The Idaho Military Museum

By Joe Berk

Our Idaho exploration continued with a visit to the Idaho Military Museum, which near Boise’s airport.  The Museum is small but intense, with a single large room containing many exhibits, and an outdoor area containing armored vehicles and aircraft.  I think the best way to present this story is with captioned photos.  Have fun reviewing them; I sure had fun taking them.

The view inside the Idaho Military Museum.
A GAU-8/A, which is a 7-barreled, 30mm A-10 cannon. These guns fire 30mm at either 4200 or 2100 shots per minute. I used to be an engineer with Aerojet Ordnance, where we manufactured ammo for this beast.
Both Honeywell and Aerojet manufactured A-10 ammunition. This round was manufactured by Aerojet. Aerojet’s cartridges featured two nylon rotating bands on the projectile.
A water-cooled M1917 .30 06 machine gun. The thick jacket around the barrel contained water that kept the gun cool.
One of several military rifle displays. The Idaho Military Museum has a great military surplus small arms collection. If you enjoy seeing vintage Mosins, Mausers, Springfields, and more, this is where you want to be. I sure had a good time here.
A Nagant revolver. These guns featured a complex approach to sealing the barrel-to-cylinder gap. It’s a brilliant solution to a problem that doesn’t exist..
More military rifles on display. See the round silver disk in the Mauser’s stock? It’s a feature for disassembling the bolt.
The Idaho Military Museum has two large military ship models. This is the USS Ronald Reagan.
The USS New Jersey. The actual New Jersey battleship was recently refurbished at the Philadelphia Naval Yard. If you ever get a chance to tour a US battleship, don’t pass it by. These behemoths are awesome.
A Soviet machine gun. These fire the same 7.62x54R cartridges used in my Mosin-Nagant rifles.
A US M-60 machine gun. These are heavy, but I used to love lugging these around when I was in the Army. Firing them is an experience.
The M-72 Light Anti-Tank Weapon, or LAW. It was our version of a rocket propelled grenade. The Army had to take these out of service, When the telescopic launch tube was extended, it sometimes pulled the warhead off the rocket motor, with the result being an explosion in the tube when the thing was fired.
Yours truly, reflected in one of the Idaho Military Museum exhibits. That’s the M1911 .45 ACP pistol and a Claymore mine. Front Toward Enemy says it all. The bad guys sometimes turned these around, which turned the ambushers into ambushees.
An M1A Abrams Main Battle Tank outside the Idaho Military Museum. These are still in service. They are powered by a turbine engine. The prior US Army tank, the M60 that was in service when I was in the Army, had a 12-cylinder air-cooled diesel engine.
Two military jets on the Idaho Military Museum tarmac:  A Soviet MIG-21 and a Korean War vintage F-86.  When I was based at Kunsan AFB in the mid-1970s, the ROK Air Force was still flying the F-86.

The Idaho Military Museum is located at 4692 West Harvard Street in Boise.  Admission is free.  Plan on spending an hour or two there; it’s a great stop on any Idaho excursion.

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8 thoughts on “The Idaho Military Museum”

    1. They are cool. Just watched a show on why we cast our turrets in WWII, versus the German’s welding theirs. Interesting stuff.

  3. Actually the aircraft carrier model is the USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76), a Nimitz-class carrier. The USS Enterprise was CVN-65.

    1. It added complexity (to the ammo and the revolver) where none was required. Conventional revolvers have a gap between the cylinder and the barrel that is small enough to assure minimal gas escape. You wouldn’t want your hand there (i.e., over the gap), but other than that, the escaping gas has minimal effect on bullet velocity.

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