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Part 6 of a multi-part series. Some kind of goofy mutant and an America-mobile. A duck and a ferret. Saracen Ratel 20. Eland 90, aka the Noddy car. Eland 60, sans 60mm mortar. Crazypants Italian armoured car. I honestly have no idea which end is the front and which end is the back. Granddaddy armoured car. Our first attempt at a locally-made armoured car. This is where we caught the wheeled death trap bug. Attempt the second. The Boys anti-tank rifle is missing. Attempt the third. The Brits had finally gotten tired of the 2 pounder, so of course we snapped them up and stuck them into our wheeled death traps. Attempt 4. Now we're really getting into it. I think that that's a 6-pounder, but I could be wrong. The G6. This is what happens if you let us work on the same thing for too long. Eventually you end up with a house-sized monster armed with a howitzer.

Part 3 in a multi-part series. Anglo-zulu era Boer war era. Assegais and throwing spears. African and Indian weapons jumbled together. African daggers and knives. San arrows. WW1. The ballistic vest on the top left actually caught one in combat. Percussion brown bess! This has been C&Rsenal - South Africa edition. This has been Forgotten Weapons - South Africa edition. A bunch of kids here were excited to see the 'sniper guns' and talked about how far they could shoot. Italian stuff. The cadet rifle and the swishy thing are the most interesting to me.

Part 5 of a multi-part series. This one's got the goods. Sherman and firefly. Early crusader. Early Valentine. The British really went through a phase where they slapped 2 pounders onto everything. Father. Son. Holy ghost. Comet, aka Hipster Centurion. Centurion, aka The entire History of South African tanks post-WW2. T-shirt cannon Churchill. Combat engineers get no respect. This thing is tiny and has an insane steering system. Somehow this thing is even smaller. Those twin barrels are for a flamethrower of some sort, because the Italians were world-class optimists.

Part 4 in an ongoing series. Entrance cannons are a universal theme for museums. Lord knows why. German AT guns get their own niche. Dear god but the '88 is huge. Pom-poms! I wasn't joking when I said that the area between the two Halls is packed with artillery. Misc naval guns. Remember that time when the Germans inexplicably re-bored a Russian field gun and used it as a much more powerful antitank gun? This one also has authentic battle damage! Misc park area guns. G5. Italy can into AT guns.

More from the Joburg war museum/museum of military history. The planes are fairly well-known, although there are a few surprises here that you guys might like. Warning: lots of blurry photos ahead. All from the Brink Hall. There's also a Hawker Hartebees lurking around in the background that I couldn't find an opportunity to photograph make an illustrative diorama of. Engines, including a certain teutonic failure-engine lurking towards the right of the first picture. This is probably the first exhibit you'll see. It's in a little glass-fronted display just past the entrance, along with its two chums. Chum 1 Chum 2. Note the impressive late-war German build quality, as well as the utterly insane idea of making a fast, grossly unreliable aircraft into a night fighter. Speaking of dangerous aircraft, here's an Impala. My brother had a friend in school who lost a father to one of these things. A lonely whirlybird Our nuclear option. The Canberra was unavailable for comment. Turbodak's dad.

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