Title: Military Museums of London (1993 Aug) Author: Alan L. Bailey (abailey@lonestar.utsa.edu) Filename: europe/uk/london-military-museums This document, and other travel information, is available by anonymous ftp from ftp.cc.umanitoba.ca in the directory rec-travel. For general info about the rec.travel archive, contact Brian Lucas (lucas@cc.umanitoba.ca). For comments, questions, or additions to this document, please contact the author/editor, whose address is given above.
The exploding bombs sounded distant as George, an air raid warden by night and grocer by day, warned us the attack was one he never forgot. When the anti-aircraft guns fired the flak, someone said it was good to be giving them something back. As the blasts drew nearer, the crowd in the underground shelter began singing, "Roll out the barrel." The bombs' piercing whistles became louder.
Suddenly, a woman screamed, "Stop it," and an explosion rocked the shelter, shaking our bench, almost a direct hit. After the sirens, our warden opened the entrance as smoke drifted in, and with his flashlight, he motioned us out. We saw the flickering lights from the fires throughout London. In the distance stood the untouched dome of St. Paul's Cathedral. Through the rubble, the guide returned us to the basement of the Imperial War Museum.
My group of 20 visitors had just experienced the Blitz in a re-creation of the sights, sounds and smells of a packed underground shelter in London during the fierce German bombings of 1940-41. It's part of the theatrics that has made the Imperial War Museum and London's other national military museums a favorite stop during the 50-year anniversary celebrations of World War II that continue through 1995. In November of 1992, I was in London for eight days and visited several government museums.
After a security search for real bombs, I entered the large exhibits gallery on the ground floor, a three-story central atrium. Vintage warplanes such as the P-51 Mustang, a Sopwith Camel and a Focke Wulf 190 are suspended from the white metal lattice and glass ceiling. The air power includes the infamous V-2 rocket and a Royal Navy Polaris missile, both resting in vertical firing position. The gallery is dominated by heavy artillery and tanks, the most famous being the M3 Grant command tank used by then Lt. Gen. B.L. Montgomery during the decisive 1942 battle of El Alamein.
The first and second floors are viewing balconies and art galleries, displaying some of the museum's 12,000 paintings, drawings and sculptures. On the balconies are peculiar relics, such as a charred rear fuselage and Daimler-Benz engine from the crashed Messerschmitt that had been flown by Rudolph Hess on his abortive peace mission in May 1941. Near by on a pedestal sat the bronze German eagle, complete with a bullet hole in its left wing, which was removed from Berlin's Reich Chancellery in 1945.
The lower ground floor contains displays of the world wars, including the London Blitz and front-line trench warfare experiences. The liberation of the Belsen concentration camp by British troops is depicted with a warning of the graphic nature of the photographs and films. Another gallery honors those awarded the Victoria Cross and the George Cross. Also for $2 (1.25 pounds) visitors can take a five-minute ride in a flight simulator with the original footage of a Royal Air Force Mosquito fighter warplane in Operation Jericho, a 1944 air raid over France to free captive Resistance prisoners.
A repository of British papers and captured German material, the museum maintains more than 100,000 books, 25,000 pamphlets, 15,000 volumes of periodicals and 15,000 maps as well as 50,000 posters, 12,000 hours of sound recordings, 5 million prints and negatives, and British films plus American, Soviet and Nazi newsreels. All available to the public. An appointment is necessary, either by telephone or writing.
Imperial War Museum, Lambeth Road, London SE1 6HZ. Telephone:
071-416 5000. Open daily 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Admission is $5.60
(3.50 pounds with 1 pound=$1.60). Admission is free after 4:30 p.m.
Blitz Experience is free. Underground: Lambeth North or Elephant and
Castle.
National Maritime Museum and Royal Naval College
Downstream from London on the River Thames in Greenwich, a
complex of 18th-century Baroque buildings that were once royal
palaces and hospitals now comprise the National Maritime Museum
and Royal Naval College. Two of the museum's largest galleries
are devoted to Britain's naval tradition in the 20th century and
to Admiral Horatio Nelson, the country's most illustrious hero.
The 20th-century sea power exhibit chronicles the progression of sea strength to protect merchant sea lanes. "Sea power goes through a sequence from battleship to aircraft carrier to submarine, in a chronological sequence they replace one another in the Twentieth Century in importance," research curator Dr. Roger Morriss (Editors: Correct spelling) said as we walked by a wall with 27 video screens blasting clips of sea footage for an impressive visual impact.
The gallery is constructed around the gray metallic replica of the bow of a Tribal class destroyer that soars to the height of the cavernous hall and stretches for almost the room's length of 162 feet. Next to the audio-visual area is a modern "Ops Room" from a Type 22 frigate, allowing visitors to become the captain and defend the ship against an underwater threat or an air attack using sonar, radar and gunnery on computer terminals.
The gallery displays more than 100 oil and watercolor paintings, including the end of the Bismarck on May 27, 1941, and the tanker Ohio in the Malta convoy August 10-15, 1942 as part of Operation Pedestal.
The exhibit shows more than 40 models, including the H.M.S. Hermes, the last of the Royal Navy's traditional aircraft carriers and flagship of the battle group in the 1982 Falklands conflict, and the H.M.S. Vanguard, first of the Royal Navy's Trident II submarines launched March 6, 1992, on which Britain is making the centerpiece of its navy as it enters the 21st century.
The Nelson Gallery hails from the time Britain ruled the seas and has the world's largest collection of Nelson memorabilia and papers, including the cabin furniture from the H.M.S. Victory, his command ship, and the maiden figurehead from his funeral carriage.
As he was explaining Nelson's honored role in British history, Morriss paused at the display of uniforms. "And this," he said pointing to a dark navy blue coat, "was the uniform he was wearing when he died."
The uniform has a hole in the back left shoulder where a French sharpshooter's bullet entered. The breeches still show the brownish blood stains of blood from the October 21, 1805 Battle of Trafalgar where Nelson died while commanding the outnumbered English warships to victory against the French and Spanish naval forces off Spain's Trafalgar Cape in the Atlantic Ocean.
Personal mementos of Nelson and his lover, Lady Emma Hamilton, wife of a British diplomat, are exhibited, including Nelson's pigtail, snipped from his hair at death and later presented to Lady Hamilton.
Across Romney Road with its public entrance on King William Walk, the Royal Naval College permits the public access to only two areas, both of limited military interest, yet definitely worth visiting: the Painted Hall, the 400-seat dining room and site of Britain's formal state dinners, and the Chapel, considered one of England's best acoustic halls where many chamber music works are recorded.
The Baroque-styled Painted Hall was designed by Christopher Wren, the architect of St. Paul's Cathedral, and painted by James Thornhill, who completed his masterpiece in 1726 after 19 years of work. Wren's Chapel was destroyed by fire in 1776 and rebuilt in a Rococo style with a Benjamin West painting of a shipwrecked St. Paul on Malta dominating behind the altar.
The college's buildings can been viewed in the movie "Patriot Games." The attempted assassination scene in London was filmed on campus. While all museums require bag searches, expect increased security checks with requests for photo identification here because the college trains mid-career naval officers in the country's nuclear power program and because prominent guests appear at state dinners.
National Maritime Museum, Romney Road, Greenwich, London SE10 9NF. Telephone: 081-858 4422. Open 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday-Saturday; noon-6 p.m. Sunday. Admission is $6.12 (3.95 pounds).
Royal Naval College, King William Walk, Greenwich, London SE10 9NN. Telephone: 081-858 2154. Open 2:30-5 p.m. daily, except Thursday when it is closed for state dinners. Admission is free.
Getting to Greenwich: British Rail from Charing Cross to Maze Hill station; Docklands Light Railway to Island Gardens, then foot-tunnel under River Thames, or by river service from Westminster.
All visitors are given a portable tape-cassette player with room-by-room sound guide that lasts about 45 minutes. The tape contains dramatic, symphonic music and pounding timpani as the commentator talks about the London of 1940, "a capital of a country under siege. Britain standing alone for freedom. . . . bombed, blacked-out, blitzed. The great city lived on."
The rooms appear more as if the chaps just step out for their afternoon tea. Everything displayed in the rooms, shielded from the public by glass to control temperature and humidity, is certified as authentic, from scraps of note papers to Churchill's helmet to the BBC equipment that can still operate for radio broadcasting to the trans-Atlantic telephone, the world's first "hot line" linking Churchill and President Franklin Roosevelt.
The tour starts at the cramped Cabinet Room, where the eight-member War Cabinet met with the service chiefs on 110 formal occasions during the war, mostly during the Blitz and the attacks by the V-1 flying bombs and V-2 rockets. The room is laid out as it was at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, October 15, 1940. The evening before bombs damaged Number 10 Downing Street, home of the prime minister.
The walls have not been redecorated. They are just as they were left in 1945. On down the hall, there is a relief map of the Malaya Peninsula that had been used to illustrate the campaign that ended in Britain's greatest defeat of the war, the surrender of Singapore in February of 1942.
Catty-corner from the "hot line" room and next to the Map Room is Churchill's emergency bedroom and office, from where he made many famous radio speeches, including his announcement to the British people of war on Japan. The room is the only one with wall-to-wall carpet. A white nightgown rests on the pillow of the twin-sized bed. There is another large metal tin can, painted light blue to serve as an ashtray.
Churchill stayed in the thick of the day-to-day, hour-to-hour operations. In the literature, I noticed he only slept in his emergency bedroom for two nights after the beginning of the Blitz and one night after Number 10 Downing was bombed. A new apartment was built directly above the war rooms in the office building so Churchill could be closer to the war rooms.
During the apartment's construction, he usually slept at another shelter near Piccadilly. I thought this somewhat strange since he already had the bedroom bunker at the war rooms. I asked curator Jon Wenzel why Churchill wanted the new apartment and spent so little time sleeping at the command center. I discovered something that had been discreetly glossed over about Churchill's preferences.
In the rush to bomb-proof the war rooms by surrounding them with steel-reinforced concrete, engineers did not allow for toilet facilities. During his nocturnal urges, Churchill had to use a chamber pot. He preferred risking German bombs in the unprotected, above ground flat with a watercloset than in the safe, underground shelter with chamber pot.
Cabinet War Rooms, Clive Steps, King Charles Street, London SW1A 2AQ. Telephone: 071-930 6961. Open daily 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Admission is $5.76 (3.60 pounds). Underground: Westminster or St. James Park.
On entering the Main Aircraft Hall, there's a production model of the flimsy Blriot XI, the type flown by Louis Blriot on July 25, 1909, in the first cross-channel flight. The main hall houses mostly fighters and experimental prototypes, such as the Supermarine Spitfire I and the Avro Rota, an autogyro design of the 1930s. In the adjacent Bomber Command Hall, there's a Boeing B-17G, the famous Flying Fortress, and Britain's version of the Enola Gay, a white Vickers Valiant that dropped the country's first atomic bomb in 1956 tests at Maralinga, Australia.
Across a parking lot, the Battle of Britain Hall contains the aircraft flown in that struggle by both the Brits and Germans. The Luftwaffe is represented with bombers Heinkel HE 111H and Junkers JU88, dive bomber Junkers JU87, long-range fighter Messerschmitt BF110, the V-1 flying bomb and the V-2 rocket.
Two British aircraft not seen in most aircraft collections are on exhibit: the mammoth Sunderland V, a flying boat flown by the Coastal Command that the Germans nicknamed the "Flying Porcupine," and a single-engine Westland Lysander, principally used to ferry spies to France.
Royal Air Force Museum, Grahame Park Way, Hendon, London NW9
5LL. Telephone: 081-205 2266. Open daily 10 a.m.-6 p.m.
Admission is $7.20 ( 4.50). Underground: Colindale.
National Army Museum
Tucked away in Chelsea next to the Royal Hospital, the museum
has galleries ranging from the Napoleonic wars to the First and
Second World Wars.
Weapons such as swords and machine guns plus uniforms from the 17th-century Civil War to Operation Desert Storm are shown. There's an art center with military portrait paintings by Thomas Gainsborough and Joshua Reynolds, among others.
The most interesting display is a model of the Battle of Waterloo by William Siborne, a captain in the Duke of Wellington's army. The model was a passion of Siborne's that caused him to go bankrupt and die in poverty in 1849.
Siborne's work of Wellington's epic defeat of Napoleon began with a survey to surviving officers of the duke's army, asking them where they were and what they remembered at 7 p.m. on the night of June 18, 1815.
He built a 420-sq. ft. model with 70,000 miniature soldiers, individual figures of cast iron with joints that move their arms and legs. Villages with complete landscape were reconstructed on top the wooden platform, now located in the Road to Waterloo gallery.
National Army Museum, Royal Hospital Road, Chelsea, London SW3 4HT. Telephone: 071-730 0717. Open daily 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Admission is free. Underground: Sloane Square.
HMS Belfast, Morgan's Lane, Tooley Street, London SE1 2JH. Telephone: 071-407 6434. Open daily 10 a.m.-6 p.m. in summer, till 4:30 p.m. in winter. Admission is $6.08 ( 3.80). Underground: London Bridge.
Royal Armouries, Tower of London, London EC3N 4AB. Telephone: 071-480 6358. Open March-October, Monday-Saturday 9:30 a.m.-5:45 p.m., Sunday 2-5:30 p.m. November-February closes at 4:30 p.m. daily. Admission to Tower of London is $9.60 ( 6). Underground: Tower Hill. Along with the personal weapons and armor of British rulers and notable figures, the collection contains the best Civil War period 1642-1651 material extant.
Guards Museum, Wellington Barracks, Birdcage Walk, London SW1E 6HQ. Telephone: 071-414 3271. Open daily 10 a.m.-4 p.m., except Friday and some ceremonial days. Admission is $3.20 ( 2). Underground: St. James Park. History of the Foot Guards, the museum is located so you can combine it with watching the Horse Guards at Buckingham Palace.
Royal Fusiliers Museum, Tower of London, London EC3N 4AB. Telephone: 071-488 5610. Open March to October, Monday-Saturday 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Sunday 2-5 p.m. November-February, closed Sunday and at 4:15 p.m. daily. Admission to the Tower is $9.60 ( 6). Underground: Tower Hill. Museum covers the history of the Royal Fusiliers from 1685 to 1968, including weapons, uniforms and equipment.
W & G Foyle Ltd., 113-119 Charing Cross Road, London WC2H 0EB. No public telephones. Monday-Saturday, 9:30 a.m.-7 p.m. Closed Sunday. Underground: Leicester Square. Massive book store with its current military titles sharing the southern wing of the second floor with books on sports.
Francis Edwards of London, 13 Great Newport Street, London WC2H 4JA. Telephone: 071-379 7669; fax 071-836 5977. Open Monday-Saturday 9:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Closed Sunday. Underground: Leicester Square. At Charing Cross, secondhand and antiquarian store has naval and military books with a good selection of out-of-print titles.
Blunderbuss Antiques, 29 Thayer Street, London W1. Telephone: 071-486 2444. Open Monday-Saturday 9:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m.. Closed Sunday. Underground: Bond Street. For the serious collector, 19th-century gilded Dragoon Guards officer's helmet, about $7,500, or a Hussars' saber tache, about $1,600.
Alan L. Bailey
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