want to cause an endless line of text scrolling to the right for a lot of you guys
So I visited Aberdeen Proving Grounds' Ordnance Museum near the MD/PA State Line a few days ago.
Here are my peectures; I'm arranging them in the rough format of how I visited the museum; so you'll be
outside; go in, then go back outside.
Parking in the parking lot; you see a lot of stuff outside. In fact, there's even some stuff in the parking lot now!
I guess they decided to move them there or something after restorations were done on them....
That huge tank looming over the car is the M6 Heavy Tank of WWII.
Nike-Ajax Missile
Ferdinand or Elephant Tank Destroyer. It may come as a shock to you, but I am not obsessive enough
to memorize the difference between the two types.
This is generally how the outdoor exhibits are laid out
That is a 280mm Artillery Piece; known for it's role in Duchess' FOTE where Mark K Sheppard
uses it to shell advancing Imperial AT-AT Columns.
Behind it is....
One of the two Anzio Annies. There were two guns at Anzio which fired on the beachhead and got
the nickname.
As you move closer to the museum building you find....
Scwhere Gustaf Dora Shell.
WWI Skeleton Tank. Pay close attention to that "shelter" you'll see it in an older picture
that was not taken by me:
Yep; that's a V-2 under the same shelter about 15 years ago. Great preservation on that!
XM-1 Abrams Prototype.
Near the front of the entrance to the museum, you find a...
T-12 Demolition Bomb; all 43,000 lbs of it.
This is the entrance to the Building.
This is a series of shots to give you an idea of how the museum building's interior looks:
You can see the museum gift shop there. I should have bought one of the Panzer Tracts in there...
What's that on the left of the pic? Why yes, it's our favoritest weapon!
Davy Crockett Atomic Bazooka!
Among some of the larger weapons inside are:
Gatling Gun
Goliath
They have a quite nice selection of experimental rifles in the cases on the first floor:
Along with every variation of the StG-44/MkB-42/MP-44 ever made.
As we go to the stairs for the upstairs exhibits, we find this next to the stairs:
Climbing the stairs, you come face to face with a ton of cases full of WIN and AWESOME:
Inside the cases are some nice things:
Japanese Tank MG still in it's mount!
A Flechette MG from the 60s!
Back away from the Machine Gun Cases, there's a little EOD exhibit with some nice things:
But what really takes the cake on Floor 2 is a relatively new exhibit of all kinds of cool stuff.
BEEHIVE cutaway!
This fuze set off a 400 kiloton warhead
ICM Submunition cargo shell cutaway.
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Remember that 280mm Atomic GUn outside?
The huge shell with 280 on it is the conventional HE shell for it; and to it's right is the propellant needed
to fire the gun. Easily 4-5 feet tall.
Take that superior german armor!
So after finishing our tour of the inside, we go back out.
Leftmost is a Gulf War I war trophy. Rightmost is a M20 Armored Car from WWII.
We were all set to build this as a light tank, with an autoloading 76mm gun; when some
congressman asked "General, the PT-76 can swim. Can this?"
When the answer was "No", the program was cancelled and we got the M551 Sheridan instead...
This one had me scratching my head. It's basically a M7 Priest style vehicle built on
a M-24 Chafee hull instead of the M3/M4 hull. Had 20+ more rounds of 105mm, faster
speed, and slightly better armor...
Now, the people at the Ordnance museum have taken some steps to rectify the sad state of their vehicles!
They FINALLY welded over plates on the cutaways -- before this the tanks
were completely open to the weather!
WWI Tanks; with the MBT-70 in between...
Robert STRANGE McNamara told the US Army if it wanted a new tank, it would have
to cooperate with the Germans to build one...the MBT-70 was the result...
Chieftain with what looks like to be a very early production Leopard 1 to the right.
Jagdtiger. This can be easily identified in old WWII Photos by it's very distinctive battle damage
pattern on it's gun mantlet.
16 inch Coastal Defense Rifle!
Anyone have any idea what this is?
Nike-Hercules
Pershing 1A.
Line up of AA Guns.
As I was leaving the Installation grounds, I stopped my car and got out to take pictures of LITTLE DAVID:
914mm Mortar Lovin'
Finally...
DOGGIE
