Duxford Red Baron's Engine

Agreed Stu. We are all whingers and moaners at some stage of ours lives. Doing it from the comfort of our armchairs is often the best place in this internet world! The difference is many whinge about things, wrong colour, this should be done, that should be done. But they expect others to do it (ie meaningful contribution to historic aviation) for them. Others actually do something about it. No one listens if you make suggestions at the time.

Hey, I thought we all “agreed” that no item was ever damaged whilst in the care of a major museum, let alone in transit……..

On the subject of whingers and moaners who never achieve anything (other than maybe change) at the 60th anniversary of the Dams raid, I suggested to DX that they might have rolled the bomb/mine over to the Lanc (about 20 ft) and fixed the broken display, to at least pay lip service to the event; the answer was “didn’t have enough time” I pointed out that they’d had 60 years……

I asked the guy manning the screens and he said the original board had been lost and the curators did not know exactly what it was

Thankfully they do now and they were displaying it next to one of the original dams models from operation chastise while the Dambusters movie played behind.

Curlyboy

If the purpose of a museum is to show and educate then surely putting a correct sign up is a basic need.I can understand in a working part of the museum where things are being moved and are in more flux then maybe temporarily the signs MAY be out of place but really it’s to hard to move a sign.Walk around a museum and listen to some of the incorrect comments by visitors and you have wrongly placed signs ,well it’s not going to help.

The engine now has a flat screen TV explaining its history.

Curlyboy

Now now Brian, taking things a bit far with that second photo – the Bowfighter and the Staggering are quite plainly easy to pick out amongst the other stuff – that engine has been on the wall racks for some time and that stuff isn’t really identified for the pubic offer. The Hangar Gremlins often move the info boards around when the lights go out then spend the day watching from the darkest corners as the visitors stand with puzzled looks on their physogs…

Two weeks ago they actually moved the Shack into the BoB Hangar but it was spotted before the doors opened….

Are the sign boards misplaced or the objects ??

Had the arm chair whingers and moaners and letter writers of misplaced sign boards got out of their arm chairs and paid a visit to Duxford they would have found that the offending, at least to the arm chair whingers and moaners and letter writers of misplaced sign boards, had actually been moved since the start of this thread.

Actually better the arm chair whingers and moaners and letter writers of misplaced sign boards don’t visit Duxford because if they go into 2 hangar they are liable to have a heart attack.:D

Now back to the real world.

Brian

I had the below reply from Duxford concerning this

Thank you for your feedback regarding the engine display caption.

We really appreciate you taking the time to let us have your thoughts and comments. We greatly value our visitors’ opinions and take this into consideration when planning future museum changes.

I have passed your feedback onto the relevant department to look into.

Thank you for bringing this to our attention and I’m sorry if it spoiled your visit.

I hope you will be able to come back again soon.

Curlyboy

It’s all very well to complain of the moaners and whingers from the comfort of your arm chair

But that’s how whingers and moaners operate, from the comfort of their arm chairs.

Brian

In my book those responsible for the display should do their job properly and ensure that the placard relates to the object it is placed in front of.

We’re OK, we can make an informed judgement about whether the information board relates to the object in front of it – or not. many people can’t so it’s debatable whether it is worth opening up the facility to the public if the organisers can’t be bothered to get the signage right.

It’s all very well to complain of the moaners and whingers from the comfort of your arm chair – but I know I’d be pretty pi**ed off if I was a teacher trying to make some sense of a poorly organised display in front of 30 children who all expect and believe the information to be correct. It’s their job to get it right, it’s not rocket science.

Anon.

Maybe we should all just celebrate the fact that the IWM let you into a working area and allow you to see objects in open storage.

So a lectern has ended up slightly to the right of the object it describes, so what.

Anne

Safe storage and Duxford don’t always go together. I am thinking of what happened to the fin and rudder of the Hermes.

Seems surprising that it never made it back to Lambeth. If there’s any name from WW1 that non-historian (or non-aviation expert) people would have heard of or relate to, it would be ‘The Red Baron’ and there has to be some ‘wow’ factor to displaying the engine from his plane.

I’m not concerned about the temporary display of this artefact, and I’d rather have it on temporary display than for it to disappear into storage for years.

But I am concerned about the damage that seems to have occurred to it since it has been in the care of the IWM; aren’t you? I don’t know when the black and white photograph of it was taken but it seems to have been dropped and to have lost one induction pipe and three pushrods since then; I hope these are safely in storage somewhere but who knows?

minimans

You can’t think logically like that. The whingers, moaners and museum complainers on here would then have nothing to whinge, moan and complain about.

Brian

Has anybody actually looked at the picture? You can see just by looking that it’s just been shoved there temporally, it’s on a pallet with probably the display base stacked in front? It’s on 2X4’s for the fork lift or pallet jack………….Mountain out of a mole hill comes to mind………………..

Disgraceful that such a historic and valuable artifact is not on proper display and being treated with such carelessness.

If it is the same engine then somebody at the IWM has dropped it at some point…

…look at the (dented) end of the propeller shaft in the later photograph!

At the risk of being labelled impatient – I hasten to remark that the old picture of the Baron’s engine shows it to be the same engine as the Duxford item; missing and dented intake pipes included.

Anon.