The Tank Museum, located in Bovington, England, is one of the world’s best collections of armoured vehicles. Bovington is the training grounds for the British Armoured Corps, and the Museum represents it’s history, and the history of armoured warfare in general.
The Tank Story
The first, and main, part of the museum is the Tank Story, which teaches you how tanks came to be, and how they developed over the years. You start with a display of some WW1 tanks and prototypes, including Little Willie, a unique prototype of the very first tank to be designed.
Next is a short section on the weird tanks of the Interwar period, which quickly turns into an extensive section on WW2. There’s much to be seen here: German, British, American, even a few Russian tanks. However, the absolute pearly of this collection is the still running Tiger 131, the only Tiger 1 tank in the world that can still drive.
This is finished up by Cold War tanks, from just as many nations. The most fascinating part of this whole section is being able to see just how much (and in other respects, how little) tanks have changed over the century or so that they have existed.
The Trench Experience and the Tank Men
These 2 sections are focused on World War 1. The first is a mock-up of a series of WW1 era trenches, featuring wax models, sounds and light effects, and a tank driving over your head as you make your way across the cramped trenches.
The next section tells the story of British WW1 tanks. The museum has dozens of these on display, each one slightly different to the other, despite the ubiquitous ‘caterpillar’ shape. The highlight of this section is the ability to go inside one such tank, to see the incredibly cramped condition the first British tankists had to face; to imagine yourself in this metal oven, surrounded by darkness, toxic fumes, and unbearable heat.
WW2: War Stories
Unsurprisingly, the section on WW2 is one of the biggest ones. There are dozens of tanks here from all nations that fought in the war, even a single Japanese tanks, which are incredibly rare, especially so far from their native Japan.
The Cold War, Battlegroup Afghanistan, and the Tank Factory
The final section of the Museum is a little bitty, but has a few cool things. There’s a section labelled Cold War, which has only a couple of tanks (most of the Cold War era vehicles are in the other sections of the museum). The coolest thing to see here is the TOG 2, a prototype for a truly massive British tank that would have been one of the largest tanks ever built, had they continued with production.
There is also a life size model of what a British camp in Afghanistan would have looked like, which is insanely interesting to look at, and to learn about the modern day experience of soldiers in this war.
The final part is the Tank Factory, which has various miscellaneous tanks that don’t really fit into the other sections. The most interesting part of this is a cut-in-half Centurion tank, which enables you to see what the inside of this vehicle looked like.
We May Roam 