Date visited: 21 April 2023

The final visit planned for this trip was to the Royal Museum of the Armed Forces and of Military History, in Brussels, who are apparently the custodians of a Belgian Navy Rhine Patrol Ship.Unfortunately the museum is undergoing extensive renovations at the moment, and many of the galleries are closed to the public, including the Marine, Aviation and tank sections.  Fortunately their security isn't very good, as I had gone all the way through the Marine section, and half-way around the Aviation section before they realised I was there, and booted me out.The Marine section is relatively small - perhaps a bit bigger than a basketball court or two, but the galleries were well presented, with the normal range of models, photographs, uniforms, artifacts, guns etc, that you would expect to see in a national naval museum.  Given the relatively modest size of the Belgian Navy historically, they are able to go into reasonable detail with the war history of many of the Belgian ships that served in WW2, and also covered the Zeebrugge raid - including a model of the Vindictive as modified for the raid.  All of the signage was tri-lingual.I didn't find the patrol ship that was supposed to be there - and apparently it may not be on display anymore.Outside of the marine sphere, the museum had very extensive collections of medieval arms and armour, masses of artillery pieces, and a large collection of warplanes.  I didn't get into the tank hall, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was comprehensive as well.  The gift shop looked very well stocked but was unfortunately closed when I was there.It was worth the visit - and if you were also interested in aircraft of land armaments, this museum would definitely be worth seeing.