On 28 March 1942, the Royal Navy and British Commandos attacked the docks at Saint-Nazaire in what became known as ‘The Greatest Raid of All’. The targets of the amphibious assault, Operation Chariot, and the key locations of the onshore skirmishes are still there, and Saint-Nazaire Tourisme...
The Freedom Museum in Groesbeek, the Netherlands, has been awarded the Architecture MasterPrize for 2022 in the ‘Cultural Architecture’ category. The museum covers a wide range of WW2 experiences and stories, such as the famine endured by Dutch civilians in 1944/5, but the focus is on the...
A visit to the 95th Bombardment Group museum and Red Feather Club is a rare treat, and when I say rare, I mean rare, so grab any opportunity to visit with both hands! The USAAF’s 95th Bombardment Group – the only Eighth Air Force Bomb Group to...
We Have Ways Fest is a three-day weekend festival in Buckinghamshire* of World War II history talks, demonstrations and presentations… with beer! The event is hosted by the We Have Ways podcast duo – Al Murray and James Holland. This year’s festival definitely built on the first...
The answer is NO, but what’s interesting is that if she had made her ill-fated breakout into the Atlantic a year later, she might have been. By then, if the same ships had intercepted her they would have been carrying red (HMS Rodney) and yellow (HMS King...
With the upcoming Masters of the Air mini-series due for release soon****, the Memorial Museum for the USAAF 100th Bomb Group at their former base at Thorpe Abbotts in Norfolk, is likely to become the focus for a lot of attention. Masters of the Air is the...
I-124 was a WWII Japanese submarine that was sunk with all hands (80 crew) by Allied forces on 20 Jan 1942 while on a mine-laying mission in the Beagle Gulf, Australia. She lies in 46 metres (150 ft) of water, 84 kilometres north-west of Darwin, NT. In...
Next time you go to Bletchley Park, you might want to take a look beforehand at this really clear and simple explanation of how the WW2 German Enigma machine worked. It’s the latest video in Jared Owen’s series of 3D animations explaining how things work, and it...
This is NOT a question grounded in any kind of reality, it’s a purely hypothetical question. What if there was a restorable airframe, and if a suitable power plant could be found, and if there was the funding, facilities, expertise and willingness to restore any WW2 era...
The ‘We Have Ways to Make You Talk’ podcast has become hugely popular with WW2 history fans, experts and historians alike since it began in March 2019. Last weekend many of them gathered in some fields near Silverstone, Buckinghamshire, for the first 2-day ‘We Have Ways Fest’...
This looks good! It’s a behind-the-scenes video about a new crowd-funded movie called ‘Litvyak’ about WW2 Soviet fighter pilot, Lidiya Litvyak, flight commander of the 3rd Aviation Squadron and a Hero of the Soviet Union. Before she was shot down and killed, aged just 22, on 1st...
The Tiger Tank parked by the side of the road down into Vimoutiers in the Orne dept of Normandy is a well known historic monument left over from WW2. “Wait! You dragged us 20 kilometres off our route to see THIS?” said my partner. “Yes, obvs!” She...
The Wildcat is an amazing aircraft that filled a much needed gap in the U.S. and Allied navies’ arsenal at the start of WWII. Descriptions of it, by pilots and historians often use words like “pugnacious”, “heroic” and “rugged”, which it certainly was, but they all recognise...
The twin-engine Bristol Blenheim was the RAF’s primary light bomber at the start of WW2. This one, a Blenheim IV, is on display at the RAF museum in Hendon. (When we can get to see it!) The Bristol Blenheim – or ‘Bolingbroke’ if you were flying the...
This is a niche blog about technically-minded travel. It reflects my own interests in the mechanical, technical, historical, engineering, transport and military world.
COPYRIGHT © MECHTRAVELLER 2016-2025, including all images unless indicated otherwise.
