"Airfix German gun emplacement" Topic

As a kid in the 1960's, I first got into miniature war gaming when for $2.00 USD a box at my local Woolworth 5 & 10 I purchased with my paper route earnings a box each of Aurora's "Rat Patrol" & "Anzio" box sets. I loved the models, soldiers & terrain. (I found out years later that the Landing craft in the Anzio box was 1/300th scale and not 1/87th like the other items were) One of my class mates told about Airfix figure & Rocco Minitanks that were at my local hobby shop. It grew from there. A few years later I purchased the Airfix German gun emplacement. The one with the rotating gun and bunkers. My British Paras & Commando made many assaults on that gun emplacement.

Now onto the present. I do 15mm WW2 games now and I saw on Esty some one (with permission from Airfix) is casting it in resin for a fair rice. I know it is 20mm, but I am so tempted to buy it. I was wondering if a TMP gamer here still has this Airfix item and could post photos of it with a few 15mm figs so I could see if I could get away with buying a new one? I thank you in advance for you help & hope some one will post some photos here.

I have one. let me see if I can find it.

I had one back in the day. IIRC 15mm figures would not work with that set. There is a shielded gun that at 15mm would be about 4 stories tall.

It was a Toy set.. but, with work to remove spigot for the gun… could, maybe be replaced by an 88 or something in scale? Doubt worth the bother, though. There are much better individual scenics around now. As a kid, I loved it… but even then, it looked too 'neat and square… and the gun would have been about 4ft bore in 1/76!

The gun originally came with a spring mechanism to fire plastic shells, which is why it was so big. It is AFAIK a completely spurious gun and housing although it perhaps vaguely resembles a WW1 ship's gun:

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Thoughtfully Airfix provided a mounting pivot for a gun in both the sandbagged revetment on the left and also inside the pillbox station on the right, so if you wanted to you could mount it in either place.

The Coastal Defence fort was another Airfix gem, with not one but two guns that fired shells. The guns are 13.5" in scale calibre, but only about an L/20 from memory, so again not real. It is based IIRC more on British coastal defence forts than German.

Someone on an Airfix forum used to do stupendous builds of these, with handrails added, the concrete weathered, etc.

The Airfix church was based on the old St Boniface in the Isle of Wight.

The windmill was I think based on Chillenden mill in Kent.

IIRC I think it could work with 15mm except for the gun.

The trenches are quite narrow as well and so you may have to have a special set of figures based in such a way so that they would fit the model.

You can still get the bigger gun emplacement but only as part of a big box set:

link