After visiting the Wilhelm Bauer, I then went on to the Deutsches Marinemuseum at Wilhelmshaven- which I gather is the official museum of the Federal German Navy.This had everything you would expect from a national institution - well equipped galleries with large numbers of photographs, ship models, artifacts etc. Outside there were several larger items on display - a section of armour from Tirpitz (which appeared to have been shot at), a damaged 11-in gun from Seydlitz, a 6-in gun from the WW2 cruiser Koln, and various other guns, mines, torpedoes etc. But the main attraction there for most of the tourists were the six museum ships.Molders. One of the German Charles F. Adams class DDGs - brought back bad memories for me - I spent some time on one of her Australian half-sisters, and she bounced around like a cork in a bucket.U-10. A small post-war submarine - and sister of the U-11 I had seen the previous day in Fehmarn. Access was via a vertical ladder through a small hatch - probably something I should have done a few years back before my knee started giving me grief.Gepard. A relatively recently retired missile boat, fitted with Exocets and RAM.Weilheim. A post-war minesweeper.The above four ships were all open to visitors, with extensive access provided to most compartments on the ship. The following two small vessels were for display only.KTS-952. This was described as a small East German motor torpedo boat - although it didn't appear to have any tubes fitted (or much space to add them). This boat is on 'loan' from a Dresden museum, so may only be a temporary exhibit.And finally a Seehund midget submarine that had been found and recovered relatively recently, and which they didn't have any history for.The big lesson from my visit to this museum, is that there is an awful lot to get around, and you will need at least half a day to do it justice - I only had an hour, so had to skim through stuff pretty quickly.Even though all of these museum ships are somewhat outside my research area, you don't often get the chance to see six museum ships in a single location, and the museum itself was also worth the visit.Wilhelmshaven is a little out of the way, but worth the effort.
