Thump's Gulf Coast Museum Tour

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Warspite63 said:
Great pics - thanks for posting!

EDIT: I just noticed the YF-17 .... what a gorgeous aircraft
Click to expand...

It has fine lines that even its immediate follow-on couldn't match due to carrier requirements and such, but yeah, seeing it up-close really brings to light that essential difference between carrier- and land-based aircraft in a way that reading or photos don't convey.

I loved seeing the YA-12 too. Again, subtle differences. I was surprised to see the chines, as I'd always thought they were an SR-71 thing. We go to these places to learn things, though, and I certainly did. I didn't put a pic up of it, but got a decent shot of the range-finder on BB-60's #2 turret, from the inside, that really informs what I've read about the technical stuff. Or how cramped a 5"/38 turret is. Dry numbers in a book are great, but seeing it closely gives me a much better understanding.
 
When I was a kid, my Dad took me to HMS Belfast in London. I was stunned by how cramped the triple 6" turrets were. Being inside any WWII warship turrets during combat must have been an ongoing sensory pummeling..... and claustrophobic ... and somewhat terrifying......
 
Great pics and collection!
About the B-25 in the USS Alabama Battleship Memorial Park collection: it looks like a B-25B, to honor the crew #2 a/c of the Doolittle Raid over Tokyo, s/n 02344. And honestly from this angle it does look like an early "Mitchell". In fact this is a B-25J s/n 44-31004 that never saw combat and was used as a TB-25J at Barksdale (don't know the exact type of trainer, guess pilot-trainer). Later converted to TB-25N. I'm curious to see how did they change the tail and the rear fuselage from J to B.
Here some older photos in our forum of the same a/c.
 
My last stop on this tour was at the Mississippi Armed Forces Museum. I'm a big fan of Unauthorized History of the Pacific War, and one of the hosts is the assistant director of this museum. It was pretty close to my route home so I decided to stop in. This post will be pretty light on aviation, but the museum's vehicle park is great. The museum is devoted to Mississippi veterans of all branches.

First, though, I visited the indoor displays. First up is a Chauchat machine-gun, one of the worst of WWI, underneath a Winchester 1898 shotgun:

They have a nice display devoted to Samuel Kaye, a MI native credited with four kills while flying SPADs as a member of the 94th Aero Squadron


A scale model of a 13th Aero Spad XIII:


One of the coolest displays was this setup designed like a front-line trench. It was cool getting the viewer somewhat closer to the vibe the soldiers must have felt -- minus the mud, rain, and shrapnel, of course:
 
A 105mm howitzer from WWII:



A big model of the USS Mississippi BB-41:

Most of the interior displays are textual and not amenable to a nice photographic presentation, but I spent well over half my visit reading the incredibly informative displays. with that said, onto the outside displays.
 
First, a selection of arty used in WWII. In the foreground is a 57mm (6-pdr) of British design used by both ground and airborne troops. In the middle is an M1918 Schneider howitzer, a French design -- as is the last, an M1918M1 155mm cannon.

Next up is the pic I think of as "Murderer's Row", showing the lineup of tanks used by the US Army from 1942 to the early 1980s:



This M4A3 has some battle damage, not visible in this shot, on the left rear, a couple of bullet-holes:



... and the Sherman's companion artillery piece, the M-7 Priest, mounting the above-pictured 105mm howitzer on a Sherman chassis:

 
M1 Abrams:



And then onto the aviation.

OV-1:



AH-1:



Huey:



Skycrane:



Plus, I was able to support the museum by grabbing this great coffee cup. $20, great quality, and biiiiig -- my coffee-maker rates it as just shy of four "cups" by its own measure:



That wraps up the four museums I visited at the end of this last March. That won't be the end of this thread, though. I have plans to revisit both USS Lexington in Corpus Christi and the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg in the next few months, and rather than start up new threads I'll just put 'em here. When the USS Texas is open for regular tours, I'll revisit it, too.

Anyway, that's all for now. Hope y'all enjoyed!
 
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