cold war gallery museum, washington navy yard

Most things are illustrated with a combination of smaller artifacts (weapons, personal items, etc) and ship models, with a number of the models being particularly pretty. Unfortunately, they were doing work in that part of the museum, so we weren't able to get a good look at the exhibits on undersea exploration. The biggest of these was the bathyscaphe Trieste, first vessel to reach the bottom of the Challenger Deep. A handful of large artifacts were used at specific points, including a recreation of a section of Constitution's gundeck and an actual fighting top removed during restoration, a number of medium-sized guns, including a twin 5'/38 and single 5'/51s and 5'/25s, and an F4U Corsair suspended from the ceiling. The displays were reasonably modern, and the curators had done a good job using all of their resources to tell a coherent story. Mr Meeseeks, Cassander and Souleater with a 16' shellĮverything in the building was done quite well.

We started in the main building, which covers the history of the USN from the revolution to WWII. Outside, there's an open area with a number of different artifacts. Washington Navy Yard has a long history as one of the Navy's leading industrial facilities, and the museum is split between two buildings, the bulk in the building where the Naval Gun Factory (the main tenant for the yard from 1886 to 1961) used to build gun breeches, and the Cold War gallery in the Taylor Building, originally built for the Navy's Experimental Model Basin.

The visitor control center was not a paragon of good customer service, and the wait was quite long, even though both Cassander and I should have already been in their system. I went with Cassander and Souleater, and we met Mr Meeseeks there. This means that you have to get a pass to visit, and at time of writing (October 2021), while the Museum is open on Saturday, people who don't have access to the base have to go Monday through Friday, when the visitor control center is open. The Navy Museum, the flagship facility of the Navy History and Heritage Command, is located on-base at the Washington Navy Yard, the oldest shore facility in the US Navy.

Cold war gallery museum, washington navy yard