This impressive howitzer was designed for the US Army in the inter-war years to fill a requirement for a modern long-range field-artillery piece. Its development was a little sluggish. The first model was produced in 1920, but it wasn’t until 1940 that the bugs were ironed out...
The Norfolk Tank Museum is more like an enthusiastic private collection than a formal museum. It is also a work in progress… or at least many of the tanks are. That doesn’t matter because, while it might not be as big or formal as for example, the...
The Musée de l’Armée (Army Museum) is located in the Hôtel National des Invalides (The National Residence of the Invalids), a collection of 17th century buildings in the centre of Paris that started life as a military hospital. Part of the complex is still used as a...
When the US 101st Airborne* were besieged in Bastogne during the ‘Battle of the Bulge’ in Dec 1944, they were re-supplied from the air, not just by parachute but by gliders too. Until Dr Peter Caddick-Adams mentioned it in his excellent online lecture** on ‘The Battle of...
The Musee 39-45 * north of Boulogne in Pas-de-Calais, differs from many WW2 museums in that it is dedicated to the uniforms and accessories of the combatants, rather than their equipment. The only large pieces of military equipment are parked outside, namely ‘Jean Beart’, a Sherman M4...
On a coastline dotted with D-Day museums, it’s easy to assume that the America Gold Beach Museum in Ver-sur-Mer, Normandy, is dedicated to the events on June 6 1944… but it isn’t, exclusively. Musée America Gold Beach reminds us that before the British Army’s XXX Corps landed...
I recently came across this small event in Patrick Delaforce’s book, Churchill’s Desert Rats . It illustrates how, sometimes, there can be brief moments of honour & decency – even involving the SS – in the midst of total war. It was during the opening stages of...
The newly renovated Army Flying Museum held its official re-opening yesterday with their patron, HRH Prince Michael of Kent as guest of honour. I wrote about the changes in March, but this event gave me a chance to actually see the new facilities and exhibits… and there’s...
The Army Flying Museum in Hampshire will be re-opening its doors on the 1st April after a four month, £2.59 million makeover. The museum’s collection, which features fixed & rotary wing Army aircraft from WW1 to the present, is now supplemented with new exhibits, better lighting, a...
The Royal Electrical & Mechanical Engineers (REME) museum re-opened in June last year at MOD Lynham in Wiltshire. The corps has had a museum since 1958. It was originally a small collection located in a few rooms at Moat House in REME’s base at Arborfield outside Reading....
The home of the Museum of the Infantry Regiments of Berkshire and Wiltshire is The Wardrobe* – one of the splendid 15th century buildings on The Close that surround Salisbury Cathedral. For that reason, and because British Army regiments have a habit of amalgamating, merging, emerging and...
The Royal Navy decommissioned its last Westland Lynx helicopter in March last year, and the British Army Air Corps is about to do the same. The twin-engined multi-role Lynx began service with the Army in 1979 and the Fleet Air Arm in 1981. Its ability to hunt...
It seems almost inconceivable that the United States Army doesn’t have a national museum! Everyone else has one. The Marines have one, the Air Force has one, the Navy has one… hell, even Navy Aviation and US Army Aviation have them! Most countries have one. I’ve been...
The National Army Museum will be opening its doors to the public on Thursday (30 March) after a £23.75m redevelopment that sees the building transformed from what the Director General, Janice Murray, described to me as a gloomy warren “rather like a car park”, to a bright...
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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