The Museo Navale de la Nacion is about 2 hours north of the Buenos Aires CBD by public transport.The Museum consists of three large halls, as well as an outside exhibition area. The first hall covers the naval history of Argentina from pre-colonial times through to the current day. At the risk of repeating what I have said for other National Naval Museums, it was a well-presented museum containing large numbers of models, artifacts, photos, display panels etc. There was a section on the Falklands War there, another section of Argentine naval aviation, and a small memorial to the submarine they lost a couple of years ago. They had a couple of large models of the Rivadavia class dreadnoughts, one of which was a cut-away to show the internal compartmentation of the ships. There was quite a bit of furniture that had been taken from ships, including a lot of large, ornate, wooden chests which I don't really know the background of. They also had what appeared to be the builder’s plate of one of the two armoured cruisers taken over by Japan in 1904 showing shell damage from Tsushima. In comparison with other similar museums, this one was artifact rich. I initially thought that this hall was the entire museum, and thought they had done a pretty good job - and then I discovered the other two halls.The second hall was non-naval maritime stuff, so I didn't really look around that, but the third hall was an equipment hall - packed to capacity with all manner or exhibits - large numbers of guns, mines, torpedoes, fire-control equipment etc. There was a complete set of British interwar destroyer fire-control equipment (topside + below deck) taken from one of the Churruca class Destroyers, a rangefinder from one of the Brooklyn class cruisers, and much to my surprise - an Argentinian-built midget submarine. A surprise both because (1) it wasn't in my database which is supposed to have a complete list of preserved warships, and (2) one of the first of my many failed naval projects was a book about midget submarines, but I had never heard of this boat. It was apparently built in the 1960s or 70s, and appears generally similar to (although probably a bit bigger than) the Italian Maiale of WW2.The outdoor exhibition area contained three aircraft, the damaged superstructure of an Argentinian Aviso that was taken out by Sea Skuas during the Falklands War, and a large number (approx 20) of larger guns/mountings from a wide range of Argentinian warships dating back to the 19th Century which were too big to fit in the equipment hall. They included one of the secondary guns from the Rivadavia class, and an Italian twin 4-inch mounting from one of the interwar heavy cruisers.All of the signage in the museum was in Spanish only, however fortunately Spanish is similar enough to English that you could generally work out what they meant. My biggest disappointment was the lack of a gift shop. Given the quality of the museum, I had high hopes that a souvenir shop would contain some good books. Entry to the museum was 500 pesos - less than 50c (USD).Getting to this museum wasn't easy - The Buenos Aires public transport system seems quite good for those who know what they are doing - but for those like me that don't fall into that category, it was a bit of an adventure getting there (who knew the relationship between bus route number and actual bus route was a 1:Many relationship), and standing on a crush-loaded bus for 1.5 hrs, on a hot day, with a driver who appears to be a frustrated rally-car driver, wasn't much fun. But the collection on display at this museum was outstanding and at least as good as any other naval museum I have visited. It really is worth the effort, and I would highly recommend it.
