Imperial War Museum- Southwark

 The Imperial War Museum (IWM),is a British national museum. It is headquartered in London, with five branches in England. Founded as the Imperial War Museum in 1917, it was intended to record the civil and military war effort and sacrifice of the United Kingdom and its Empire during the First World War.

The museum's remit has since expanded to include all conflicts in which British or Commonwealth forces have been involved since 1914.

 Originally the museum opened in 1920 in the Crystal Palace, in Syndenham Hill. In 1924 it moved to a space in South Kensington. It found its final destination and permanent home at the Bethlem Royal Hospital, Southwark in 1936.

 The Imperial War Museum's original collections date back to the material amassed by the National War Museum Committee.

Armoured Land Rover Defender - Reuters press vehicle

The wreckage of a car destroyed by a bomb during the Iraq War.

Rocket V2

(click on the above link to read about the V2)

Harrier jump jet

(click the above link to read about the Harrier) 

Supermarine Spitfire

(click the above link to read about the Spitfire)  

The museum's collections include archives of personal and official documents, photographs, film and video material, and oral history recordings, an extensive library, a large art collection, and examples of military vehicles and aircraft, equipment, and other artefacts.

The museum's documents archive seeks to collect and preserve the private papers of individuals who have experienced modern warfare. The archive's holdings range from the papers of senior British and Commonwealth army, navy and air officers, to the letters, diaries and memoirs of lower-ranked servicemen and of civilians.

 The archive also includes large collections of foreign documents, such as captured German Second World War documents previously held by the Cabinet Office Historical Section, Air Historical Branch and other British government bodies. The foreign collection also includes captured Japanese material transferred from the Cabinet Office.

 

The museum's exhibits collection includes a wide range of objects, organised into numerous smaller collections such as uniforms, badges, insignia and flags,personal mementoes, souvenirs and miscellanea such as trench art;orders,medals and decorations(including collection of Victoria and George Crosses).

 The museum's Photograph Archive preserves photographs by official, amateur and professional photographers. The collection includes the official British photographic record of the two world wars; the First World War collection includes the work of photographers such as Ernest Brooks and John Warwick Brooke. The archive also holds 150,000 British aerial photographs from the First World War, the largest collection of its kind. The Second World War collection includes the work of photographers such as Bill Brandt, Cecil Beaton and Bert Hardy.In 2012 the museum reported the size of its photographic holdings as approximately 11 million images in 17,263 collections.

The Imperial War Museum is the first museum in the world to have both dedicated Second World War and Holocaust Galleries. These Galleries help ensure that experiences of wartime generations are never forgoten.

The British naval guns with 15-inch barrelsIn were the newest and largest guns in 1914 

on any of the Royal Naval battleships and during their tenure were placed on more than a dozen different ships.

They each weigh more than 100 tons and the shell of the bullet that goes in them is nearly 2,000 pounds each.

Over two million people visit the IWM each year.The museum became the “imperial” rather than the “national” war museum in recognition of the huge contribution that had been made by soldiers from every corner of the empire, including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India.

(source)