Greece
Athens
The Greek National War Museum
The Greek National War Museum, which opened on 18 July 1975, is situated in Vassilissis Sophias Avenue, Athens, just a short stroll from the Parliament Building and Syntagma Square. Exhibits cover conflicts in which Greeks were involved from ancient times to the present day. In addition to the main museum in the capital, there are now branches in Nafplion and Tripoli, both of which are in the Peloponnese, Chania on Crete and another in the country`s second city of Thessaloniki. There is also the Greek National Aviation Museum which is located at Tatoi-Dekeleia Air Base north of Athens.
The Athens Museum's exhibition areas are distributed over four floors and contain displays of Greek military history from antiquity to the present day. A small number of military aircraft and missiles, all ex-Greek Air Force examples, are on display at the entrance while various artillery pieces are on show in the open-air at the rear of the building. More information can be found on the musuem`s official website: www.warmuseum.gr.
Canadair CL-13 Mk.2 Sabre and North American T-6G Texan.
North American T-6G Texan 32803 (ex 41-32803).
Northrop F-5A Freedom Fighter, 89071 is ex 68-9071.
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Bell 47-3B-1 OH-13S Sioux Helicopter, serial number ES-709 (ex 69-19622).
Partially visible in the background in the left-hand photograph is a replica of the Henri Farman aircraft, `Daedalus`, one of the first military planes to see action. In 1912 Greece received four bi-planes from the French manufacturer to form an air force and `Daedalus` was used to drop bombs on Turkish positions in December of that year during the Balkan Wars.
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Canadair CL-13 Mk.2 Sabre 51-6171.
Lockheed F-104G Starfighter, Serial Number 6695.
Republic F-84F Thunderstreak 67-37216. Prior to serving with the Hellenic Air Force it was a Luftwaffe aircraft, serial number DB+344.
The artillery pieces in the museum`s collection originate from various countries including Great Britain, France, Germany and Czechoslovakia. The weapons were either used by the Greeks and their allies or by enemy forces during the Balkan Wars and other conflicts in which Greece participated.
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The museum has a large number of models on display including warships, submarines, tanks and this German Army Krupp K5 railway gun nicknamed Leopold. Twenty-five of these massive artillery pieces were built, each with a barrel 21.5 metres (71 ft) long. Only vertical elevation of the weapon was possible and horizontal alignment was restricted to the angle of the track on which the carriage stood. On occasions a curved length of railway was used with the gun shunted backwards or forwards to aim. Three of these guns were installed on the Hitler`s Atlantic Wall to target Allied shipping in the English Channel. Leoplod and Robert, better known to the Allies as Anzio Express and Anzio Annie, were used to shell the Anzio Beachhead in Italy. As the Allies moved inland the guns were found abandoned on a railway siding. Both had been damaged but Leopold less so. They were shipped to the USA for testing and Leopold was repaired using suitable parts from Robert. Leopold was then put on display and is now at Fort Lee, Virginia, USA. A second surviving gun can be seen at the Batterie Todt museum, near Audinghen in Northern France. |
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This 535cm torpedo comes from Papanikolis (Y-2) Submarine, one of the most successful Greek submarines to operate during the Second World War. She sank various enemy vessels during the conflict including cargo ships and a troop carrier. She also disembarked and uplifted various Commando units which carried out raids on Axis tragets on several occupied Greek Islands.
Papanikolis survived the war and returned to Greece after liberation in October 1944. Built in 1927, she was by then severely outdated and was decommissioned in 1945. The ship's conning tower was preserved and is on display outside the Hellenic Maritime Museum at Piraeus. |
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Many of the displays in the Athens War Museum relate to the Greek War of Independence and feature national heroes and military leaders.
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Left: Lieutenant General Vassilios Petmezas (1785 - 1872). General of the Armies of the Peloponnese, Theodore Coloctrones (1770 - 1843) is in the centre.
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Detailed maps showing The Battle of Salamis and the Battle of Thermopylae, both of which took place in 480 B.C.
Above: One of the stones now known as the Elgin Marbles, this is one of a sequence depicting the battle between the legendary Lapithae and the Centaurs. To the Athenians, this symbolised both the victory of the civilization over barbarism as well as the Greeks triumph over the Persians.
Right: This is a plaster cast from the original tablet, currently held at the Athens National Museum. It depicts the Hoplite Democledes, son of Demetrius, sitting pensively with his helmet and shield at his side and the prow of a trireme in front. The original, which dates from the early 4th century, is thought to have come from the funerary cenotaph of Democledes who was killed in a naval battle. |
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The map shows the German advance through Greece in April 1941, during the Second World War.
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This is a model of one of the forts on the Metaxas Line, a chain of 21 defensive strongpoints constructed along the line of the Greco-Bulgarian border. It was named after Ioannia Metaxas who was the dictatorial ruler of Greece at the time. A network of tunnels led to observatories, emplacements, artillery and machine-gun posts and some of the constructions are still used by the Greek military.
Work on the Metaxas Line began in 1936 but was far from complete when war broke out in 1939. Any manned fortresses were outflanked by the Germans in 1941 when they invaded through what was then Yugoslavia. Despite a determined resistance the Greek forces were unable to thwart the German panzer thrusts and surrendered after several days of heavy fighting. |
A WW2 Russian 7.62 Cal. M1910 Maxim Machine Gun. This weapon was the standard heavy machine gun during most of the conflict. It was a water cooled belt-fed design adopted in 1910 modified to accommodate standard Russian rifle ammunition. The M1910 was normally mounted on a cumbersome wheeled mount with a bullet shield, although there were some rare light tripod mounts in use in addition to various naval and aircraft mounts.
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A very reliable weapon, it was well liked by the Soviet troops, but it did have many drawbacks. It was considerably heavier than the German General Purpose MG 42, making it far less mobile, and at 600 rounds per minute, it did not have as fast a rate of fire as its counterpart. Further, the Russian gun lacked the ability to change burnt out barrels quickly, a frequent requirment following sustained use. However, what it lacked in refinement it made up for in brute force. The gun could fire longer bursts than many of its contemporaries as the water contained in the tubular water jacket helped keep the barrel cool. Also, the standard 250 round belts could be joined together to reduce the number of ammunition changes.
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Scale models include an M24 Chaffee medium Tank and the Ford Motor Company`s M8 Greyhound Armoured Car, both WW2 era armoured vehicles built in the USA which later saw service with the Greek Army.
The Panzerfaust (`armor fist` or `tank fist`) was in use from 1943 until the end of WW2. An inexpensive, single shot, recoilless German anti-tank weapon, it was designed to be operated by a single soldier to help redress the overwhelming balance of Allied and Soviet armour. Unlike the American Bazooka, and the Germans' own heavier 88mm Panzerschreck, the Panzerfaust did not have a trigger but a pedal-like lever near the projectile that ignited the propellant when squeezed. The German weapon proved particularly effective in urban environments.
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This small piece of metal is all that remains of the Cameron-class merchant ship SS Clan Fraser which was destroyed by the Luftwaffe in a bombing raid on the port of Piraeus on 6 April 1941. The vessel was built in Greenock by the Greenock Dockyard Company and entered service with Clan Line Steamers of London in 1939. She was a familiar sight on the Clyde until the outbreak of the Second World War when she was utilised for convoy duty in the Mediterranean.
Clan Fraser was just one of many ships that were struck and set alight during the raid but her cargo proved to be particularly catastrophic. She was carrying arms and 250 tons of high-explosives which soon ignited causing a massive blast which ripped through the port causing severe damage to ships, dockside installations and houses, some of which were a considerable distance from the waterfront. The shock wave even rattled doors and windows in Athens, fifteen miles away. This fragment was found in a Piraeus garden, 1.5km from the centre of the explosion. Clan Frazer sank in the harbour leaving six of her crew dead and nine wounded. Her master, Capt J.H. Giles was one of the survivors. |
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A World War 2 British Army sentry box and five-barrelled Nordenfelt machine-gun manufactured in Sweden in 1880. This weapon was used by the Hellenic Navy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The weapon was also adopted by the British Royal Navy, to supplement their Gatling and Gardner guns. During a demonstration held at Portsmouth a ten-barrelled version of the weapon, firing rifle calibre cartridges shot 3,000 rounds of ammunition in 3 minutes and 3 seconds without stoppage or failure. The development of the more advanced Maxim gun resulted in a Nordenfelt / Maxim Gun Company merger in 1888.
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There are a number of paintings showing the country`s armed forces in action during the major conflicts of the 20th century.
Please bear in mind that all my images are copyright. They are not free to use and have been embedded with a digital watermark.
