COBI German Bunker Regelbau 667 Set 3136

COBI's German Bunker Regelbau 667 is a 1:35 model built from 642 blocks, with a roof that lifts off for access to the interior. Two figures are included, a German soldier and a radio operator, along with a 5 cm KwK anti-tank gun, radio sets, grenades, MP-40 and Kar98k weapons, ammunition, barrels, sandbags and foliage camouflage.

Regelbau means standard design

The Atlantic Wall was not designed position by position. Germany produced a catalogue of numbered standard bunker plans — Regelbauten — and a construction battalion anywhere from Norway to the Spanish border could be handed a number and a patch of ground and build the same structure from the same drawings.

The 667 is a small one: a casemate for a single anti-tank gun covering a beach or a road, with a shelter for its crew. Hundreds were built. The advantage of the system was speed and predictability — the concrete quantities, the steel, the labour hours were all known in advance, which mattered when the work was being done under time pressure by forced labour.

The disadvantage was that the Allies had the catalogue too. Intelligence could identify a bunker type from an aerial photograph and know its wall thickness, its embrasure angles, its blind spots and how many men were inside before anyone landed.

Many are still standing on the French and Dutch coasts, because demolishing several metres of reinforced concrete costs more than leaving it.

Specifications

Pieces: 642 · Figures: 2 · Scale: 1:35 · Opening roof
Model dimensions: 27.5 × 21.5 × 8 cm (10.8 × 8.5 × 3.1 in)