My trip to the IWM London, oh dear

Also, whatever became of the Mosquito mounted against the wall with the right wing missing?

The Mosquito was traded to TFC for a Hurricane project about 25 years ago. It has since been sold on, and is currently being rebuilt to fly in New Zealand for Paul Allen.

To around the height of a 5 to 12 year old?… 🙂

Happy New Year!

That’s where the inspiration, education and continuation are needed, so yeah. Probably the major visitor demographic too. Funnily enough my 12 year old daughter went this year. She certainly benefitted from her visit.

yes, Happy New Year Bob, been a while! Have a good one.

nb I think perhaps the museum that has most impressed me in recent years is Time and Tide in Great Yarmouth. It’s very good at expressing it’s purpose.

I enjoyed it back when they had a FW 190 on the ground with a oil pan underneath to catch the drips.
Also, whatever became of the Mosquito mounted against the wall with the right wing missing?

i would have liked to visit the iwm lambeth when i was over there earlier last year(it’s 2015 in Australia),,my paternal grandfather was a ww1 vetran and i never got to talk to him about what he experienced,the story needs to be told as there are none left to tell us now…and we should never forget the holocaust…we forget we repeat.

Lower your expectations.

To around the height of a 5 to 12 year old?… 🙂

Happy New Year!

They rearranged my Tesco about five years back and I can’t find half the stuff. Absolutely hate the place now.

Lambeth was pretty crap the last few times I went, over the years. I imagine it’s probably better now. I find the RAFM and much of DX to be a poorly displayed collection of dead airframes slotted into a room or three rather than an inspiring museum. Science Museum has more life to it. Give me the TFC hangar with it’s smells for a proper aviation museum experience any day of the week.

The Royal Anglian museum (my old badge) at DX I find dull as anything, Norfolk Regt museum I quite liked in Norwich. Yad Vashem in Jerusalem gave me more holocaust on display than I’ll ever feel the need for.

Museums are pretty uninspiring places for adults. Lower your expectations.

With reference to the above postings, I’m glad at least some agree with me ……..!?
Gentlemen, let’s remind ourselves of the cost – was it £40 or £45 million ?

I too visited end of Summer this year – first impressions – for sure the issue of no fresh air inside had still not been addressed.
Second impression : dis-jointed and a total sham !
Third impression : where’s the attraction or appeal gone ie. for all new-comers ?

Never mind, probably a nice little fee ‘earner’ for all the high profile consultants involved though……….

No mention of the BE.2c – is it still there? And I fully agree with Moggy C’s comments – some great exhibits were in the IWM (and hopefully still are), and many of these impressive items are not remotely aviation-related.

I’m planning a visit, or possibly two this year to the re-vamped version. Re-visits do however depend on whether the archives are still accessible.

In the Holocaust exhibition I reached a larger than life photograph of a teenage girl clearly in distress. Her twisted body stance and obvious vulnerability to her inhumane captors reminded me of my own disabled son who is approaching a similar age. Shocking and heartbreaking. I had to leave. What would have happened to my son if those b******s had won the war?

Because of my experience at Lambeth, any issues I have with layout, exhibits etc are side issues, although I respect the opinion of those unhappy with their visit.

I head scratch a little at the Harrier GR.7 suspension there! The front anchor holes for the wing blocks had a confidence check before use with a torque wrench and adaptor. I hope they intend to bring her down every now and then!

Visted Lambeth in the summer and thoroughly enjoyed it. Although I understand the complaints of the post it note style display boards.
I would agree with Moggy, it takes a day just to take in the WW1 and Holocaust exhibitions, sadly ran out of time so didn’t manage to see all of the Holocaust one.
I do not have a particular interest in WW1 but I count that as one of the finest exhibitions I have seen in a British museum for some time. My partner who has no real interest in history didn’t mind that we ate 3 hours of precious time we could have spent shopping so it must have been good.

The trend seems to be that for those that visited the old museum know fully how poor in comparison the refurb has been. How can any museum benefit from removing an entire floor level and reducing the space available for displays? With nothing to compare it to then it is an interesting museum but it’s such a shame what the place has become.

A lot will depend on your interests.

Because of the death of my Uncle on the Somme in 1916 the Great War is something of huge interest to me. So taking it in thoroughly did involve me in the best part of a day once you allow for travel to and from and lunch. Anybody who takes a superficial look at it, say an hour, and then moves on to their field of interest, such as WW2 aviation, would be bound to rate the museum lower than I.

But it is the IWM, not the IWW2M, and I think that has to be borne in mind. Some dislike the car salvaged from a car bombing in Afghanistan(?). Standing by it gave me a lot of pause for thought about the nature of modern conflict.

I carry a point and shoot camera, but I have no particular interest in photography, so if it’s not great for ‘photographers’ (I have no idea whether it is or not – though Pen Pusher’s offering seems to suggest it is excellent), then wouldn’t sway my judgement one bit.

Moggy

From my visit just after it re-opened.

IWM-London

I’ll have another visit soon and see if there has been an improvement. But I doubt it.

Brian

I made my one and only visit just over 5 years ago. On what turned out to be one of the
hottest days of the year.
I spent three hours there with my wife, and due to the lack of ventilation, we were both
starting to wilt and she was getting bored. So we walked back into London. It was our
Silver Wedding after all 🙂

I must get back there and see what they’ve done with it. There’s just so much to see.

Having not made a visit for a few years I wonder if our members above have visited the same museum! And it also bears out my previously stated wariness towards internet recommendation sites. Moggy or Austern?

The WW1 exhibition in the basement is worth a day in London alone. Allow four hours at least if you are not just going to skim through it.

The holocaust exhibition in the gods is a truly heartbreaking experience, allow minimum two hours and then time for a drink or two after in consolation.

The recovered LRDG truck is sufficient justification for a trip from Norfolk to London.

For me, two visits in so far and another couple planned for this approaching year it is a great museum.

It’s not an aircraft museum, there is one at Hendon, just down the road, but the suspended Spitfire and the galleries from which you can view it give a wealth of photo opportunities for those who feel this is important to their day.

Moggy

What displays or galleries do they have?

Agreed!!! I even went to the trouble of writing a negative review on trip advisor. Yet again a total waste of money.

Harrier Spit ans a doodlebug, and they have grey aircraft silhouetted on a grey background makes lovely photo opportunities indeed, if I could post some I would, Zeke looks great, but thats it