War Museums Celebrate Britain’s ‘Finest Hour’

Fifty years after the invasion of Pearl Harbor, Americans are again turning their attention to World War II. The British, however, have always had enthusiasm for wartime nostalgia, as this city’s many military-themed museums can attest. There’s probably no place better to explore the history of WWII than here in the country that survived against desperate odds.

Half a century after the war consumed Great Britain’s energies--but not its spirit--big audiences are flocking to ever-expanding displays that commemorate that battle for survival, which Prime Minister Winston Churchill termed his country’s “finest hour.”

Crowds of tourists and British schoolchildren mingle at museums and aboard a Royal Navy cruiser permanently moored in the shadow of the Tower Bridge to explore graphic reminders of what it was like during the war.

Naturally, the emphasis here is on the war in Europe. But the Pacific War and, even more, the indispensable role of the American Allies, are amply recognized in the historical displays.

Given the British preoccupation with the “Big One,” it’s not surprising that one of the hottest shows in town is “Carmen Jones,” a revival of the Oscar Hammerstein musical that borrows the old operatic theme and sets it among black GIs in the South during the war.

The play is selling out nightly at the Old Vic, a 19th-Century structure that has long since recovered from the damage of a wartime bombing raid.

Another bomb survivor that now attracts legions of visitors is a brownish-brick columned building, also of 19th-Century vintage, that once housed a “lunatic asylum,” Bethlem Royal Hospital--more commonly known as Bedlam. Fittingly, Bedlam’s soaring main hall, built in 1815, is now the entryway of the Imperial War Museum, a spectacular collection of memorabilia dedicated to remembering the lunacy of war.

“There is no one alive today whose life has not been shaped in some way by the great conflicts of this century, and if that is a sad comment on humanity it also suggests that our subject is one that deserves study,” the museum’s general director, Alan Borg, notes in an introduction to the museum.

Although the War Museum traces its roots to 1920, it was only two years ago--53 years after it moved to the Bedlam site on the south side of the River Thames--that it opened its new and refurbished galleries with triple the exhibition space. And it plans further expansion.

The War Museum has enough displays to keep a visitor occupied for a full day and then some, and its unseen archives promise a fortune of knowledge for scholars. But in addition, the museum maintains three other sites for the public: the HMS Belfast, the last of the “big gun ships,” moored not far away in the Thames; the Cabinet War Rooms, the reinforced underground emergency complex near 10 Downing Street where Prime Minister Churchill, the War Cabinet and chiefs of staff conducted operations during the war, and the Duxford Airfield near Cambridge, the former Battle of Britain fighter station where 120 aircraft and other exhibits are displayed.

A closer-in gathering of war birds can be seen at the Royal Air Force Museum on the northern fringe of London in Hendon, the cradle of British aviation, reachable via the subway system.

For those visitors who did not experience World War II firsthand and wonder what it was like, any one of these museums (and there are others in London and environs) offer examples ranging from the entertaining to the truly gut-wrenching.

Two of the more dramatic at the Imperial War Museum are “The Blitz Experience,” a re-creation of a 1940 air-raid shelter and bombed London street, and an audio-visual display depicting Nazi concentration camps.

In the Blitz re-creation, small groups of visitors are seated in the shelter, where they experience the effects of a bombing raid as the room shakes from the concussion of exploding bombs and a smoky smell fills the air. Once the “all clear” sounds, visitors are led past a Disneylike diorama of a blazing city and along a battered neighborhood street, where they hear the voice of a person trapped under the rubble and people around him shouting encouragement. It’s a sobering reminder of what it was like to live in a city under attack.

Even more chilling are the photos, films and oral histories of life and death in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. In showing the monstrous horrors of Germany’s “final solution,” the museum pulls no punches; there are films of people being executed and their bodies being carted away. It’s not a display for anyone whose nerves are easily rattled.

But not all of the War Museum is devoted to World War II--other modern wars get their share of attention. Among the tanks, guns, uniforms, medals and other remembrances of war are trophies that range from World War I to Operation Desert Storm. A Sopwith Camel, the biplane made famous by World War I flying aces, hangs from the ceiling of the giant hall amid such World War II celebrities as the British Spitfire and the American P-51 Mustang. Below them is a display case that contains the desert camouflage uniform shirt and beret that were worn only a few months ago in the Mideast by Gen. Sir Peter de la Billiere, commander of British forces in Desert Storm.

The museum has also quickly mounted a display of eye-catching photos by Mike Moore, the only photographer to go to the front with the British 4th Armoured Brigade--”the Desert Rats.” And there is also an audio-visual section devoted to the BBC’s war coverage of the Persian Gulf War.

Four stops away on the London Underground, history buffs can get a much different view of wartime by visiting the Cabinet War Rooms, the nerve center of military operations during World War II. The reinforced underground rooms, said to be exactly as they were when intelligence experts walked away from their desks at war’s end in 1945, are beneath the government offices in the center of London and only a short walk from 10 Downing Street, the British prime minister’s residence.

It was from one of these rooms, not much more than a broom closet in size, that Churchill talked by a secure telephone line to President Franklin D. Roosevelt in what established the world’s first hot line between world leaders. Visitors can see that room, as well as 20 others, many of them laden with maps, charts and communications devices. It was also from these rooms that Churchill made many of his wartime radio broadcasts.

For a sailor’s view of the war, visitors are welcome aboard the HMS Belfast, which carried 850 crewmen into battle and is a lasting symbol of the proud British maritime tradition. Except for the addition of several museum displays and a snack bar, the ship is much as it was half a century ago. The tour requires considerable clambering up and down narrow staircases that link the five 613-foot-long decks and the five-level control tower to see the remarkable variety of facilities--from shell-loading operations to bread baking--that are crammed aboard a fighting vessel.

And the air museums have still another story to tell.

The RAF Museum bills itself as the largest and best-attended aviation museum in Europe. A sprawling facility with dozens of aircraft and military paraphernalia on display, it devotes much of its space to the Spitfires and Hurricanes of World War II, as well as to the evolution of military flight.

It, too, has a Sopwith Camel in a prominent position.

But you can be sure you won’t find any jokes about the Camel’s chief protagonist, the German flyer who was known as the Red Baron.

GUIDEBOOK: London War Museums

Imperial War Museum: On Lambeth Road. Take the London Underground Bakerloo line to Lambeth North or Elephant & Castle stations. Or take the Northern line to Waterloo station. Local telephone: 071-820-1683 (recorded) or 071-416-5000 (general inquiries).

Open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily; free on Friday. Closed Dec. 24-26 and Jan. 1. Admission: about $6; $2 extra for the “Blitz Experience” or “Operation Jericho,” a ride in a Link pilot trainer that simulates a Royal Air Force sortie. Gift shop, cafe with reasonably priced selections, free films on weekends and holidays. A program of talks by museum staff. A museum guidebook costs about $4.50.

Royal Air Force Museum: In Hendon, north London. Take Northern line to Colindale station; museum is a healthy walk away. Telephone: 01-205-2266.

Open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily. Closed Dec. 24-26 and Jan. 1. Admission: About $7.25 (ticket may be used again within six months). For a small additional fee, the RAF Museum also features a ride in Link trainer that simulates “the thrill of flying a low-level sortie in an RAF Tornado strike aircraft with No. 617 Squadron, ‘The Dambusters’.” Gift shop, reasonably priced lunchroom. Guidebook is about $2.70.

Cabinet War Rooms: Clive Steps, King Charles Street. Take Circle or District Underground lines to Westminster station. Numerous bus lines also serve the area. Entrance is on Horse Guards Road overlooking St. James’ Park. Telephone: 071-930-6961 or 071-416-5000.

Open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Closed Dec. 24-26 and Jan. 1. Admission: $6.50. All visitors are provided with a tape-recorded guide.

HMS Belfast: Morgan’s Lane, Tooley Street. Take Northern line to London Bridge station, or Circle or District lines to Tower Hill station. Telephone: 071-407-6434.

Open 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Nov. 1 to March 19; 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., March 20 to Oct. 31. Closed Dec. 24-26, Jan. 1. Admission: about $6.50. Snack bar aboard and gift shop on shore just beyond the gangplank.

For more information: Contact the British Tourist Authority, 350 S. Figueroa St., Suite 450, Los Angeles 90071, (213) 628-3525.