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...
Memorial 14-18 is not one, but three sites on, and next to, the dramatic Notre-Dame-de-Lorette hill just southwest of the town of Lens in the Pas-de-Calais region of northern France… The National Necropolis of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette is the largest French military cemetery with the remains of over 42,000...
My expectations of the Grand Bunker Musée (museum) were not all that high when I eventually got around to visiting, but it turned out to be really interesting. I originally thought the 16m tall concrete bunker, which has been restored to its 1944 condition, was a flak...
The Juno Beach Centre is different to many of the other museums & memorials on the Normandy coast in that its focus is not so much on ‘what happened here?’, as ‘how and why were the Canadians here?’. “The goal is not to be too technical,” says...
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...
A visit to the the historic Geevor Tin Mine in Cornwall includes a chance to walk down into part of the tin mine itself, if you can do it under your own steam, but not everybody can – until now. A new 360-degree virtual reality tour launched...
The Biber (“Beaver”) midget submarine was not Germany’s most successful weapon in WW2. Designed hastily in Feb 1944 in a bid to compensate for the horrendous losses in the U-boat fleet, and in anticipation of an imminent Allied invasion, the Biber was a cheap, one-man submarine, capable...
The Naval and Maritime Museum at Patriots Point is pretty spectacular and definitely worth a visit if you are in the neighbourhood. By ‘neighbourhood’ I mean pretty much anywhere on the central east coast of the continent! The largest exhibit by far is the aircraft carrier, USS...
I’ve saved the best for last, in the Portsmouth/Gosport museum reviews. The Explosion! Museum of Naval Firepower may be the least well-known of the National Museum of the Royal Navy sites, but I think it’s the most interesting. Or, put another way, it’s the one I would...
The Airborne Museum at Sainte-Mère-Eglise is a ‘must see’ for those touring Normandy, and it’s usually one of the first or last stops on a tour of the Normandy beaches because it’s out there on the western flank, which is exactly why the US airborne forces set...
The German battery at Azeville north west of Utah Beach was supposed to be taken on D-Day itself. It was still firing on Utah on the morning of D+3 (9th June). Azeville is a little different to other batteries in Normandy in that you spend the first...
Apollopalooza is a week-long celebration commemorating the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 and the future of human space exploration, held by the Wings Over the Rockies Air & Space Museum in Denver, Colorado between 17 – 20 July. Each day will feature a lineup of content punctuated...
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...
You can’t miss the Utah Beach Museum. It’s right there, woven into the sand dunes that, along with the Germans, defended the shore in 1944. In fact it’s partially built on the remains of German bunkers. The History Utah beach was one the ‘extra’ beaches, added to...
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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