Tank Times | May 2015

May 2015

Tank Times

Published by THE TANK MUSEUM, Bovington, Dorset, UK, BH20 6JG

Tel: +44 (0) 1929 405 096

Tank Factory launched

www.tankmuseum.org

FROM THE CURATOR DAVID WILLEY

HRH The Duke of Kent opens the new Exhibition The Tank Museum’s Patron, HRH The Duke of Kent, opened our newest exhibition, ‘Tank Factory’, on 26th March alongside Mavis Jones, 91, who during the Second World War worked on tank production lines and whose personal story features in the exhibition.

Mavis joined Sheffield’s Newton Chambers tank factory at the age of sixteen working as a tracer in the firm’s drawing office. She met her future husband, Lieutenant Eddie Jones, who was stationed locally while training for D-Day. They were engaged three weeks later.

David Willey

A part of the new exhibition

Mavis Jones, 91 throws the switch on the production line with HRH The Duke of Kent and Curator David Willey Supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, ‘Tank Factory’ tells the personal stories of the men and women who built these complex war machines and the effects factory life had on the workforce and wider society. In a progression of themed bays, the display covers a series of wide-ranging but relevant issues such as Materials, Armour, Weapons, and Testing, along with an impressive line-up of vehicles.

Inside… ● TANK 100 ● ANOTHER LITTLE MYSTERY ● EISENHOWER – THE ‘MK VIII’ PRESIDENT ● LOOKING FOR LAWRENCE ● WHAT’S ON

The new exhibition is housed in one of the Museum’s older buildings making it the perfect backdrop, it being a former industrial site. The exhibition’s centrepiece is the Centurion tank production line, replicating the design and build process of arguably the best tank Britain ever made.

‘Tank Factory’ is now open to visitors who, among other things, will have the unique opportunity to travel back in time 70 years to experience life and often hazardous working conditions. This discovery experience is brought about by a number of exciting and educational interactive displays suitable for all ages.

“We hope this exhibition brings a new story and perspective into the Museum’s displays, and how such amazing machines are designed and made,” says Curator David Willey, “And of course telling the story of the people who put them together – often with great pride and satisfaction in their work.”

THE TANK MUSEUM - THE WORLD’S BEST COLLECTION OF TANKS An Independent Museum and Registered Charity No 1102661

Well after fourteen years as The Tank Museum’s Curator – I am changing my job – to the jazzy but familiar title of…Curator!

As a positive sign of developments at The Tank Museum we are simply becoming overwhelmed by the scale of requests and demands on a number of our posts. To make the most of opportunities that are coming our way, including the First World War anniversaries; working closer with the Army, and media; World of Tanks, and so on, we have split the curator’s role in two. We now have a Head of Collections; having recently appointed Chris Van Schaardenburgh, formerly of the Coventry Transport Museum – who now oversees the day-to-day running of the Archive, Exhibitions, and Workshops, while my role is collecting; strategic planning; interfacing with the media and generating greater content – whether through book publishing or on line developments. Chris will in due course be introducing himself to you all.

We have just opened the new and impressive Tank Factory Exhibition which has a number of interesting vehicles – including TV15000 – the parent vehicle of the CVRT family.

We have three Ferrets, one new to us and a cutaway example on show of this classic British design. Added Continued on page 2...

THE TANK MUSEUM - MAY 2015

FROM THE CURATOR DAVID WILLEY Continued… to this we have some mesmerizingly good films about Tank Production, supplied from our Archives along with a number contemporary accounts from those people who designed and built the tanks.

We are already planning our Trench and First World War gallery revamp for 2016; the hundredth anniversary of the first Tank going into action. Our archive material on the men who used and served in the first tanks is quite outstanding.

Whilst carrying out research, the Museum’s staff rarely ceased to be amazed by the range and quality of items discovered and coming to light – and I say discovered, since with literally millions of items in our care – we are still cataloguing – so new things are appearing, or being re-interpreted. The Trench Experience that first opened in 1998 will be upgraded and despite being 17-years old –this display remains one of our most popular exhibits.

www.tankmuseum.org

Tank 100

by Sarah Lambert

Tank 100 is the working title of a project to encompass interpretive upgrades to The Tank Museum’s Trench Experience and to complete the redisplay of the First World War Hall. The new exhibitions in both areas will mark the most significant anniversary in the Museum’s history: 100 years since the invention and first use of the tank.

The Trench Experience along with the current arrangement of the First World War Hall are approximately 17-years old and in places looking tired. Whilst the exterior of the building has been re-clad, the interior displays do not do justice to the unique and outstanding collection of First World War tanks. The creation of a more engaging ambience, with dioramas such as the Chinese Labour Corps figure washing down a tank, will promote a greater understanding of the harsh realities of operating a new kind of weapon in the midst of war.

Around the set pieces (collection items, currently in store) will be displayed artefacts such as a large camouflage tank model, painted by artist Tudor-Hart in 1916, along with mascots, artwork, uniforms, footage and imagery. Binding the various interpretive media together will be the theme, ‘What was it like to be a tank crew man in the First World War?’ Personal stories too, really connect visitors to the subject matter deeper than chronological narratives, and technical data. It is likely 6 to 8 key individuals will be identified and their stories followed throughout the exhibition. However, this approach is still very much in its infancy.

Ultimately this project will convert the already popular - but dated -gallery into a visually impressive space increasing access to collections. It will also create a pertinent environment marking a nationally significant anniversary - the first use of tanks in warfare, during the Battle of the Somme.

Tel: +44 (0) 1929 405 096

IN BRIEF Tiger Day - 2nd May

Tiger Day, is your first chance to see Tiger 131 in action following its starring role in the Hollywood blockbuster FURY...

The Museum opens at 10.00am with a range of World War Two talks and tours taking place throughout the day, including the opportunity to get close to Tiger 131.

The Vehicle Conservation Centre is open between 10am – 5pm with access to the main floor allowing unprecedented access to the Museum’s extended collection of tanks and other military vehicles.

Tiger Day’s highpoint will be at 1.30pm, when Tiger 131 makes its return into the Kuwait arena*. The 30-minute display examines and compares this World War Two beast to its Axis and Allied contemporaries, including Matilda II, Panzer III, T-34, and Sherman. The display will also examine the impact Tiger had on future tank design, with Centurion, and Leopard and if you’ve got one of our new super-deal, all-singing, all-dancing, Tank Museum Season Tickets, you will be well ahead of the game with huge savings on normal admission prices and in the shop and restaurant too!

For full details of this fantastic ticket offer – see below.

Please note: Tiger Day is a Special Event Day, so pre-existing annual passes will NOT be valid.

Our Exciting New Ticket Deal!

Curator David Willey and HRH The Duke of Kent on a tour of ‘Tank Factory’ On other fronts we are arranging the collection of a number of vehicles we have lent away or have acquired and are of course, continuing to hunt out vehicles on our ‘wants’ list, or are looking to borrow interesting items to help compliment the our collection.

So remember, the key identification features of a Curator still holds true… odd facial hair and corduroy!

David Willey Curator

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Tankfest is one of the biggest dates of the year in The Tank Museums’ calendar and this year’s Tankfest, 27th – 28th June, is set to be our biggest yet.

An original 1944 Mk XI (PR) Supermarine Spitfire that flew forty reconnaissance sorties over Germany, France, and Holland, from 1944 to the end of the war, along with a WWII Douglas C-47 ‘Dakota’ from the RAF’s Battle of Britain Memorial Flight, will be flying over on both days of Tankfest.

This year we have some visiting VIP armour.

Already confirmed is a 38t, Sherman’s from the ‘Fury’ film-set and, for the first time ever, we are able to bring a 38t to Tankfest. This rare piece of historic Czechbuilt armour had considerable influence in

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the early campaigns of WWII in the service of the German Army.

We are also reuniting three of the four Sherman’s featured in our favourite film of last year, ‘Fury’. Tiger 131 will star alongside the Sherman’s and, together with a crack team of living history reenactors, our Finale Battle is sure to go off with a bang! There will be unique photoopportunities with the three Shermans, and Tiger 131, together again in the Tank Park - don’t miss it.

Standard admission tickets are still available online, annual passes are not accepted at Tankfest. We look forward to seeing you there!

THE TANK MUSEUM - THE WORLD’S BEST COLLECTION OF TANKS An Independent Museum and Registered Charity No 1102661

The Tank Museum Season Ticket allows full admission every day that we are open, including our Special Event Days such as Tiger Day, Tankfest, and Warfare Through The Ages. It’s fantastic value, saving up to 50% on normal admission prices and you’ll also save 10% in the shop and restaurant.

Tank Museum Season Tickets are available online (see our website, tankmuseum.org) or direct from Admissions. *As with all our historic machines, the appearance of the Tiger tank in the display is subject to its mechanical reliability on the day.

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THE TANK MUSEUM - MAY 2015

www.tankmuseum.org

Tel: +44 (0) 1929 405 096

ANOTHER LITTLE MYSTERY

by David Fletcher There are a number of unanswered questions concerning tanks, most of them very obscure and relatively unimportant but which we feel should be answered if possible to add to the fund of knowledge at The Tank Museum.

local engineering firms, had been created to manufacture Mark VIII Hulls that were to be assembled at the designated factory in France as part of the International Tank programme, all of which was cancelled at the time of the Armistice before any tanks were built there. However the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry has been unable to confirm this. We also tried the museum at Rock Island Arsenal, in the USA, but they did not know either. Rock Island Arsenal is where the 100 Mark VIII tanks were assembled. Rock Island itself is in Illinois, on the Mississippi River and its museum is well worth visiting, especially if you are interested in artillery.

The Pilot model Mark VIII at Rock Island Arsenal.

Identified by the layout of the exhaust pipes.

One that is exercising us as the moment, which somebody ought to know the answer to, concerns the Mark VIII, the International or Liberty tank, one of which is on display in the First World War Hall. As most people who are interested in First World War tanks will know, one hundred of these were assembled in the United States from the summer of 1919 until the summer of 1920. I say assembled advisedly, rather than built, because the tanks were assembled rather than actually constructed from components that came from elsewhere. The structural steel framework, the panels of armour plate, the tracks, and weapons all came from Britain. Most of the internal fittings, including the mechanical parts and of course the engine were made in the United States.

And what we want to know, but have had no luck so far trying to find out, is where in Britain they were built, who supplied them.

We think, at least it makes sense to us, that they came from Manchester, since a Manchester Tanks Association, composed of

The North British Locomotive Company in Glasgow was the only firm in Britain to make the Mark VIII tank. They built a mild steel prototype and around eleven production tanks, six of which were taken into Tank Corps service, the rest were scrapped, as were five of those taken into the Army. The only survivor is the tank we have at Bovington. There are two preserved in the USA, one at Fort Benning in Georgia, the other at Fort George Meade in Maryland.

So if you know the answer, or have any constructive information that would help us, please write in and tell us. It’s not vital, but it’s something we feel we ought to know.

Mark VIII tanks building in the North British Locomotive Works, Glasgow is this where the American tanks came from?

EISENHOWER THE ‘MK VIII’ PRESIDENT

Three examples of the Liberty tank exist. Of the surviving trio, one made in 1920 at the Rock Island Arsenal, Illinois, saw service with US Army’s 301st Tank Battalion (Heavy) later re-designated the 17th Tank Battalion (Heavy) - is displayed at Fort Meade, Maryland. A second, British-built version, arguably the trio’s best is here at The Tank Museum in the WWI Hall.

From 1921 to 1922, the US 301st Tank Battalion’s commanding officer was a certain Major Dwight D. Eisenhower, whose glittering military career earmarked him for high political office. In 1942, Eisenhower took charge of the European Theatre of Operations, directing the Allied forces in the Torch landings in North Africa in 1942, and the subsequent invasions of Sicily, and the Italian mainland leading to the eventual liberation of Rome in 1943.

In 1944, serving as Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Forces, Eisenhower led the D-Day landings in Normandy code-named ‘Overlord,’ in the liberation of Europe and the thrust eastwards into Nazi Germany. Later that year he received the acting rank of ‘Five Star’ general, becoming substantive in 1946. Postwar, he commanded the U.S. Zone of Occupation in Germany.

In 1952, leading Republicans persuaded Eisenhower, then commanding NATO forces in Europe, to run for President; he won convincingly, defeating Democrat, Adlai Stevenson. He served two terms in the White House (19531961). A skilful politician, tough Cold War warrior, he brought the Korean War to a close in 1953.

In January 1961, he retired to his farm in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. He died on March 28, 1969, following a long illness.

JH

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THE TANK MUSEUM - MAY 2015

www.tankmuseum.org

by The Editor

FROM THE

EDITOR

Tel: +44 (0) 1929 405 096

Looking For Lawrence

Lawrence on his motorcycle. Photograph taken a few weeks before his death.

John Howland Our new visitor-interactive exhibition, Tank Factory, opened by HRH The Duke of Kent, on the 26 Match, is already proving a popular feature by replicating a factory production line environment, based around the Centurion tank. While Tank Factory also re-counts the human story of the men and women employed on the work, the exhibition includes other armoured vehicles with certain design specifics that have a particular production story to tell, such as our Sherman M4A1 ‘Michael’, the oldest surviving Sherman in the world.

The Tank Museum is bracing itself for what will be two of its busiest events in 2015, both of which are expected to be bigger, better, and noisier, than previously. Diary dates; Tiger Day on 2nd May, and Tankfest on 27th & 28th June, when our Tiger 131, the world’s only running Tiger 1 tank will make an appearance on each of the days in the arena. These are the only days in 2015 when you’ll be able to see, and hear, this legendary vehicle fired-up and powering round the arena.

For the first time ever at Tankfest we have another rare piece of historic armour, the Czech 38t tank, built pre-WWII war by Skoda, and later adopted by the German army after Czechoslovakia’s annexation. The tank you will see was recovered from Hungary in the 1970’s, ‘badged’ with the markings of the 5th Company, 7th Panzer Division – and may have been one of those to have reached the gates of Moscow.

Other Tankfest show-stoppers will be flypasts by a 1944 Mk XI Supermarine Spitfire from the Hangar 11 Collection, and a Douglas C-47 ‘Dakota’ in D-Day markings from the RAF’s Battle of Britain Memorial Flight. These two outstanding examples of arguably aviation’s most iconic aircraft, will be in the skies over the Museum on both days of the show.

John Howland Editor

At 8.00am on Sunday 19 May 1935, Thomas Edward Shaw, a little known local resident in the heathland parish of nearby Turners Puddle, died of head injuries received six days earlier on Monday 13 May, in a traffic accident three-quarters of a mile north of Bovington Camp. His death guaranteed his eternal place in myth and legend, becoming the subject of countless books, speculation, conspiracy theories, and the focus of David Lean’s 1962, Oscar-winning blockbuster movie starring Peter O’Toole.

Shaw who had changed his name by deed poll in 1923 from ‘John Hume Ross’– to thwart unwelcome publicity was in fact Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence, known world-wide as the legendary, ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ - the enigmatic WWI hero who rallied the Arab tribes during the Sinai and Palestine Campaign, and the Arab Revolt against Ottoman Turkish rule between 1916–18.

His first ill-fated attempt at self-imposed obscurity was in 1922 when he enlisted in the Royal Air Force under the alias, ‘John Hume Ross,’ but unfortunately the media soon discovered his true identity, forcing his resignation. Undaunted, in March 1923, using the assumed name, ‘Thomas Edward Shaw’ he joined the Royal Tank Corps, as a Private, and found himself posted to Bovington Camp. He loathed army life, petitioning powerful friends for a transfer back to the RAF.

In August 1925, he was re-admitted and served until retirement in 1935.

After leaving the RAF, he lived frugally in a tiny, former gamekeeper’s cottage at Clouds Hill. It was while returning to his beloved cottage from Bovington Camp’s Post Office aboard his 1,000cc SS100 Brough ‘Superior’ motorcycle (Reg.GW 2275), when he collided with two bicycling delivery boys. Thrown from his machine and sustaining severe head wounds he was subsequently taken to Bovington Camp’s military hospital, where, six days later he died without regaining consciousness. He was 46yrs old.

He lies buried in Moreton Churchyard just north of Bovington Camp. Ironically, his grave bears the name T E Lawrence, the name he tried so desperately to conceal, and not T E Shaw, his legal name when he died.

The precise crash site is the tankcrossing, three-quarters of a mile north of Bovington Camp (OS map reference SY 826 905). There is a plaque commemorating the fatal collision in the car-park on the eastern side of the road close to the crash site.

The Tank Museum has on display a similar Brough ‘Superior’ to the one owned by Lawrence, alongside an exhibition of Lawrence memorabilia.

The Editor pointing at the spot where TE Lawrence crashed.

Also shown, the commemorative plaque at the Clouds Hill viewing area car park.

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THE TANK MUSEUM - THE WORLD’S BEST COLLECTION OF TANKS An Independent Museum and Registered Charity No 1102661

WHAT’S ON

27.6.2015 – 28.6.2015

Tankfest 2015* The World’s best display of moving armour returns for 2015. With historic vehicles and even a WW2 Spitfire!

4.7.2015 – 5.7.2015

Wargamers Weekend See Britain’s wargaming enthusiasts exhibiting different strategy games for visitors to view and join in!

25.7.2015 – 26.7.2015

Attack of the Daleks Dr Who’s arch-enemies invade the Museum... a brilliant weekend for children of all ages!

19.9.2015 - 20.9.2015

Warfare Through the Ages* A living history of period battles by Medieval, Napoleonic, WWI, English, and American Civil Wars, re-enactors. * You may not use your Annual Pass for re-admission on these dates.