US Ordnance Museum to Move

lightning2000 · Post by **lightning2000** » Sat Aug 30, 2008 5:55 am

Hi All,
Just read this interesting news piece on the Panzermuseum.com web site:

<b>Tiger I Returning to Aberdeen</b>
If you've been wondering about what's happened to the Tiger I tank that used to be at the U.S. Army Ordnance Museum at Aberdeen, we have an update for you!

According to Dr. William Atwater, the museum's director, the museum's Tiger I - which has been in England undergoing restoration - was scheduled to return to the museum in November 2006, transported in a U.S. Air Force C-5 Galaxy aircraft.

Unfortunately, the aircraft that was scheduled to transport the Tiger was the one that crashed at Dover Air Force Base on 3 April (fortunately, however, all 17 crew members survived). The crash and the demands for air transport to support military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan completely upset the transport timetable. However, Dr. Atwater expected the Tiger to return to Aberdeen in 2007 on a date yet to be determined.

In a bit of related news, Dr. Atwater also said that the Ordnance Museum would be moving from Aberdeen to Ft. Lee, Virginia. Everything - including the 16" coastal artillery gun and the German Leopold railway gun - will be moved there to a new 175,000 square foot facility the Army is planning to build. The move is scheduled to take place in 2009.

On a personal note, I hope they plan on restoring some of the vehicles that have been sitting out in the elements all these years and at least give them a fresh coat of paint. The least we can do to preserve their call to glory...

Lightning2000
www.themotorpool.net

ChairmanMilo · Post by **ChairmanMilo** » Sat Aug 30, 2008 7:06 am

I've known about the move for some time - I'm glad they're finally going to get those rare armoured fighting vehicles under a roof for the first time. It's a shame that a lot of them were in bad shape, but I've read a lot about ongoing restoration efforts - for instance, the Ferdinand that stood on the railhead at Aberdeen for years finally got cleaned up and given a decent paint job.

Go here for some decent pics:

http://www.ww2f.com/weapons-wwii/24182- ... mages.html

kduck · Post by **kduck** » Sat Aug 30, 2008 5:44 pm

I went to AIT (45L, Artillery Repairer) at APG in 84. I spent a lot of time hanging out at the museum. They had a great collection of vehicles. One of the neat things about APG was that there were numerous obscure historical vehicles all over the post. You never knew when you might stumble across something really interesting.

KAMIKAZE · Post by **KAMIKAZE** » Sat Aug 30, 2008 6:16 pm

It's about time they got all those vehicles out of the elements.

Mark

Rowsdower · Post by **Rowsdower** » Sat Aug 30, 2008 8:06 pm

Restore the damn atomic cannon and it's two tractors! The pics I've seen of some of the rare vehicles rotting outside make me sick.

Check it out. Rusting, flat tires and sinking into the ground.
http://svsm.org/gallery/280mm_m65

Fox Tare-28 · Post by **Fox Tare-28** » Sat Aug 30, 2008 9:48 pm

Rowsdower wrote:Restore the damn atomic cannon and it's two tractors! The pics I've seen of some of the rare vehicles rotting outside make me sick.

Check it out. Rusting, flat tires and sinking into the ground.
http://svsm.org/gallery/280mm_m65

*Holds in vomit* Oh god, that's even worse than Se7en.

Rowsdower · Post by **Rowsdower** » Sun Aug 31, 2008 8:24 am

That whole system has intrigued me since I saw the Revell model kit at KB Toys when I was a kid. It really was amazing how the two tractors worked together like some giant metal nuclear dinosaur.