What WW2-related museum or site has stayed with you?

Have you ever visited a WW2-related museum or site which has remained in your memory? For me, it was the Jewish Museum in Berlin, with an area dedicated to the Holocaust. There were many thought provoking aspects to it, for example, the floor was uneven in places, designed to represent the Jews' struggle, and there was a darkened.room with sounds to represent the gas chambers. I could not go in the darkened room, that was a step too far for me, but the memory of the place has stayed with me.

 

AWM...Australian War Memorial...

 

National Museum of Naval Aviation, Pensacola, Florida

 

I'm lucky that I don't live far from the National WWII Museum in New Orleans. I visit it at least once a year. Overall, though, the best war museum I've ever been to and has blown every other museum that I've been to out of the water is the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.

 

The Victory Memorial Museum near Arlon, Belgium.
Unfortunately it went bankrupt in 1998 and (most of) the collection was sold to Dean Kruse and relocated to Auburn, Indiana.

It was a great collection of many vehicles. The few visits I made as a teenager really got me interested in those beautiful machines.

 

Winter war monument

Winter War Monument | Raatteen Portti

The Winter War Monument is a field with thousands of natural stones erected in memory of Finnish and Red Army soldiers who fell in the Battle of Suomussalmi in 1939-40. The field is encircled by forest battered by artillery. The idea of the monument is to use visual means to make people think about the suffering and havoc wrought by war. The memorial is also a tribute to all veterans of the Winter War.

The “Open Embrace” memorial in the middle of the Winter War Monument has 105 brass bells, one for each day of the Winter War. The bells ring in the wind. The Winter War Monument covers 3 hectares and has around 17,000 large natural stones, which visualise the numbers and suffering of the victims of war.

 

I got to see the U505 at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago when I was 13. I used to have my photos I took framed on my wall for years. This was back when it was outside the museum in the elements. It looks like you can get a better look at it now that it’s inside.

When I went to Germany in high school, we went to Heidelberg and on a hike in the mountains near by got to see a big amphitheater in the mountains. One of Albert Speers projects I think.

 

Fort DeRussy on Oahu, it was cool to see the part of the fort that's preserved the tunnel system and the main guns on raisable platforms so the guns could be lowered to protect them then raised to engage enemy targets. I read a developeper was trying to buy the land for a hotel but I hope they don't do it or another where the developer has to incorporate the museum into the hotel I'm not sure if that's a good plan either. I'm sure the coved killed any development plans for the near future but when things are back to normal who knows.

 

Wow that's awesome looks great.

 

Imperial War Museum in London. Been there numerous times. The HMS Belfast belongs to their collectio as is the aeroplane museum in Duxford.

Thunderbirds (45th Infantry Museum) in Oklahoma City. They have the only Whitworth with Confederate provenance. Mosby's cannon as well as a swivel gun related to Farragut & Dewey (the curator didn't know that until I pointed it out - but then again, he specializes in Army history and not Navy). Nice tank collection outside as well as small arms inside. Bill Mauldin originals are part of the collection too.

USAF Museum in Dayton, Ohio. AAA book says plan for four hours. I was there for seven and never got to the fourth hanger.

If you guys are into museums, suggest you join the Company of Military Historians. Their conferences are always at interesting places and you get behind the scene museum tours. In the few I've attended, we've went to Watervliet Arsenal, NY State Military Museum in Albany, Tennsessee State Museum as well as battlefield tours led by experts.

 

That great they put her inside like that it will go well to preserving her. Maybe they should do that to a few of the US museum subs. I remember my skipper from my sea explorer days told us when he was in the navy his class was sent to terminal island when it was still active and they had to tear down an old gato class sub and rebuild the engines clean her up repainted said she looked as good as new and everything functioning they even got to take her out for some runs to see how she was running. He had some good stories like he was on a destroyer part of a squadron heading I think he said to the phillippines and they were running thru a typhoon they were bouncing up and down so hard said the number one gun broke thru the deck and water was pouring in, they had all alarms going and two destroyers positioned themselves on either side in case they had to abandon ship. He said no one was looking forward to go overboard in a typhoon fortunately they were able to seal the damaged section and the pumps were able to keep up they limped into port and had to go into dry dock for repairs. Said that was one of his hairiest sea duties. Said he was mostly a tin can man for most of his service. Lol, bet he'd have a blast on the latest destroyers. So much larger and seaworthy. It's amazing how devastating a typhoon can be so many ships sunk, when Hawaii got hit it was so bad they were calling for construction companies from the mainland USA to send crews I was hoping I'd get to go that the company I was with was working on a contract we did commercial electrical. But the contract fell thru too bad. Thought I'd visit relatives while there. Took like a year or two to get things back to normal but not sure if that was the damage or Hawaiian island time. A bridge collapsed and took the state like two years to rebuild it. It wasn't even that but of a bridge shout like been six months to a year tops.

 

It still kills me how they say depending on the class the subs had 50 to 80+ men in them I was like where did they cram them. Went on that sub at Pearl Harbor. Wow it was so tight the galley was so small I'm amazed the cook could work in there, the officers quarters the size of a walkin closet. Wonder if their much better on the newer larger subs. The movies always make them look roomy but that's the movies like the cockpits of planes look so roomy but then you read about pilots saying they could barely move and some guys saying their head would bump the closed canopy. My buddy said he went diving at truk and found a wrecked zero said he tried to det in the cockpit and could barely fit and said he was amazed as he is a short guy but said his head was about even with the top of the windscreen.

 

Lol, yeah they said that on a guided tour but still it's so tight I'm sure they had to extensively screen out guys who had any hint of cloister phobia at all. Now there was a lower deck where they said most if the equipment and freezer storage was I'm guess the battery room was down there as well. It's still crazy think so many guys could be squeezed into such a small craft. I wonder if they had that powdered milk or if they used evaporated milk. Can evaporated milk was great it lasted a long time and when water added back in it was just like regular milk still had all the same nutritional value but the process didn't quite preserve the flavor. The same with powdered milk had a different flavor than fresh but not bad. Not sure where my mom got the stuff was in a big plastic pail. I'd mix it with fresh milk to make it taste better was great for pancake making. The only powdered orange juice I've tried was tang but there's supposed to be new powders that are closer to real orange juice tang tasted more like an orange drink artificial than orange juice. The government paid lots for juice mixes for the troops packets added in ration packs. I know they did try outs with dehydrated food, the bacon and egg mix wasn't bad, and beans and Frank's, you had to make sure you put in just the right amount of water and let it cook slow enough for the water to reconstitute the dehydrated meat and beans or you ended up with some dry gummy parts. But I'm sure for the troops it was a treat better than the old ration packs. My dad brought some back from a training exercise and my mom and aunt tried it said most of it was terrible said the blue berry muffin was very dense and bland. Wonder if it really was a muffin, read the candy bar in the rations in wwii were actually a mix of potatoes and chocolate powder it looked like a chocolate bar but didn't taste like candy but had a lot of calories the army wanted to make sure the ration had 2500 calories and that mix gave them the calories and nutrition they wanted, although I always thought a chocolate bar had lots of calories but the carbs from potatoes is carbs that give you energy for heavy exercise. Sugar burns fast then too much sugar you get those downs or dips in energy. Funny they say fda almost considers sugar a drug because of how it affects the body and some get totally addicted to high amounts of sugar and go into withdrawals if they don't get enough sugar. During wwii they said candy kept a persons spirit up so they tried to keep candy supplied to the troops the Germans did the same they kept supplies of hard sugar candy at aid stations and passed it out to troops coming off the line or just back from battle. Cigarettes were found by both sides to have a calming effect on troops on the line so cigarettes were kept in supply where ever possible. Lol, my nephew told me how his grandfather in the army after he got out wouldn't touch spam, said they gave it to him so much he got sick of it while his grandfather in the navy was ok with it, he was on the vestal at Pearl Harbor. Another friend his gramps was on the Arizona found himself in a hospital after being fished out of the water, by the time he got out his shipmates had been assigned to other ships he ended up on at Liberty ammo ship. Said so many ammo ships got blown up by enemy fire or stray fire and accidents. They had that account of a ammo ship loading a bunch of small craft like lvcp and boom they said nothing more than a 12 by 12 or so piece was found and that was thrown and imbedded into another ship hundreds of feet away. A navy investigation ruled it was an accident caused by unsafe practices on the ship but such was throughout the navy why the accident near San Francisco happened I think they say the wrecks are still their the navy never cleared them a few of the destroyers are still supposed to be left near Channel Islands. There's all sorts of stuff off the coast some mix navigation and some were sunk to help make a break or artificial reef back in the 70 s they used hundreds of used tires wonder how that's working.

 

The Australian War Memorial has 500 million dollar upgrade and expansion plans on what is already there…here is a pretty good idea of what’s going on.

Our plans | Australian War Memorial