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American Smithsonian Museum of American History 75mm embarassment

J

jeff w

Well-Known Member
Just returned from the Smithsonian Museum of American History in Washington DC. They have nice exhibits of American military ordnance (especially a very early bazooka and a flamethrower) but they also have this gaffe labeled as American 75mm in their World War ONE section. :tinysmile_cry_t3: Feel free to complain to them (I did), maybe they will correct it. Or maybe someone cares to donate a correct projectile and fuze? :tinysmile_fatgrin_t

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Good luck trying to get an answer from them. I told them about this a few months ago and they didn't even acknowledge my email.
 
I've contacted them myself. On another issue. To no avail. Then I got to thinkin'- how many folks visit that place and find assorted errors and think their input should be attended to? It would require a staff of hundreds, probably, just to sort thru all the correspondence.

Found these stats: http://newsdesk.si.edu/about/stats

Note that this particular museum, of the many, has had 2.3 million visits for 2015, through June. If just 1% of the visits generated an "error report", that's 23k letters. To verify, and effect some sort of action. As well, they are free institutions, so the money's not just pilin' up there. Gov't funding actually does have a few limitations. So after figuring all that in, I understood being ignored. Besides, their ain't 100 people in the world that knows that 75MM is inaccurate. Bullets is bullets to the vast majority of visitors.
 
This is a museum problem in general. They pay very little, so getting an actual EOD person, or anyone that knows ordnance is next to impossible. Maybe one day they will fix that. But I don't hold out any hope.


JOE
 
This kind of carelessness is how it starts, next thing you know they've lost the Ark of the Covenant in some enormous warehouse...
 
All that said...a museum of the supposed quality of this one MUST get it right. It's just not acceptable. OK, no response, fair enough, but follow up on it and get it right, otherwise the mistake perpetuates and future generations will never know the truth. Granted, it is not essential that future generations know about this round, but where will it end ??
 
Well, at least it is more subtle than this one :tinysmile_twink_t:
 

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I hate to be too off topic but would you post some pics of the flamethrower and bazooka?
 
I'd like to see the flame thrower too. I'll bet that display is somehow wrong as well.

The M1 bazooka is a nice example but neither of the rockets displayed with it are correct for this version of the launcher, especially the round-nose type on the right. Even the M6/M6A1 rocket on the left is wrong as it should have an external electrical wire from the tail fins to an insulated contact band around the nose. They're batting 100 so far.
 
Probably just nitpicking here but, as mentioned in the previous post, this is the proper style rocket for the M1 rocket
launcher.

The box on top of the bazooka housed an electrical contact that pivoted down through a hole in the tube and connected with the brass band around the rocket's nose to complete the firing circuit. Unfortunately, if the mechanism was damaged, the contact button sometimes acted as a blockage in the bore and the whole bazooka would launch off the shoulder when fired. The solution was to redesign both the launcher and rocket and modify all the existing ones in storage and in the field.


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I doubt if the Smithsonian has one in that condition if they even have one. Thanks for posting it.
 
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