From the title it is apparent that this set was released to coincide with the 70th anniversary of D-Day, and yet Italeri gave it the general title 'Bunker Assault' rather than something specific to that campaign. Naturally assaulting bunkers was not an activity exclusive to the beaches of Normandy, so perhaps the thought was to make it more relevant to the whole campaign in north-western Europe in 1944 to 45.
With so many sets of figures, vehicles, tanks and guns available for the Second World War, it is no surprise that Italeri kept coming back to it for ideas for battlesets. This one involves US infantry attacking a bunker held by German infantry, who are aided by an anti-tank gun. For the infantry, Italeri reached once more for their old Esci issues, and included the following sets:
Also included is the bunker, and this is the Italeri Coastal Defence Bunker (6085), which is a plastic kit rather than made of MDF. Finally there is the Italeri (also ex-Esci) set of Battlefield Accessories. The set of Germans have a somewhat early war feel to their uniforms, even though some of their weapons are late war, but the gun crew is a closer match for the last year of the war in Europe. The US troops work fine in this context, and actually all of the figures and gun are nice models. The PaK 40 is for positioning in the bunker, and while you would expect a rather larger calibre weapon to be used for coastal defence, the bunker does hide the gun on the whole, leaving just the muzzle showing, so Italeri just about get away with this compromise.
This time the back of the box is taken up largely with painting instructions for the figures, plus the above general view of a diorama and some close-ups. As with all such sets, there is much here that is not to be found in the box, but this is more blatant than those that have gone before, with a wealth of extra accessories and a substantial base showing the bunker on high ground. Clearly even Italeri were nervous about taking so many liberties with this one, and added the legend 'Diorama base not included' as you can see. The pictured model is certainly impressive however, and we were particularly taken by the way that the bunker itself has been painted and weathered.
This product offers nothing that isn't readily available elsewhere, and in the case of the infantry figures what it offers is very old indeed. At the time of writing (2022) this set seems to be long out of stock everywhere, so we do not know whether an attraction might have been that buying the set was cheaper than buying the individual components. If this was not so then it is hard to see what the appeal would be, except as a good-looking gift set.