" emplacements, one called just "Gun Emplacement" and the other "Coastal Defense Fort". I've modified both of them pretty extensively. Here's the first:

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Here's the other one:

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The only other plastic kit suitable for the Atlantic Wall -- that I know of, at least -- was the thing by Arii called "German Secret Strong Point". I just used the main piece of the set:

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Last, another "big gun", this one a pretty accurate representation of one of the gun positions in the Longues-sur-Mer battery. The front portion of the bunker was a plaster kit (whose maker I've forgotten). The rear and the interior I added:

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When I have some more time, I'll post some photos of the smaller defenses I'm working on: pillboxes, AT positions, shelters, pits, and the like.
John Simmons  United States of America
 
Posts: 66
Member since:
17 Apr 2020, 14:12


Posted by Rich W on 14 Oct 2024, 22:30

Very nice John! That will look super once all put together!
Rich W  United Kingdom
 
Posts: 1337
Member since:
05 Feb 2018, 23:40

Posted by PaulRPetri on 16 Oct 2024, 01:03

Absolutely outstanding work John!!
PaulRPetri  United States of America
 
Posts: 675
Member since:
02 Apr 2019, 00:59

Posted by C M Dodson on 16 Oct 2024, 06:12

What a stunning departure from Stones River!

Excellent work with a lot of imagination on display.

Frank has done a lot of research on his blog about Omaha resulting in this which I hope you will find useful.

https://tabletopdeutschland.com/2022/10 ... sentation/

Happy modelling.

Chris
C M Dodson  United Kingdom
 
Posts: 2673
Member since:
01 May 2015, 18:48

Posted by Santi Pérez on 16 Oct 2024, 12:57

PaulRPetri wrote:Absolutely outstanding work John!!

I fully share Paul's view, John. A titanic project, full of nice details. :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy:

Santi.
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Santi Pérez  Spain
 
Posts: 2084
Member since:
28 Aug 2016, 19:42

Posted by T. Dürrschmidt on 16 Oct 2024, 20:24

Really nice work on that bunkers. Even they were quite new at that time I would do some weathering, so they don´t look too clean. Also some camo painting on the concrete bunkers would be nice.

Very impressive, but that remembers me on how useless 95% of that fortifications were. Once broken at one spot the whole atlantic wall was obsolete.
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T. Dürrschmidt  Germany
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Posts: 2238
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01 Oct 2008, 18:33

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