RAF Cosford is still an operational airbase and most importantly, it’s the home of the Defence College of Aeronautical Engineering (DCAE), which sets the tone & style for the museum and gives it a unique atmosphere. It’s not that in Hangar 1, for example, you’ll find loads...
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...
A brand new museum focused on D-Day and its connections to the American servicemen that left Britain in 1944 for the Normandy beaches, has just opened in Portland, Dorset. The Castletown D-Day Centre has been in the planning for several years and it is perfectly placed within...
This audio detection set, now in the Swedish Army Museum in Stockholm, is billed as a Listening Device M/1928 manufactured by a British company, Barr & Stroud Ltd. Sweden bought a number of these ‘ear trumpet’ devices in the 1920s to detect and pinpoint aircraft. Barr &...
It’s not a spectacular building. In fact it’s what it always used to be – a college. But this nondescript building next to the station in Reims is historic. This is where World War II ended in Europe. This is where the Germans signed their (first) unconditional...
The build-up to the 100th anniversary of the end of The Great War continues to grow and so do the associated memorials, museums and interpretation centres in Belgium & France. In the French Ardennes, the War & Peace Museum is due to re-open on 11th November 2017...
The National Railway Museum in York is just one of those key landmark museums in the UK, like the Science Museum in London, or IWM Duxford, that you have to see… and you don’t have to sacrifice any ‘me time’ away from your family or partner to...
I’ve got a special place in my heart for the Yorkshire Air Museum. I visited a lot of aircraft museums this summer (well… four!) and they’ve all got amazing exhibits and displays to talk about, but the Yorkshire Air Museum made me the happiest. There’s something special...
Nobody visits Stockholm, for business or pleasure, without visiting the Vasa Museum, and that’s as it should be – the Vasa is, without doubt, one of the great treasures of the world. The story The Vasa was King Gustavos Adolphus’ brand new flagship for the Swedish Navy...
The National Army Museum has saved T E Lawrence’s dagger, robes and kaffiyah for the nation thanks to two grants from the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) totalling £113,400. Lawrence was given the dagger, known as a jambiya, by Sherif Nasir in 1917 after the victory of...
The Museum of Flight in Seattle, Washington, has been working with Microsoft to digitise the interiors of some of its aircraft. It means that visitors to the museum, and to the museum’s website, can wander through the cockpit and interiors on the Surface Pro tablets carried by...
The Air Museum at Duxford, one of the Imperial War Museum (IWM) sites, is probably the most important, ‘must-see’ aircraft museum in the UK. If you haven’t been, you really should, it is excellent. There are a number of things that set it apart. Firstly, its history....
For some nationalities, like us Brits, it’s a little hard to understand the role of France’s customs force, les Douanes. We have customs officers standing around at airports & ports, checking bags, opening shipping containers, and so on, but they are viewed as bureaucrats or government officials....
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...
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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