Tony Williams
Well-Known Member
I was visiting the north east over the weekend and on the way back dropped into a couple of museums.
The NE Aircraft Museum is situated just outside Sunderland, next to the massive Nissan car plant. They have a Vulcan, a Canberra and some odds and ends outside and about 30 planes in hangars, mostly in various stages of restoration. Some unusual ones I spotted are a Super Mystere and a Pucara. They also have a lot of engines of all types on display, including some early turbines (featuring a Double Mamba). Hardly anything on the gun and ammo front, though. Their website is here: http://www.neam.org.uk/
Much more to my taste is the Heugh Battery on The Headland, north Hartlepool. This was a coastal gun battery and is famous for engaging the German battlecruisers which bombarded the port in WW1. Lots of guns and barrels of up to 5.25 inch on display, plus a few vehicles.
My favourite is the 37mm MacLean automatic cannon because it's a rare beast from before WW1 which I was able to identify for them when they contacted me last year: it fired the USN's "Heavy One Pounder" 37x136R Hotchkiss round. The only significant customer was Russia which called it the "Maklen" and used it in harbour defence, but they distributed them all over the place (including to Spain during their civil war) and there are examples in museums in various places. Their website is http://www.heughbattery.com/
I took lots of photos but they're not yet up on the web.
The NE Aircraft Museum is situated just outside Sunderland, next to the massive Nissan car plant. They have a Vulcan, a Canberra and some odds and ends outside and about 30 planes in hangars, mostly in various stages of restoration. Some unusual ones I spotted are a Super Mystere and a Pucara. They also have a lot of engines of all types on display, including some early turbines (featuring a Double Mamba). Hardly anything on the gun and ammo front, though. Their website is here: http://www.neam.org.uk/
Much more to my taste is the Heugh Battery on The Headland, north Hartlepool. This was a coastal gun battery and is famous for engaging the German battlecruisers which bombarded the port in WW1. Lots of guns and barrels of up to 5.25 inch on display, plus a few vehicles.
My favourite is the 37mm MacLean automatic cannon because it's a rare beast from before WW1 which I was able to identify for them when they contacted me last year: it fired the USN's "Heavy One Pounder" 37x136R Hotchkiss round. The only significant customer was Russia which called it the "Maklen" and used it in harbour defence, but they distributed them all over the place (including to Spain during their civil war) and there are examples in museums in various places. Their website is http://www.heughbattery.com/
I took lots of photos but they're not yet up on the web.
