Address: Clarence Esplanade, Portsmouth (See map)
Telephone: +44 (0)23-92827261
Website: http://www.ddaymuseum.co.uk

Shop: shop present
Restaurant/refreshments: refreshments
Size of the museum/site: medium
Year of visit: 2004
Overall rating:

Description: Apart from the usual displays of tanks, guns and other 'maiming & killing equipment', this museum has a unique attraction that makes it especially worthwhile to visit: The D-day Museum is home to the Overlord Embroidery. The Embroidery, which is 83 metres long (that's right, 13 metres longer than the Bayeux Tapestry!), portrays the events taking place during Operation Overlord and its aftermath. It contains 34 sections, each visualising a different scene from the liberation of Western Europe. Visitors can stroll along it at their own pace, with or without the aid of an audio-guide.

Other interesting features of the museum are the informative film you can watch, some nice dioramas and a few specialised vehicles and watercraft that are on display, such as the Beach Armoured Recovery Vehicle (see picture below). Although the museum mainly focuses on D-day, other war topics are also covered. There is a diorama of women working in the war-factories and one of the house of an air raid warden during the Blitz for example.

While you're in Portsmouth, you might want to consider visiting the D-Day museum in combination with one or two of the other war museums the city boasts (see map).

Monty standing in front of the D-Day museum.	Churchill Mark VII tank ("Crocodile") equipped with a flamethrower. It towed a trailer containing a massive 400 gallons of fuel for the flamethrower, which had a range of 90 to 100 metres.
A humorous British poster warning people not to talk about sensitive war-related subjects in public, as the enemy (portrayed by the Hitler and Goering figures on the bus) might be listening.	A section of the Overlord-embroidery displaying the massing of Allied ships and airplanes at D-Day.
One of the scenes of the actual landings, where success and heavy losses went hand-in-hand.	Marching deeper into 'enemy' territory after having survived D-Day...
Women were recruited en-masse to work at British factories, while the men were fighting at the second European front.	Diorama depicting the unloading of a glider-plane.
Especially designed for the D-Day operation, this Beach Armoured Recovery Vehicle was used to pull or push stranded armoured vehicles out of the sea.