The Tank Museum

The Tank Museum (previously The Bovington Tank Museum) is a collection of armoured fighting vehicles at Bovington Camp in Dorset, South West England. It is about north of the village of Wool and west of the major port of Poole. The collection traces the history of the tank. With almost 300 vehicles on exhibition from 26 countries it is the largest collection of tanks and the third largest collection of armoured vehicles in the world. It includes Tiger 131, the only working example of a German Tiger I tank, and a British First World War Mark I, the world's oldest surviving combat tank. It is the museum of the Royal Tank Regiment and the Royal Armoured Corps and is a registered charity. The writer Rudyard Kipling visited Bovington in 1923 and, after viewing the damaged tanks that had been salvaged at the end of the First World War, recommended a museum should be set up. Accordingly, a shed was established to house the collection but was not opened to the general public until 1947. George Forty, who was appointed director of the museum in 1982, expanded and modernized the collection. He retired in 1993 after which he was appointed an OBE. The museum established its own YouTube channel to teach about the tanks in January 2010. David Fletcher, who had been a historian at the museum since 1982, retired in 2012 and was also appointed an MBE "for his services to the history of armoured warfare". As well as containing the majority of the museum's World War I tanks this hall tells the story of men who crewed the first tanks between 1916 and 1918. Featured tanks: Mark I tank, IV, V (one of the few World War I tanks still in working order), IX & Mark VIII "Liberty" tanks. This hall now explores the rise of the tank and the role of the cavalry on the Western Front. Featured tanks: Vickers A1E1 Independent, Peerless armoured car & Vickers Light tank, Mark II. This hall displays the largest section, with tanks from most nations involved in that conflict. Featured tanks: Panzer I, III, IV, Stug III, Tiger II, Jagdpanzer 38(t), Jagdpanther, Jagdtiger, Sd.