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Sturgeon's House

Bittereinder: Ditsong Museum of Military History


Toxn

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The Joburg war museum (now Ditsong museum of military history) is a bit of an odd beast. Located right next to the Joburg Zoo, it's sort of small and kind of schizo in terms of content. It's also partly a monument to the fallen, partly a conference/events venue and partly a warehouse for all the odds and ends that the country has collected over the years and isn't sure what to do with.

 

Anyway, I went there recently with my son and brought back tonnes of photos. These will be dumped around the forum in the appropriate places (tanks, planes, big guns and small arms), with this thread serving as an overview.

 

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The entrance is like the rest of the place: tucked away a bit and kind of pokey.

 

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A few metres away, though, is an impressive monument to the British dead from the second Boer war. Nothing screams 'empire' like crushing your enemies and then putting up a huge shrine to your own war dead in their former city.

 

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The museum is divided into a few big halls, some narrow glass-fronted galleries, an open park area and a central conference venue. One thing which should be noted is that two of the galleries do not allow photography.  The interior pictures from these halls posted below are merely accurate replicas made from memory and a bunch of 1:72 models I happened to have lying around.

 

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Brink Hall from the front and back. It has a number of aircraft and related gear, as well as stuff related to the Boer war and First World War. The Brink Hall is pretty much the first thing you're going to wander into, as its close to the entrance.

 

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Between the two halls is a little artillery display. From here you can either go right to the open park area or straight into the Adler Hall.

 

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The Adler Hall from a few angles. This one is dedicated to small arms, uniforms, a POW exhibit and just about everything else you can cram into a small hall and still fit. It also has a few vehicles (M3 light, Sexton, M4) that are opened up and/or have stairs so that you can look into them.

 

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Past the uniform exhibit (which snakes around the sides and back of the hall) is a rather random exhibit on Cuito and the Border war. The cut-up Ratel in there has a driver's station with a display above it. The display shows grainy footage from the battle on a loop.

 

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Just past the artillery display thingy there are a few naval objects on display. The most interesting is probably this Nazi mini-sub which we got from who-knows-where. The placement of the sub did something strange to my phone camera, so there are no photos with it in perfectly focus.

 

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Most of the outdoor park stuff is going into other posts, so I'm just putting this there. These are the only two things that kids are allowed to clamber all over in the museum, and the little tykes seem to have stripped them down to bare metal over the years in doing so. I actually have lots of photos of these, as my little one was very insistent on spending time driving the jeep/flying the plane.

 

All in all: a decent little museum, and home to a few interesting odds and ends that I'll put up in other places.

 

Edit:

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

 

 

 

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