Historical Duxford

Waaay back in 2014 I visited Duxford and took some pictures, I figured that those would make a nice quick article. 

Note: This was back before IWM Lambeth got trashed in its 'reimagining', and a lot of the cool exhibits got moved to Duxford. I mean what do I know about museums, silly me I'd have loads of exhibits that you can get up close too, but apparently I'm wrong and what the public want is for you to remove a floor, and replace it with five exhibits. A V-2, a press 4x4, the remains of an IED, the Nery Gun and tucked away at the back a T-34, hidden behind the stairs almost like its an embarrassment. Espcially when you compare the current IWM to what it used to be like.

Here's the old one:

To the right of the camera are loads of tanks and the guns etc. and here's the modern one:

The good news is that with all the exhibits being shuffled off to Duxford the modern Duxford is vastly more exciting and excellent. Anyway, enough of my ramblings...

One of the better parts was the land warfare hall. They've got a nice battle scene, with some good little twists.

The T-34 is depicted as part of a convoy driving along a road. The road heads between several ruined houses, and disappears down the street, depicted by a giant Street fighting picture on the far wall. The T-34 commander is pointing to a wrecked house off to the side, when you get round to the other side of the house you see that there's a German soldier pressed up against the wall getting ready to ambush the convoy. Another little one which very few people notice is the building behind the T-34 in that picture, if you look at the upstairs window there's a German with a Panzerfaust.

Elsewhere in the museum, and utterly unacknowledged by most is Coastal Motor Boat 4:

I try to point this out to everyone who visits simply because of this story. It's a VC winner like the Nery gun, but its hardly ever mentioned.

Elsewhere we also have this interesting vehicle:

Again, it's often overlooked. most people just assume it's some kind of command vehicle and ignore it, but it's much more interesting than that. It's a SPR-1, which is a GT-MU carrier adapted to carry jamming equipment. Once while watching it drive around the arena at Duxford the commentator suggested it could be used to trigger fuses in some artillery rounds as they were fired overhead.

Some of the other exhibits on display back then:

This Sherman is also something we've visited before.

Anyway, next week we have something a bit different.