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#1: Fort Benning / Fort Lee Updates? Author: jcneel, Location: Victoria, Texas

Posted: Tue Dec 31, 2013 4:19 am
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Has there been any projected opening dates for these two armor museums? Most of the stuff I find on line about these two museums seems not to be updated on any regular basis.

I sure would like to be able to see the Tiger tank some day.

Thank

Chris Neel

#2: Re: Fort Benning / Fort Lee Updates? Author: Doug_Kibbey, Location: The Great Satan

Posted: Tue Dec 31, 2013 4:28 am
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I don't have the dates, but I'm pretty sure it will involve time travel. Wink

#3: Re: Fort Benning / Fort Lee Updates? Author: piney, Location: Republic of Southern New Jersey

Posted: Tue Dec 31, 2013 8:24 am
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- Doug_Kibbey

I don't have the dates, but I'm pretty sure it will involve time travel.

#4: Re: Fort Benning / Fort Lee Updates? Author: ChrisC,

Posted: Tue Dec 31, 2013 10:06 pm
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sometime after the day after never?

#5: Re: Fort Benning / Fort Lee Updates? Author: TerryStibal, Location: Pensacola FL

Posted: Wed Jan 01, 2014 12:21 am
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People don't want the military to support frivolity (museums, Blue Angels, Black Knights, whatever the Coast Guard does), and the donation rate at Aberdeen the one year my wife sat there and monitored it was rock bottom.

Net result is we have two big time museums that have gone dark for the foreseeable future.

I'm going through New Orleans next week, and will check if the Jackson Barracks collection is open yet (after the effects of Katrina). I don't have my hopes up....

#6: Re: Fort Benning / Fort Lee Updates? Author: Rick_Eshleman, Location: Lewes, Delaware, USA

Posted: Wed Jan 01, 2014 1:00 am
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So if I go back in time Benning/Lee are accessible? How about Ft Sill? How's 20 plus years? Some how even though I was near Ft. Lee (at Tank Museum in Danville, VA) they were not part of my agenda? Happy New Year all! Rick

I Think I need a Delorean. Cool

#7: Re: Fort Benning / Fort Lee Updates? Author: JG300-Ascout, Location: Cyberspace

Posted: Wed Jan 01, 2014 4:01 am
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- TerryStibal

People don't want the military to support frivolity (museums, Blue Angels, Black Knights, whatever the Coast Guard does), and the donation rate at Aberdeen the one year my wife sat there and monitored it was rock bottom.

You might also want to poll people about the advisability of re-funding collections that they'd already contributed to only to see them moved serendipitously to a new, unfunded and unestablished location...that now solicits donations for uncertain "new" exhibits.

P.S. "Dawn" called...they keep asking if Tony Orlando has been released yet. Laughing

#8: Re: Fort Benning / Fort Lee Updates? Author: Dontos, Location: Vine Grove, KY

Posted: Thu Jan 02, 2014 4:17 am
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Officially there is no US Army Armor Museum. That facility died with BRAC

There is an Armor & Cavalry collection whose sole purpose is to provide historical instructional activities only to be utilized (and seen) by active duty trainees...on Ft Benning.

There is a foundation that is trying to fund a facility but....

Hopefully, my grandchildren will be able to show their kids some of the historic vehicles 'we' tried to preserve....but I doubt it...

Don

#9: Re: Fort Benning / Fort Lee Updates? Author: Doug_Kibbey, Location: The Great Satan

Posted: Thu Jan 02, 2014 6:17 am
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The best advice I could give a new budding armor enthusiast would be to contact the people on these boards, seek to obtain as many images as have been collected over the last few years (some of which are assembled and published as either the AFV registries for various nations...and the find commercial work of Chris "Toadman" Hughes and build a virtual library. A lot of these vehicles are not soon to be seen again and probably never in the best condition that some our members have captured. Get permissions and don't share without it and maybe a grand collection could be published later, because the only real museum in the immediate future is going to the the "virtual" one created by dedicated members here and elsewhere.

We need a leader to volunteer to assemble a tome of all the stuff we have and try to get it published at a reasonable rate. It would be well worth having.

#10: Re: Fort Benning / Fort Lee Updates? Author: piney, Location: Republic of Southern New Jersey

Posted: Thu Jan 02, 2014 12:25 pm
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Yes that would be a great project, not counting my digital stuff, I have a couple hundred Kodachrome slides somewhere in my storage building from the 1978 -1993 period, including the "Mile of Tanks" and the Elephant in about five different paint jobs. I also complied a chart of the vehicles around the museum building when I started going there in 1977

PS
there also used to be a computer disk available at the museum gift shop that had single shots of many of the vehicles. I paid $10 US for my copy. Since the gift shop is gone I wonder what may have happened to the existing stocks and or rights to it. There was also a great book called "Tiger Without a Home" about the Tiger I and it's history, it was also IIRC only available through the Gift shop for about ten dollars that I was fortunate enough to get on my last visit. Maybe Bob Smart still has some contacts and could get more information on these items,

Last edited by piney on Thu Jan 02, 2014 4:18 pm; edited 1 time in total

#11: Re: Fort Benning / Fort Lee Updates? Author: binder001,

Posted: Thu Jan 02, 2014 3:46 pm
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Over the years it has been apparent that the museums are the "red haired stepchildren" of the US Army. The Air Force has a nice facility at Wright-Patterson, the USMC has a recent facility at Quantico, even the Navy supports some museums to a certain extent. The Army seems to have minimal interest in preserving its own history. In fact in the current political climate from Washington, the US Army seems a bit embarassed by having been involved in wars at all. The situation isn't all that new, look how Aberdeen languished for so many years. Supporting a museum isn't on the officers' career ladder. It used to be that there would be one or two bright spots, for a while it was Knox and the Patton Museum. Right now the only apparent bright spot appears to be at Ft. Sill where the Field Artillery Museum has quietly been doing some improvements and has even grabbed a few loose items from APG. The Army has some fascinating artifact vehicles, such as "Cobra King" but no one in the upper eschelons gives a damn. We have just had to digest the news of the largest private collection of restored AFVs being closed and the collection broken up. I'm curious about how having some new Armor Branch trainees or officer candidates look over some rusting claptrap will teach them anything about the history of their profession versus being able to sit in some fully restored examples of historic vehicles and being able to compare them with the new equipment they are being trained on.

#12: Re: Fort Benning / Fort Lee Updates? Author: armyjunk2,

Posted: Thu Jan 02, 2014 7:02 pm
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"there also used to be a computer disk available at the museum gift shop that had single shots of many of the vehicles. I paid $10 US for my copy. Since the gift shop is gone I wonder what may have happened to the existing stocks and or rights to it."I have a copy of this and it is copyrighted by The Ordnance Museum Foundation, Inc. If someone gets permission to post the photos I will post them.
I also copied around 60 cd's of Patton Museum photographs that sometime in the future I would like to post, when I get around to it. Again do I need permission? from who?
One more thing, I have 6GB's, maybe 4000 Hunnicutt photos, I have no idea what can or can not be posted...
I assume the Patton Museum cds are gone along with everything else there...
Anyone have any good ideas on this??

#13: Re: Fort Benning / Fort Lee Updates? Author: Dontos, Location: Vine Grove, KY

Posted: Fri Jan 03, 2014 12:40 am
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- armyjunk2

[b]"I also copied around 60 cd's of Patton Museum photographs that sometime in the future I would like to post, when I get around to it. Again do I need permission? from who?
One more thing, I have 6GB's, maybe 4000 Hunnicutt photos, I have no idea what can or can not be posted...
I assume the Patton Museum cds are gone along with everything else there...
Anyone have any good ideas on this??

All you have to do is credit the individual collection or 'Armor Archives'.....or if you really wanna confuse, simply credit Patton Museum Archives since that's what they were when you obtained them....

I have a considerable amount of the digital archives, as I was making copies up until the day 'we' packed the library up...

...that's my secret stash....opps. I didn't say that...!! LOL!!

Regards
Don

#14: Re: Fort Benning / Fort Lee Updates? Author: armyjunk2,

Posted: Fri Jan 03, 2014 1:09 am
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you were there the day I was copying those CDs, How have you been??

#15: Re: Fort Benning / Fort Lee Updates? Author: Dontos, Location: Vine Grove, KY

Posted: Fri Jan 03, 2014 11:48 am
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Doing pretty good. Work has kept me from any new projects though....

Regards
Don

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