±Recent Visitors

Recent Visitors to Com-Central!

±User Info-big


Welcome Anonymous

Nickname
Password

Membership:
Latest: HighestAce
New Today: 0
New Yesterday: 0
Overall: 6648

People Online:
Members: 0
Visitors: 199
Total: 199
Who Is Where:
 Visitors:
01: Community Forums
02: Community Forums
03: Home
04: CPGlang
05: Community Forums
06: CPGlang
07: Photo Gallery
08: Community Forums
09: Community Forums
10: Community Forums
11: Community Forums
12: Home
13: Community Forums
14: Home
15: Home
16: Home
17: Community Forums
18: Photo Gallery
19: Home
20: Photo Gallery
21: Photo Gallery
22: Photo Gallery
23: Home
24: Community Forums
25: Community Forums
26: Home
27: Your Account
28: Photo Gallery
29: Community Forums
30: Community Forums
31: CPGlang
32: Photo Gallery
33: Community Forums
34: Downloads
35: Community Forums
36: Home
37: Member Screenshots
38: Home
39: Member Screenshots
40: Photo Gallery
41: Community Forums
42: Your Account
43: Community Forums
44: Photo Gallery
45: Photo Gallery
46: Community Forums
47: Home
48: Downloads
49: Community Forums
50: Community Forums
51: Your Account
52: Home
53: Community Forums
54: Community Forums
55: Community Forums
56: Photo Gallery
57: Photo Gallery
58: Member Screenshots
59: Home
60: Community Forums
61: Photo Gallery
62: Community Forums
63: Home
64: Community Forums
65: Photo Gallery
66: Photo Gallery
67: Home
68: Photo Gallery
69: Community Forums
70: Community Forums
71: Downloads
72: Home
73: Photo Gallery
74: Community Forums
75: Photo Gallery
76: Home
77: Photo Gallery
78: Member Screenshots
79: Downloads
80: Community Forums
81: Photo Gallery
82: Home
83: Community Forums
84: Home
85: Home
86: Community Forums
87: Photo Gallery
88: Community Forums
89: Photo Gallery
90: Community Forums
91: Community Forums
92: CPGlang
93: Photo Gallery
94: Photo Gallery
95: Home
96: Community Forums
97: Home
98: Community Forums
99: Downloads
100: Home
101: Community Forums
102: Home
103: Community Forums
104: Community Forums
105: Community Forums
106: Home
107: Community Forums
108: Community Forums
109: Community Forums
110: Community Forums
111: Home
112: Home
113: Photo Gallery
114: Photo Gallery
115: Community Forums
116: Home
117: Photo Gallery
118: Photo Gallery
119: CPGlang
120: Community Forums
121: Home
122: Community Forums
123: Home
124: Community Forums
125: Home
126: Home
127: Photo Gallery
128: Community Forums
129: Community Forums
130: Home
131: Community Forums
132: Community Forums
133: Photo Gallery
134: Community Forums
135: Community Forums
136: Home
137: Photo Gallery
138: Community Forums
139: Photo Gallery
140: Community Forums
141: Community Forums
142: Photo Gallery
143: Community Forums
144: Community Forums
145: Photo Gallery
146: Community Forums
147: Photo Gallery
148: Community Forums
149: Photo Gallery
150: Photo Gallery
151: Community Forums
152: Home
153: CPGlang
154: Community Forums
155: Your Account
156: Community Forums
157: Community Forums
158: Home
159: Home
160: Community Forums
161: Community Forums
162: Community Forums
163: Home
164: Community Forums
165: Community Forums
166: Community Forums
167: Home
168: Home
169: Community Forums
170: Home
171: Home
172: Home
173: Community Forums
174: Community Forums
175: Home
176: CPGlang
177: Home
178: Member Screenshots
179: Home
180: Community Forums
181: Community Forums
182: Your Account
183: Photo Gallery
184: Community Forums
185: Community Forums
186: Community Forums
187: Community Forums
188: Home
189: Home
190: Community Forums
191: Home
192: Home
193: Photo Gallery
194: Home
195: Community Forums
196: Photo Gallery
197: Community Forums
198: Home
199: Community Forums

Staff Online:

No staff members are online!
The Aberdeen museum is moving to Fort Lee
The AFV ASSOCIATION was formed in 1964 to support the thoughts and research of all those interested in Armored Fighting Vehicles and related topics, such as AFV drawings. The emphasis has always been on sharing information and communicating with other members of similar interests; e.g. German armor, Japanese AFVs, or whatever.
Post new topic    Reply to topic    Printer Friendly Page     Forum Index ›  AFV News Discussion Board

View previous topic :: View next topic  
Author Message
the_shadock
Power User

Offline Offline
Joined: May 27, 2006
Posts: 2865
Location: Normandy, France
PostPosted: Wed Jul 19, 2006 12:16 pm
Post subject: The Aberdeen museum is moving to Fort Lee

Here I found some informations about the Aberdeen museum being moved to Fort Lee.
Who can confirm this information?

www.wehrmacht-awards.c...p?t=163961

I hope they will be able to move the Ferdinant and the Jagdtiger.. they will maybe have some fun with it..

Pierre-Olivier
Back to top
View user's profile Send e-mail Visit poster's website MSN Messenger
Neil_Baumgardner
Power User

Offline Offline
Joined: Jan 24, 2006
Posts: 3942
Location: Arlington, VA
PostPosted: Wed Jul 19, 2006 12:44 pm
Post subject: Re: The Aberdeen museum is moving to Fort Lee

Pierre-Olivier, thanks for posting the link, I hadnt seen that article yet. Below is a link to the best summary I have come across of the situation, we've been discussing it for some time actually.

www.com-central.net/in...pic&t=3355

Here's a link to some pics I took of where the museum might be located:
www.com-central.net/in...pic&t=3858

Neil

By MARK YOST
The Wall Street Journal
May 25, 2006; Page D8
Aberdeen, Md.
When the Base Realignment and Closure Commission announces that your military base has to close, it's usually greeted as bad news. Jobs will be lost, families uprooted; the environmental cleanup costs can be enormous. But in the case of the Aberdeen Proving Ground, home to the U.S. Army Ordnance Museum (www.ordmusfound.org), it's a blessing in disguise.
Opened in 1925, the museum was initially supplied with weapons from around the world that were tested at the proving ground. Once established, the museum was able to build an impressive collection of U.S., allied and enemy weapons.
Some of the many tanks the museum has on display.
Its shortcoming is that the museum is squeezed into an undersized building on a post more often associated with developing new weapons than preserving old ones. As a result, museum curator Jack Atwater, who has a doctorate in history from Duke and has been here for 17 years, can display only 5% of the collection he oversees. That's a shame, because he has much to show the museum's visitors, who number about 35,000 a year.
Even if you've never been to the base, the museum is easy to find. It's the small building in the middle of a field surrounded by about three dozen tanks, cannons and artillery pieces. Such as the 500-ton coastal defense gun. It and other 100-ton objects will be a logistical nightmare to move. They are too heavy for the interstate, so Mr. Atwater will either move them by rail or float them by barge to the proposed new museum site at Fort Lee outside Petersburg, Va. There's also the 280mm "Atomic Cannon," a Cold War weapon that was designed to fire tactical (that means close-range) nuclear warheads at the Soviets as they theoretically advanced from Eastern Europe into Germany.
In the tank department, which makes up the bulk of the large items on display, there's the 30-ton 1917 Mark IV, one of the first tanks ever made (and one of only three left in the world). The World War I British tank had a top speed of 3.75 miles an hour and traveled two miles on a gallon of gas. There's also a World War II-vintage Sherman tank. As the placard notes: "The M4 was the principal U.S. combat tank in all combat zones for most of WW II. Though undergunned (75mm) and under armored compared to German tanks, the Shermans prevailed by their numerical superiority (estimated 50,000)."
The Atomic Cannon, a Cold War weapon that was designed to protect Germany from a Soviet invasion.
While this collection is mostly made up of U.S. weapons, many of our former enemies are well represented. There's a 1943 German Panzerkampfwagen V Panther, "considered the best of the German WW II tanks," the museum tells us. "It had superior firepower and mobility over allied tanks of the same period."
The fact that many of these pieces have been sitting in a field for decades presents a problem.
"No one's ever thought to do regular maintenance on them," Mr. Atwater said during a recent tour. "Most of these pieces, many of them the only ones of their kind left in the world, are literally rotting where they sit."
So Mr. Atwater has set up a workshop nearby where many of the tanks and other large pieces -- he has 240 of them -- are going through an extensive rehabilitation process. He also uses the shop to refabricate new additions to the museum that come to him in less than pristine condition.
Recently, a Russian T-55 tank was sitting outside the shop, ready to go back on display. Typical of the problems Mr. Atwater must remedy, it had layers and layers of lead-based paint. Mr. Atwater's armor artisans pull these mechanized monsters into a special booth and blast them with water pressurized to 43,000 pounds per square inch. That removes the paint (and could remove your leg, Mr. Atwater says with a chuckle), exposing bare metal. It is then flash-dried and repainted in historically accurate colors and paint schemes. Mr. Atwater's crew also has to remove the radium-coated dials and drain the oil, which often contains polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, a family of 209 chemical compounds that were used in industry until they were found to be highly toxic.
"My watch emits more radiation, but the environmental weenies tell me they're a hazard," the former Marine says of the glow-in-the-dark dials.
The T-55 looks like it just came off the production line, ready to hold off the Germans at Stalingrad. It's in marked contrast to a World War II British Vickers reconnaissance vehicle that just came to the shop. The floorboards are rotted out; there's a big hole in the front that exposes the cockpit. When Mr. Atwater's men are done, it'll look as good as new.
Our next stop is one of three large storage warehouses. This is where Mr. Atwater keeps the pieces that have been rehabbed but he doesn't have room to display. The collection is impressive and includes Pershing's staff car from World War I, as well as a VW-made Nazi SS staff car used in North Africa in World War II. It has a propeller on the back that's flipped up. Mr. Atwater flips it down and shows how it can engage a power takeoff drive -- like on modern-day tractors -- that drives the propeller so that the car can go through shallow rivers.
"The SS got the cool stuff," he says.
Also stored here are row upon row of inert hand grenades, fuses and shells. Some of the material is educational, such as a cut-away of a World War II German "potato masher" grenade that shows how it was constructed and used.
"I simply don't have the room to display this stuff," Mr. Atwater said.
That will all change when the museum moves to its new digs at Fort Lee. The expanded museum is expected to have room to display almost everything in the collection. The move is slated for 2009, but having worked for the government for more than two decades, Mr. Atwater thinks it will be later than that.
For now, the public will have to be satisfied with the cramped space and open field that do a very good job of giving visitors a good cross-section of some of the military's biggest -- and most lethal -- weapons.
Mr. Yost is a writer in Lake Elmo, Minn.
Back to top
View user's profile
the_shadock
Power User

Offline Offline
Joined: May 27, 2006
Posts: 2865
Location: Normandy, France
PostPosted: Wed Jul 19, 2006 12:59 pm
Post subject: Re: The Aberdeen museum is moving to Fort Lee

Sorry Neil, I didn't see that there was a topic about that before.. However, it's a good thing that the entire Aberdeen AFV collection will be in a safe place, and be able to be restored..

Pierre-Olivier
Back to top
View user's profile Send e-mail Visit poster's website MSN Messenger
bsmart
Power User

Offline Offline
Joined: Jan 23, 2006
Posts: 2523
Location: Central Maryland
PostPosted: Wed Jul 19, 2006 1:09 pm
Post subject: Re: The Aberdeen museum is moving to Fort Lee

Ferdinand shouldn't be a problem It's sitting where it was unloaded from a rail car years ago and can be put right back on one Smile

The article is pretty good. My only complaint is that it is DR. Atwater not Mr. Atwater. He also under estimated the number of exhibits outside the Museum building.

The 16" Coast Defense Gun and Anzio Annie will be problems due to their size. Some other artefacts will be a problem because of their condition, they are very fragile after sitting outside for years (especially some of the rockets and missles they have)

My fear is that when they get the actual costs the bean counters will decide they don't need the entire collection and do something stupid with it or that the move will get half way completed and the funding dry up and things get left in some 'temporary' storage and we won't be any better off than we are now but in a different location.

_________________
Bob Smart ([email protected])
Back to top
View user's profile Send e-mail
Neil_Baumgardner
Power User

Offline Offline
Joined: Jan 24, 2006
Posts: 3942
Location: Arlington, VA
PostPosted: Wed Jul 19, 2006 1:13 pm
Post subject: Re: The Aberdeen museum is moving to Fort Lee

My fear is similar, except I'm not sure Fort Lee has the same kind of storage space as APG does. My fear is that come 10 years from now part of the collection will be at the new museum at Fort Lee, some of it will still be sitting outside the old museum at APG, and some more items will still be "behind the fence" at APG...

Neil
Back to top
View user's profile
Display posts from previous:   
Post new topic    Reply to topic    Printer Friendly Page    Forum Index ›  AFV News Discussion Board
Page 1 of 1
All times are GMT - 6 Hours



Jump to:  


You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
You cannot attach files in this forum
You cannot download files in this forum