Museo Histórico Naval de Veracruz

by Fernando I. Moreno Villa

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Mexico Navy Day 2008   
Dia de la Marina in México

 

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.

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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. 

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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.

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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

Photos and text © by Fernando I. Moreno Villa