Visit the Imperial War Museum for its military airplanes & Second World War gallery

Photo: Craig Cross

Craig’s review… When was the last time we lost a war? Let me think… apart from the Romans and the Vikings and the Normans, and the Hundred Years War, and the First Boer War, and that war against Mel Gibson in Scotland, I can’t think of a single time that anybody actually managed to beat us.

Obviously you can’t include the American War of Independence because that was technically against ourselves. And Iraq and Afghanistan were half-wins and Libya was a win for about five minutes so I’m still including those… and let’s not forget the 1966 World Cup… but our days of winning wars without allies are probably behind us. We’re the military equivalent of an elderly general now. We’ve still got our old uniform pressed and ready to go but all of our best weapons are hanging from the roof of the Imperial War Museum.

Spitfire, Harrier Jet & V2 rocket in the entrance hall

Photo: Craig Cross

When you walk into the entrance hall the first thing you see is a Spitfire and Harrier Jump Jet dogfighting with a Kamikaze Ohka.

Down on the floor they’ve got a press van, a pressed van (flattened by a Baghdad bomb), a German V2 with its intestinal pipes and wires showing, and a sneakily positioned Soviet T-34 that looks like it’s rolling round the side of a building.

Photo: Craig Cross

First World War Galleries

After the inevitable bit of empire bashing (nobody’s allowed to mention the British Empire these days without first apologising for it) the exhibits move straight onto the First World War and display cases full of caps, hats, helmets, belts and boots, and an armoury of rifles, rockets, gas shells and grenades.

Photo: Craig Cross

I do like the gloomy atmosphere of this section with its soundtrack of galloping horses’ hooves, murderous gunfire and shrapnel shells exploding in the sky – the noise is pretty relentless – but I do wish they wouldn’t focus exclusively on the horror of it. Obviously I appreciate that war is awful, but when they talk about a defeat they revel in the futility and stupidity of the commanders. When they talk about a victory they bemoan the battalions that were sacrificed. Even uplifting events like the famous football game of 1914 are quickly dismissed with a few photos and a paragraph of text.

Sadly all of the family-friendly exhibits that you might remember from your youth disappeared years ago. They used to have an old trench which was almost like walking through a muddy movie set with cracklings radios and firecrackers exploding in the sky, but the version they offer up now is just a load of soldiers’ silhouettes projected onto the wall.

What you get instead are photos of bullet-ridden bodies, injuries and obituaries – I saw a cellar full of dead Belgians left there by the Germans. The only real moment of light relief is when you can measure your height, test your eyesight and wrap a measuring tape around your waist to see if you’re too unfit to fight.

The entire First World War Gallery is pretty heavy going and will probably take you the best part of an hour on its own – I needed a sit down in the cafe afterwards just to take a break from the dark.

Second World War Galleries

Photo: Craig Cross

The Second World War Galleries are more of the same with loads of posters, photos, guns and uniforms, but the vehicles are a lot more interesting up here. They’ve got a Sherman tank, a rusty old desert Chevrolet and one of those German sidecars that always seem to get blown up in Indiana Jones.

They’ve also got Monty’s old staff car, the cockpit of an Avro Lancaster, and the rusted wreck of a Japanese fighter that was hacked out of the jungle fifty years after the war.

I’m not sure it’s such a great idea having an atomic bomb on display with all these school kids running around because you know what kids are like… they’ll have a fiddle with it while their teachers aren’t looking and the next thing we know London will have disappeared into a choke of rubble and dust.

Photo: Craig Cross

The Holocaust Galleries

The last time I came here they didn’t let kids into this exhibition but they seem to have relaxed the rules now because it’s full of students holding clipboards and pens.

To be honest I’m not entirely sure the photographs are suitable for them because a lot of them aren’t even suitable for adults – I saw a picture of a guy so desperate to flee the camp that he’d jumped face-first onto an electric fence and was just hanging there like a tattered carrier bag.

Another one showed a firing line a split-second before they pulled the trigger… one victim seemed to be begging and crying for his life whilst another was just standing there and suggesting that they get on with it, to give him some blessed relief. It was probably the happiest day of his life.

They show you old film footage of children’s bloated bodies decomposing in the heat, peoples’ limbs that are so emaciated you wonder how their bones are still hanging together, fields of shoes, piles of pulled teeth and hills of hacked-off hair… the whole exhibition is every bit as horrendous as you’d expect it to be and you’ll walk around it in library-like silence.

Peace and Security Galleries

Photo: Craig Cross

The spy section contains some interesting equipment that wouldn’t look out of place in a James Bond movie… bombproof briefcases with hidden transmitters, shaving brushes with concealed cameras in them, matches that double-up as invisible pens… there’s also an old Enigma machine and a tiny bit about codebreaking, but you really need to visit Bletchley Park if you’re interested in that.

The museum kind of peters out after that. They’ve got a slab of the Berlin Wall and some mangled struts of steel from the wreckage of the World Trade Centre, but that’s about it.

Photo: Craig Cross

So in summary then… I do like the Imperial War Museum, but I wish they would shift their focus away from the misery of war because that’s the main aim of this place now: to drum it into your brain that war is awful. It’s 2-3 hours of looking at dead Jews’ shoes, tomb-strewn battlefields and bullet-riddled bodies.

And there’s nothing for the kids either. I remember coming here as a kid and clambering all over the vehicles and going home with a pack of jingoistic playing cards and some Commando comics from the shop. Now you’re more likely to go home with a copy of Schindler’s List.

I’ll sum it up like this: in the past it made you want to join the army… now it makes you want to join the priesthood.

Worth a visit? ★★☆Value for money? freeGood for kids? ★☆☆Easy to get to? ★★★

I also recommend… If you enjoy this then try Churchill War Rooms (walk it in 20 mins or travel from Lambeth North to Westminster by tube) and HMS Belfast (walk it in 28 mins or travel from Lambeth North to London Bridge via tube). If you’re interested in World War II then you might like to visit Bletchley Park and the RAF Museum as well

The author Craig Cross owns city-guide.london and has spent the last decade reviewing the capital’s landmarks, attractions and hotels. His guidebook London Squire is available from Amazon. This review was updated on 28th August 2023