Combat Machines

WWI was the first truly mechanized war. All sides began with strategies from the Napoleonic Wars, resulting in troops being unprepared for the destructive new technologies such as Maxim machine gun and fast-firing artillery.

The North African desert campaign of World War II gave rise to the Desert Rats. Machines in this campaign were the Matilda II tank, Rolls Royce armoured car, the Panzer III, 88mm anti-tank gun and the American M3 Grant tank.

In WWII, tanks, ships, and aircraft were well known, but there was also a whole fleet of lesser known vehicles such as the Jeep, the amphibious DUKW and a legendary American GI and his Harley motorbike.

In WWI, the Corps of Royal Engineers invented the Geophone, a device to detect enemy tunnelers. In WWII, they drove converted tanks that created bridges and cleared minefields, and made mobile robots that defused bombs.

In any war, information is key. Examine the machines used to capture, transmit, and analyse vital combat information, featuring SOE agents and their equipment, spies stealing Royal Navy blueprints, and a daring submarine mission.

Examine machines on the ground that would have fought in a nuclear war, featuring, amongst others, the 1961 tank standoff at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin when Soviet T-54 tanks faced off with American M-48 Patton tanks.

The Vietnam War. The Americans used their abundance of jet fighters, helicopters, and river patrol boats to try and stop the continuous stream of supplies and North Vietnamese fighters coming down the trail.

The Cold War. East and West developed weapons that could destroy the world. Examine the origins of the Arms Race and the first use of nuclear weapons that ended World War II, featuring, amongst others, the Titan II Intercontinental Ballistic Missile and the Corona spy satellite.