I've started a mini-campaign, based around a fictional French-Canadian Brigade landing on Love Beach, part of the Juno Beach sector in June 1944. Details and the first AAR can be found below:

The Campaign overview:
https://wargameswithtoysoldier1685-1985.blogspot.com/2025/06/d-day-6th-june-juno-beach-campaign.html

The Landings:
https://wargameswithtoysoldier1685-1985.blogspot.com/2025/06/d-day-6th-june-juno-beach-landings.html

Lovely stuff.

The British beaches were named after fish. The proposed name for the Canadian beach was "jelly", but for some strange reason they declined.   

Great report, looks a cracking game.

Seconded !👍

Lovely looking set up and a great AAR.

However, is it just me or is that bunker facing the wrong direction? Surely the guns should be facing the sea?

Impressive stuff nonetheless.

Thanks chaps!

@ Ithoriel. This type of bunker was designed to fire along the beach, with 50mm or 75mm ATGs, with thick concrete facing the sea, making it nigh in impervious to naval gunfire. Hence why it looks wrong. Those emplacements with larger calibre artillery did face the sea, so I could easily turn it around and use it as such, with a tad of artistic licence!

How did they defend the back of the bunker? Is it that your model doesn't show some firing slits, was there a plan, or did they just hope the general muck flying though the air would do it?

We used one of these beach facing bunkers in a game - and it was odd. It didn't seem to get line of sight on anything early enough to be useful, and was easily put out of action by infantry assault as they could move up to it. 

I perhaps need to have another look at how they were setup in real use - as in the scenario we had it was positioned very similarly to the one in Steve's scenario (and the scenario was historically based, Sword beach IIRC)

The sea facing wall should be pretty much impervious to anything - it's just a giant concrete wall designed to resist naval gun fire, and protect the embrasure from being targeted too. Feels this is where wargames rules aren't really representing the reality well enough. I wonder if these bunkers were really quite hard to spot (or at least spot as a threat). And if they were deployed in pairs to support each other. 

From Osprey on D-Day fortifications

Even fully enclosed bunkers were vulnerable to naval gunfire around their unprotected gun embrasure, so these enfilade-fire casemates oriented the embrasure perpendicular to the shoreline and shielded it using a reinforced wall facing the sea. The most powerful of these was the H677 bunkers armed with the 88mm PaK 43/41. Due to the considerable range of the 88mm gun, a single bunker of this type would be used to cover 3km or more of coastline. In the case of Omaha Beach, there were two H677 bunkers at the eastern and western end of the beach that could cover the entire 7km of beach between them. Besides the 88mm enfilade-fire bunkers, there were similar designs: the small H667 armed with the 50mm gun and the H612, similar in size to the 88mm bunker but intended to house 75mm guns.

They were largely buried in earth on the seaward side and the top. With earth berms at the back protecting the door. They had 2m of concrete so were impervious to tank fire.

Apparently 150 built, with around 50 in Normandy!


And here is one where the sand has eroded showing the size of the concrete

They were mutually supporting, or at least in theory they were, but often at extreme range. This bunker, WN33a, was actually knocked out by naval gunfire from a destroyer, as it was built on a promontary, which meant they could hit the sides. Each bunker was part of a defensive network, supported by MGs and Mortars.

As Fred says, representing them well in games is tricky, especially at this level. It sort of worked in this game, but I suppose there is always room for improvement!

Hi Steve

Thanks for this really enjoyed reading the the first instalment and looking forward to the next in due course. 

Cheers Paul

The alleged "Mutually supporting" is the crux - I was thinking what stops a squad running up behind it, then creeping round to post some grenades.

Here's an image of WN33a well after D-Day!

The sloped piece of concrete nearest the sea is the wall to stop seaward fire hitting the gun. The gun itself seem to be angled to the right of the picture to cover the beach.

The landward side looks to be a pretty solid chunk of concrete. Though the construction looks like it might be the "double hull" of interlocking concrete blocks with the gap between them filled with poured concrete. Quicker to build but less robust than steel reinforced concrete, apparently.