This was one of the 26 sections destined to be part of Saddam Hussein’s ‘Project Babylon’ Iraqi supergun project started in the late 80s. The project was the brainchild of Dr Gerald Bull, a Canadian artillery expert who had been involved in the US-Canadian HARP project (High...
The Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) opened its new ‘behind the scenes’ visitor centre last week in northern France. Most people are aware of the CWGC, particularly when they visit a CWGC cemetery or memorial, but they are perhaps not aware of what the CWGC does or...
Picture this. East v. West relations have deteriorated to the point where somebody in the Soviet Union launches a flurry of nuclear Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) at the USA. Suddenly, as they begin to re-enter the atmosphere over northern Canada, a set of steel hatches behind a...
It’s been a few years since I last visited the Royal Air Force Museum in Hendon, North London, and I certainly haven’t visited since the recent Lottery Heritage funded re-development for the 100th Anniversary of the RAF this year. Ridiculous really, since I live in North London!...
The Canadian War Museum in Ottawa will conclude its commemoration of the First World War Centenary with a special exhibition opening today. Victory 1918 – The Last 100 Days, explores the critical role the Canadian Corps played in the series of battles that led to the Allied...
West of Pointe du Hoc on the Calvados coast, Maisy Battery is a WW2 German coastal defence gun battery which housed 350 men in the run up to D-Day and had howitzers trained on both Omaha Beach to the east and Utah to the west. Begun in...
Barbados is home to many obvious things; palm trees, beaches, rum and Bajan cuisine, but nobody expects a Cold War relic like the massive HARP space gun. Nor are they likely to stumble across it accidentally. You have to go and find it. The High Altitude Research...
The Blockhaus at Eperlecques is a huge concrete bunker built by the Germans in WW2 as part of its ‘Vengeance’ weapons programme (V1 flying bomb, V2 rocket, and V3 supergun). Now it is a privately owned museum, and a protected building of national historic significance. On 22nd...
La Coupole is one of the giant concrete constructions* built by the Germans in France during World War 2. It was designed to be a combined assembly and launch facility for Hitler’s V2 rockets. Its colossal, 72m diameter reinforced concrete domed roof was 5.5m thick and designed...
The home of the Netherlands Mariniers (‘Marines’) has always been Rotterdam, so no surprise that the corps’ museum should be in the historic heart of the city. It hasn’t there long. The first attempt to create a collection of historic Mariniers artifacts was at their barracks on...
It wasn’t just any civilian*, it was one of America’s most famous celebrities at the time, Charles A. Lindbergh. Lindbergh, famous for making the first solo non-stop transatlantic flight from New York to Paris in his single-engined Spirit of St Louis aircraft in 1927, wasn’t supposed to...
The Royal Electrical & Mechanical Engineers (REME) museum re-opened in June 2017 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. It...
This is an interesting standalone exhibit in one of the outbuildings on the Beaulieu estate (site of the National Motor Museum) in the New Forest. It’s a Welbike – a small, parachuteable, motorbike designed for the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in WW2. As the blurb in the...
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...
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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