Boys and their guns...Wednesday's trip
was designed to appeal to younger son with a visit to Muckleburgh Military
Collection, ‘the UK’s largest privately owned military museum’ as the brochure
proudly boasts. On the coast of Norfolk, within spitting distance of the sea,
and based in a former NAAFI building, is a large collection of tanks and other
tracked vehicles, field guns, missiles, support vehicles, small arms and
ordinance, uniforms, models – and the occasional plane, including a rusting
Harrier Jump Jet, stripped of its engine.
Driving there, we threaded
our way along narrow leafy lanes, no other car in sight for several miles, past
bright coloured speckles of flowers in the hedgerows. Navigating the small
quiet villages, it struck me how the focal point in many cases was the village
war memorial.
When our boys were younger,
their favourite museum was the Imperial War Museum in London – an excellent museum with extensive displays on the history of warfare, including its technology, the personalities and politics, the heroism and the horror of it all. Especially memorable and moving are the exhibitions on the two world wars and on the Holocaust. The museum is housed in the former ‘Bedlam’ hospital, the world’s
oldest institution for people with mental disorders. It can't be a coincidence!
While Muckleburgh is
much smaller, it has some spectacular displays of weapons and ammunition, as well as
personal items from the Suffolk and Norfolk Yeomanry collection (plus a model
of the Duke of Wellington’s horse – so huge I suspect he used a stepladder to
mount it.) As fascinating and appalling as the variety of killing tools are, it
is the personal belongings of the soldiers that resonate with me, little things
that speak of personality or conditions of the time.
On Thursday, we went to Sandringham, the Queen’s country house and estate. The House is set
in 60 acres of spectacular gardens, with lofty pine and oak trees, clouds of
rhodendron, azalias, magnolia and forsythia, lawns and glades, lakes and
streams. It seemed that there were many more hikers and dog-walkers in the car
park than stately home visitors.
The House did not
disappoint. Crammed with objects d’art and curios, priceless jade, porcelain,
silverware, china, paintings and tapestries, gilt everywhere, each spectacular
room leading to the next, and then on to the Lobby which is filled with display
cabinets of...guns! I didn’t count them but there could easily have been one
hundred or more, mostly shotguns and rifles, many by famous makers like Purdey
and Holland & Holland. In the stables museum there were even a couple of
carriages used to transport the corpses of hundreds of freshly-shot grouse. Clearly
guns and horses are the main hobbies of our royals.
On Friday there was only
one gun in sight, a SA80, the current British military’s assault rifle. It was
in a display of equipment at the Cambridge University Air Squadron’s Family
Day, held at RAF Wyton Air Base.
Student Officer Robertson took
us for a tour of the area. In one hanger we saw ten Grob Tutor aircraft used
for elementary flying training by the University Air Squadrons. After
inspecting various items of sport and safety equipment, we visited the crew
room, the briefing room, the ‘departures’ room - (ok, I forget what it was
called!) - and learned that each pilot’s flying helmet is bespoke, personally
fitted, and it and the parachute are rigorously checked after each flight.
Chatting with the training
officer, I was surprised to learn that his biggest concern was with the
students’ fitness. We live in an age where PC, video and internet games have
taken over from physical sports. For what it’s worth, the students all looked
incredibly slim and fit to me (despite wolfing down endless burgers and hot
dogs during the lunchtime barbeque).
The control tower was
staffed by non-military personnel, one of a number of functions outsourced to
independent contractors. As expected, it had a great view of the two runways
and we learned about the equipment they use. Hanging from the ceiling above the
computers, radar screens and terminals was something I had not expected to see
(other than on a warship) – an Aldis lamp. Apparently this is used to flash
visual green or red ‘go’ or ‘stop’
signals to aircraft, and can be seen from the end of the runway, over 8,000
feet away.
After lunch we were treated
to an air display by a number of aircraft including high performance light
acrobatic planes, a couple of noisy Tucano turboprops that are used by the RAF
for fastjet training, and my favourite, an aerial ballet by a stately Lynx
helicopter piloted by Royal Navy aircrew. It’s hard to believe that the Lynx
has been in service with the navy since the early 1970s.
And so to bed, as they say...
No comments:
Post a Comment