The WW2 ‘Battle of Britain’ is etched deep in the collective memory of Brits, whether alive at the time or not. As everyone knows, it was an intense struggle between the RAF “few” and the massed aerial fleets of Germany’s Luftwaffe. What most people, including me, don’t...
This is a memorial I stumbled across outside a church in Nottinghamshire a year ago. There’s not a great deal of information on the memorial itself but thanks to the efforts of a number of people who have been diligently researching the loss of Lancaster W4270 with...
I’ve been trying to work out what this slightly rusty Self Propelled Gun (SPG) is, parked up at the back of the Musee de Blindes in Saumur, awaiting a little love and attention from their restoration teams. Now, thanks to TankNutDave.com, and some time I spent trawling...
These are pattern/template boots for the Swedish army. The one on the left was an approved design for a cavalry boot in the 1690s, when Sweden was still an autocracy, so the final approval comes from the king who puts his seal on it. The letters CRS...
This masterpiece of engineering, named after her designer, William Fairbairn, was built in 1878 to lift heavy loads (up to 35 tons), which she did for 95 years. She has now been restored and is a Scheduled Ancient Monument under the care of Mshed.org who fire her...
I love this quirky little French 6-wheeler from 1939. It’s a Laffly V15T with 4-wheel drive, plus an extra two wheels to get it over lumps & bumps! It had a top speed of 58 kph and was used primary by the French cavalry as an artillery...
Normally I would not be featuring art on Mechtraveller, but this is geeky & cool! I came across it last night in the lobby of the Conrad London St. James hotel. They have a number of artworks. This is one of them. The House Always Wins. Artwork...
This Dreidecker (“triplane”) is a reproduction at the Luftwaffe Museum in Gatow. According to Wikipedia, 320 of these machines were built, but only three are thought to have survived WW1. Serial 528/17 was retained as a testbed by the Deutschen Versuchsanstalt für Luftfahrt (German Aviation Research Institute)...
Maillé-Brézé is a French T 47-class destroyer, launched in 1953 in Lorient and named after admiral Jean Armand de Maillé-Brézé (1619–1646). She was decommissioned in 1988 and became a museum ship in Nantes. However, at the beginning of this month (May 2016), she slipped her moorings in...
BF110F-2 Werknummer 5052 is on display in the Deutsches Technikmuseum, Berlin. This aircraft served with 13./Zerstörergruppe JG5 at KemiJarvi, Finland during 1943. On January 11, it was damaged by train-mounted flak while flying a four plane mission against railway lines between Murmansk and Leningrad. Pilot Helmut Ziegenhagen...
75mm Airborne M1A1 Pack Howitzer (1942) designed to be dropped into battle with airborne troops. This one was used by 1st Airlanding Light Artillery Regiment, Royal Artillery, at Arnhem bridge September 1944 where it was damaged (see broken tow ring). It is now in the Royal Artillery...
Odd name. The Percival Pembroke was a British light transport aircraft built between 1953-1958 by the Percival Aircraft Company, which later became ‘Hunting Percival’. They are quite rare. Only 128 were built. This one, a C-54 variant built for the German Luftwaffe is at the Militärhistorisches Museum...
This is a niche blog about technically-minded travel. It reflects my own interests in the mechanical, technical, historical, engineering, transport and military world.
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