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Hello modelers! I want
to share with you all some pictures I took during my visit to the Mexican
Navy
Historical
Museum
located in Veracruz. The building is beautiful and it used to be the building of the Navy
Military School, founded in 1897 in order to formalize the military training for young
cadets as the equivalent to the Heroic Military
College for the Army. From that building, the students resisted the U.S. Navy bombing
and landing parties
in 1914.
I was amazed with
the quality of the dioramas and models. Most of them were made by a local
modeler and some others were ordered in Mexico City. I think this is one of the best (and few) museums of this kind in Mexico, so
if anyone has the chance to go to Veracruz on business or vacation, never miss
the chance to visit it, along with the "Guanajuato Gunship" Floating
Museum and the fort of San Juan de Ulúa.
Click on
images below to see larger images
As you can see
there are scale models of many ships from the three tiny "carabelas"
of Columbus up to the newest "stealth-shaped" ships in the Navy.
Some of the
most interesting things for me were those models of the gunships purchased
between 1902 and 1905, just before the Mexican Revolution, which played a
relevant role in that conflict. As a note, the first documented effective
air-sea battle was fought in the
port
of
Topolobambo
when a Curtiss Pusher airplane dropped some bombs against one of these
beautiful warships, forcing it to break the Federal blockade and saving the
damaged gunboat "Tampico" that joined the Constitutional Army.
Click on
images below to see larger images
Another
impressive work was a huge diorama showing one of the last battles between
Aztecs and Spanish Conquistadores in the lake
of Tenochtitlan. It needed more than 1,000 figures, painted by hand one by one, plus the
work on the resin base and all the ships.
Click on
images below to see larger images
Finally
there is the section of the Modern Navy, with several good pictures and
technical data, and the Armory in which you can closely see and even handle an
Oerlikon 20mm, a Browning 50cal, a Hotchkiss 7mm and other machine guns and
Mausers.
I hope
you like the pictures. Special thanks and greetings to the guys of IPMS Veracruz,
who gave me an incredible welcome in my visit.
Fernando
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