Are four visits to the same museum overkill? Not to this one!

The UMMC Museum Complex is an absolutely unique and astonishing collection of all kinds of machinery. This includes cars, airplanes, railway transport, and much, much more – both civilian and military, and from antique to modern-day. There’s even a submarine! An incredible place – and I’ve said that many times but never get tired of repeating it. The museum has over 10,000 (!) exhibits, so you won’t be able to see everything in just one visit, so don’t even hope for that. For a thorough and comprehensive tour of the exhibition, set aside two or even three days.

I’d already been here three times, walked around a lot, observed, was amazed – and then shared my photos and impressions. This time, I managed to carve out a couple of hours for a visit (which, of course, is categorically insufficient) – just to rush through and see the latest additions to the collection. Yes, yes, despite the enormous number of exhibits there are already, the museum continues to actively expand with new ones.

First, we head to the “Wings of Victory” exhibition hall, where aircraft and other aviation-related exhibits are mainly displayed. Wow! Another Douglas DC-3 in the collection ->

Aha, they were built in the USSR under license until as late as 1952.

So what else is new in the halls?

Whoa, a Fieseler Fi 156 Storch – I’d never seen such an aircraft before (nor even heard of it:) ->

An amazing aircraft: thanks to the size of its wings and their advanced mechanization, it could take off from a strip only 60 meters long (!), and for landing, it needed just… 20 meters!! That means – on a regular runway, it could take off and land across the runway :)

Another new addition – another German plane: the Junkers Ju 87 dive bomber. I don’t remember from which forest or swamp they managed to recover this specimen, but the restoration work’s simply superb:

You can take a look inside the cockpit:

This half-tracked-half-wheeled transporter was found somewhere in the northern swamps. The condition is just excellent! Even the license plate’s been preserved:

And it’s operational! Proof: oil’s dripping from the engine (and it was driven under its own steam into this hall) →

Why they placed it in the aviation section – I’ve no idea. I guess it was that there was no more room in the more appropriate hall. Next to it is another tractor. Probably placed here for the same reason:

An anti-aircraft gun – now that’s more related to aviation. But it’s from “the other side” ->

Soviet equipment. Another anti-aircraft gun and… a “listener”. Or what do you call a machine that “listens” for enemy aircraft? They say that a specialist with good hearing could not only hear approaching aircraft from several kilometers away, but also estimate their number and altitude.

Many exhibits arrive at the museum after decades of being forgotten in forests, swamps, and at the bottoms of lakes and rivers. For example, here are the remains of a Che-2 seaplane:

This Douglas DC-3 has been here for a while, but it’s been significantly touched up, polished, and improved ->

And the cabin’s been “refreshed”. A fascinating aircraft that was revolutionary in comfort for its time.

Overall, a highly interesting exhibition! But again, I’ve only shown and talked about the new exhibits that weren’t here last time (summer 2022). There’s plenty of other stuff too…

Now, a few more new items in the Military Equipment Museum building. Here’s a recently recovered STZ-5 artillery tractor. Clearly, it’s spent a long time lying in a swamp.

It’s a pity that the informational plaques don’t tell the stories of the individual exhibits – where they were found, in what condition, and what’s known about the people associated with them.

A Renault FT light tank – another new addition:

Whoa! Space exhibits too! A descent capsule, in its original form:

And they told an interesting story about this heavy tractor. A German aircraft was shot down, but landed on the ice of a lake somewhere in the north. They sent this very tractor to retrieve it. Not surprisingly, it just fell through the ice – where it remained at the bottom of the lake until just recently! ->