HMS M33 is the smallest of the National Museum of the Royal Navy (NMRN)’s museum ships and you’ll find her in her dry dock next to HMS Victory. She is significant because she is the last remaining ship from the Gallipoli campaign in WW1. History HMS M33...
Set back behind the Tudor bulk of Southsea Castle, just east of Portsmouth harbour, the D-Day Story Museum does what it says on the label – showcases the events leading up to the Allied invasion of France on June 6 1944, codenamed Operation Overlord. There’s been a...
The ZSU-23-4 Shilka is a Soviet self-propelled anti-aircraft system. I thought the Shilka was an old piece of Cold War kit, but it turns out that, while it may be old, many countries have developed upgrade packs and are still using it. The ZSU-23-4 (Zenitnaya Samokhodnaya Ustanovka...
Saturday 2nd March will mark 50 years since the maiden voyage of Concorde from Toulouse, south-west France. Concorde was manufactured jointly by French firm, Aerospatiale in Toulouse and the British Aircraft Corporation in Filton (near Bristol), but it was in Toulouse that Concorde 001 took to the...
The Atlanta History Center (Atlanta, Georgia, USA) has opened Cyclorama: The Big Picture, the fully restored The Battle of Atlanta cyclorama painting. The 360° cyclorama is one of the world’s largest oil paintings, standing 49 feet (14.9m) tall, stretching longer than a football field and weighing 10,000...
I finally paid a long overdue visit to Portsmouth last month and caught up on the key ‘attractions’ on both sides of the harbour. I’m going to address the main attractions – HMS Warrior, HMS Victory, HMS M33, The Mary Rose museum, The Royal Navy Submarine Museum...
The thing with ‘icons’ is that you know what to expect when you finally see them. Sometimes the scale is unexpected – eg. “Oh, the Mt Rushmore heads are smaller than I thought!” (they were) – but the detail is exactly as anticipated. I have seen HMS...
This is a bit of a discovery for me. I went to a press function¹ last night at the London Film Museum in Covent Garden, where they have Bond in Motion, an exhibition of James Bond movie vehicles. Now normally that would not have got me particularly...
The National Constitution Center in Philadelphia is opening a new permanent exhibit on 9th May 2019. It’ll be the first in America devoted to exploring the constitutional debates from the Civil War and Reconstruction. Civil War and Reconstruction: The Battle for Freedom and Equality will feature key...
So where do old Boeing 747 Jumbos go to die?¹ Well, most of them wind up in the aircraft “boneyards” scattered around the world, some are cannibalised for parts, and a few end up as ornaments, attractions or exhibits. Yesterday, I reported on one that is destined...
A Boeing 747 Jumbo will be the centrepiece of an underwater theme park planned for Bahrain. HH Shaikh Abdullah bin Hamad Al Khalifa has announced the launch of the world’s largest underwater theme park, covering an area of over 100,000 square meters, which will include a 70-metre...
A new book about Ypres has just been published. There must be dozens of books about the WW1 battles for Ypres in Belgium, but Ypres – part of Oxford University Press Great Battles series – is not really about the strategy or carnage in the Ypres Salient....
As part of its 100th anniversary¹ celebrations, British Airways (BA) has announced it will be painting a Boeing 747 in the much-admired design of its predecessor British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC). The livery from the 1964 – 1974 BOAC era will adorn a B747, reg: G-BYGC. The...
The wreck of an aircraft discovered in 1996 near Papua New Guinea could turn out to be the Lockheed Electra 10E in which Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan disappeared on July 2, 1937. William “Bill” Pennington Snavely, Jr certainly thinks it could be, but he is reluctant...
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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