This is my scratch-built, 1/35th scale model of a type M-272 coastal defense bunker. This style of bunker was one of the most modern built in Normandy. There are several slight differences between this example and other bunkers of this type. Armed with a 150mm TbtsK torpedo boat cannon, 4 bunkers of this type were situated near the village of Longues, overlooking the Bay of Seine. At least 5 Allied cruisers dueled with this 4 gun battery from daybreak to dark on D-Day. Fortunately for the Allies, the sophisticated fire-direction gear was not yet operational. Had it been, the effect of the shelling could have been devastating. Because the fire-command bunker was not operational, directions were communicated visually to the guns by use of placards. One of the bunkers was silenced by naval gunfire direct hits, two were damaged and the fourth was still operational when the garrison surrendered on the morning of June 7th.
The bunker was built from 2 pieces of urethane foam cut and sanded to shape. The foam was then covered with spackle paste and basswood strips were pressed into the wet spackle to produce the texture of the wooden forms used to make the original. The square impressions in the roof and sides are not battle damage, but wooden blocks attached to the forms before the concrete was poured, to form an irregular surface to help camouflage the structure. The turret is made from 40 and 20 thou. styrene, brass tubing, part of a fishing rod and the spare parts box. The diorama itself is rather boring, I know. If it were in action, everybody would be inside! I might put some more figures in to have them adjusting the camo nets, cleaning the gun or something else. After spending considerable effort to built this from scratch, Verlinden now makes a kit!
I like the realxed pose of the guys. Besides, how can you go wrong? Theres a german shepard in there…! Not everything has to be in the thick of battle and it gives a great opportunity to show scale.
Great paint job all around and I really like the ground work. The camo netting is well done and placed. Surgical gauze? Cheese cloth? cmon give it up.
Great job Lepold. Nice to see something a bit different from the norm. Event though Verlinden makes the kit now, you can be even prouder of your scratchbuilt one. Thanks for posting.
Thanks to everyone for the compliments. This was my first major scratch built of a military subject. It didn’t take nearly as long to built as I had feared. This is in fact only a facade, not the whole bunker. It still measures 15x19 inches, the whole bunker would be twice that big. I originally planned to built this into a shadow box, didn’t get that far…yet. The bunker is primarily just two large pieces of foam, one for the walls and one for the roof. A few more small pieces for the floor and under the canopy. Once I scaled-up the plans, it was simply a matter of tracing the plans onto the foam and hacking it out with a small hand saw and a razor saw. Urethane foam is easy to work with and can be shaped with a wood rasp. Just a few hours for the rough shape. The texturing of the surface took longer than the actual construction. The turret was a bit more difficult. There is a spartan interior and crew inside, along with a few turret and gun details. I probably spend about a month on this total. And yes Shermy, it still exists! The camo net is Verlinden, since it was the correct size mesh and nothing else seemed to match.
While this particular bunker can be found in many books on D-Day, the drawings I used to build this came from Schiffer’s: German Defensive Batteries & Gun Emplacements, ISBN: 0-88740-755-2. This battery still exists today and one bunker even retains it’s turret, albeit a little worse for wear and tear. I may still build a shadow box around this, since it has only one viewing angle from the front to begin with. I am thinking about trying to depict it firing, but the muzzle blast would probably be so large as to obscure the entire model. I also need to figure out how to paint the blast effect on a piece of glass to place in the front of the shadow box frame with a LED or a grain-of-wheat bulb to simulate the flash. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks again for the compliments!
Awesome dio. I love the Atlantic Wall defenses at Normandy and would like to build several of them. Had an idea of building multiple dio’s showing the life of a bunker. Pre War with French civilians playing among the dunes. German Construction Crew pouring concrete. Finished structure pre June 6th. D-Day with US or British troops moving past the knocked out structure. D + 50years showing how looks now (D + 64yrs?). Just need to pick the right structure and get a good set of plans.
Another interesting idea since you brought up a shadow box would be to do the inside of the bunker, maybe on D-Day. Then the blast could be accomplished with lights at the rear of the dio.
Philp, That is an interesting idea of building a series of dioramas documenting a fortification’s history. Enough photos exist of particular bunkers that you can probably find documentation to show each stage in it’s history. Better still, I really like your suggestion of building a shadow box with the view from inside the bunker. So much so, that I think that will be my next project! I think the effect of illuminating the entire scene with the muzzle blast of the gun could be very dramatic, without the problem of the blast obscuring the rest of the diorama. Some books on Atlantic Wall forts I can recommend are: Fortress Third Reich and Fortress Europe both authored by Kaufmann and Jurga, ISBN; 0-306-81239-8 and 1-58097-000-1, respectively. Another book is; Bunker Archeology by Paul Virilio, ISBN: 2-907757-49-2.
