When in Johannesburg, one of the best places to visit is the National Museum of Military History, a.k.a. the War Museum, located next door to the Zoo and just off of Oxford Road. The Museum’s opening hours are between 09h00 – 16h00 daily and I find that three hours is enough time to spend in order to see the exhibits on display. Opened as the South African National War Museum on the 29th August 1947 by the then Prime Minister, Field Marshal Jan Smuts, it had as its main display halls two Bellman hangars, which were originally built during the Second World War and now have become museum pieces themselves.
The Bellman hangar, was so named after its designer N. S. Bellman, the structural engineer for the British Air Ministry in 1936 who was given the brief to design a lightweight, portable and quick to erect (and dismantle) portal frame structure to house the aircraft of the Royal Air Force (RAF), at a time when the RAF was expanding its number of squadrons as a consequence of Britain re-arming to answer the threat of a resurgent Germany. What follows is an abridged version of a Guardian newspaper report, dated Monday 4th March 1935:
In a major reversal of rearmament policy Britain today announced new expansion plans for its army, navy and air force. The plans, in a defence white paper, are to demonstrate that Britain does not take lightly Germany’s continuing rearmament.
The white paper calls for an enlarged fleet...
