"Pillboxes for Holland 1940" Topic

I should say Kazemat of course, being the Dutch term for pillboxes. I've been getting a little preparation done for a forthcoming Chain of Command campaign set in Holland 1940 where the Dutch player will be able to call on Kazemat as part of their fortification options. I've made these using 20mm MDF pillboxes from Blotz. These are designs based on British pillboxes of the late thirties and early forties but they bear a fairly similar resemblance to some of the designs used by the Dutch. I'll want them to use in other theatres, so I wasn't looking for something exclusively Dutch, just close enough.

There's a longer post/tutorial on how they were made that you can find here: Pillboxes for Holland 1940

Looks good, congrats! And looking forward to seeing them in action.

Very cool. Look forward to the campaign!

If I were to offer a critique the ones you show may not be that typical. I did a bit of a study on bunkers/pill boxes generally and in the UK and printed one at 1/144 scale from UK WW2. What surprised me was that the roof was designed to be "Artillery Proof" so its roof was 42" thick (1.07m thick) and partly buried. None of yours seems to meet close to that criteria.

Secondly but perhaps less of an issue is burying. Some bunkers had earth built up to the height of the embrasures and sometimes higher. In addition in many cases the entrance was dug out somewhat However that was not always the case. The top picture with them painted camouflage does represent at least some types, the bottom set seem at odds with the real world. BUT perhaps in a wood a simple grey would be adequate. The embrasures are not really correct but that may be a scale/manufacturing issue my scale model at 1/144had simple holes as the angled shape of the real thing. was too small to be adequately represented. The laser cut one has a few lines to illustrate the issue without actually reproducing it.

The UK had some brick built ones but I guess they were physiological cover only, brick won't stop much particularly at short range. They may not have been camouflaged but they are mainly isolated so more like a protected lookout.

Dutch kazemat come in many shapes, not many buried given the high water table, in fact, some on stilts. Some camouflaged and many in plain concrete. Not sure exactly what your point is exactly other than to be picky given I was pretty clear these were going to be ‘close enough', which of course, they are.