How Britain's Priceless WW2 Treasures Are Being Kept Alive | The Imperial War Museum

We've got showcase contractors, we've got carpenters, we've got plasterers, we've got painters, we've got AV contractors, we've got security consultants, we've got people who are fitting our alarm system, CCTV system, we've got people who are doing our floors, we've got people who are fixing the ceiling rafts. No, that zeb's come out. Anybody painting in this area, we watch them like a hawk because you don't want to get paint on an object. Just have to remind people it's not just a building site, it's a museum. This is one of the greatest war museums in the world. The Imperial War Museum is huge. With more than 33 million items, everything from an 83-year-old warship to priceless vintage aircraft. Oh, wow. It's a place where an extraordinary range of specialists... Up here is where we keep all our samples of heads. ...work with world-leading experts... Any object tells a story, if you let it, about why we are where we are today. ...to help tell some of the most important stories from our past. My great-granddad opened the door for other black recruits. Now, we've been given unprecedented access... Quite nervous about today. I'm not sure if it's going to work as well as we want it to. ...not only behind the scenes of this national institution... This is the mothership for the museum. ...but also to the unique world-class resource. 23,000 hours of rare film footage shot in the throes of war. Gives us that gateway to understand what actually went on 100 years ago. Which will help us bring to life the stories of the museum... Do you want to see where I was sitting? Yeah. Yeah? ...as they design state-of-the-art galleries... Oh, wow. It seems quite bright. Yeah, this is bright. ...solve historical mysteries... You can tell from the letter that he went over, knowing he was almost certain to be killed. ...and preserve the most important objects from our past. If we lose this, there's not another one in somebody's shed. So, this is it. The start of a new day looks very different across the Imperial War Museum's five UK sites. As the visitors walk through the door of the IWM North Museum in Manchester, the first flights taxi onto the runway at the museum's historic Duxford airfield in Cambridgeshire. AFM, by holding point Charlie, one departing hard on advise. In central London, conservation teams are already hard at work in the Churchill war rooms. Checking the former prime minister's chair is ready for display. Oh, there's some bits of the webbing coming down. While in the middle of the Thames, the museum's largest exhibit, the warship HMS Belfast, is having her four-inch gun serviced... In the dockyard, isn't it? ...very carefully. At the Imperial War Museum's flagship site in Lambeth Road, the famous naval guns, both fired in action during the Second World War, stand guard as curator Kate Clements arrives for work. So we are here in the atrium of the museum. This is the wow factor. So right here, we've got a V2 weapon, which is from the Second World War. Over there, we've got a 13-pounder Neri gun. Just here, we've got the burnt-out wreck of a car bomb in Baghdad. So when visitors see all this, they get the impression of what this museum is about. Kate's been working at the museum for almost seven years. I love working here. We have such amazing collections. We have such incredible stories, and it's really a privilege to be able to tell them. And the most important thing is to ensure they tell their stories accurately. A lot of work has gone into creating this, and everything would have been thought through in terms of just, that barbed wire, is that the right size? Is it the right scale? Are these people at the right scale? Are they wearing the right hats? The tin helmet. There are curators involved. There are archivists involved. There are conservators involved. It's a massive group effort that goes into this. Behind the scenes, in an area hidden from the public, Kate is overseeing the birth of one of the museum's most complex and expensive new galleries. This project is a really ambitious, exciting project. We are telling the full global story of the Second World War. This space previously was the cinema at the museum. We've knocked down walls left, right and centre to build these new galleries. The Second World War and the Holocaust will soon pass from living memory. To make sure those stories continue to be told, the museum has invested more than £30 million in a series of bold new galleries. So we are telling the story of the Second World War in a new way. We're making it really global, to make it clear how the war touched the lives of people across the world. When visitors come in, they're going to see so many different things. We've got a big area here where we talk about the British Empire and the contribution and exploitation of the people across the British Empire to the war. Over there, we're going to have something about the Battle of the Atlantic. Here we'll have showcases about East Asia and the Pacific. Over here, about the German invasion of the Soviet Union and the war in the Mediterranean and North Africa. The galleries have been five years in the planning and Kate and the team have a big idea for the centre of the gallery. Now we're coming into gallery three, which is the gallery where we look at Britain's experience in 1940 to 41. And when we were thinking up how to design this gallery, we realised that a lot of it is about the threat that Britain was under from the air. Firstly, the Battle of Britain and then the Blitz. The Blitz was a defining moment for Britain during the Second World War. Eyewitness archives show German aircraft repeatedly bombing towns and cities across Britain. In eight months, they dropped 30,000 tonnes of bombs, killing more than 40,000 civilians and leaving another two million homeless. And so we decided to use the whole space and to put something on the ceiling to give that sense of what it would have looked and sounded like to have these aircraft continually flying overhead and wondering, is this an enemy threat to your life? To make sure the galleries are accurate, curators like Kate have to gather first-hand accounts from the few remaining people who remember the Blitz first-hand. Hi Kitty, how are you? Hello. People like 90-year-old Kitty Baxter. Of course, there was no gate here. No. They wouldn't have a gate there because we had to hurry up. Because you had to get through quickly. Yeah, and we had to run along here, but keeping close to the wall. Keep close to the wall, because in case the bombs come down. So you keep close to the wall and run like this, crazy. Kitty was just 10 years old when the raids started over London and still remembers the moment her family had to scramble from their flat as the German bombers approached. You see the hump? Is this it? This is it, the shelter. It's this big area here? Yeah, and if the planes were too loud, we would jump out the window. So what was it like when you were inside it? Hot, smelly, there wasn't room, always room to sleep. Everybody was looking after themselves and their own families. Living memories are really important because you can gain so much from reading books and from reading the documents and watching the films of the time. When you speak to someone who actually witnessed these events, you get that much more personal and immediate response and reaction about what happened. Where did you live? I lived in this block here, on the ground floor in that flat there. That shelter at the back of this building holds 100 people. All these people from this block of flats. All crowded into the same one. About one toilet. But what they said, let's all sing. Like, we are the Camberwell girls. Bom, bom. You could hear the noise of the guns and the bombs. You could hear it from the shelter? Oh, yes. Yeah. I mean, London was bombed, I think it was 57 nights in a row. Yeah, that was, yeah. I mean, did you kind of think, is this ever going to end? I didn't think, I thought it was a part of life, you know. You would see what they call dogfights. Yes. How did that feel when you'd see them? Well, it was frightening, of course. Yes, of course. You just hope that one would come crashing down. But you're standing there hoping it's coming crashing down. And you think, well, if it crashes down, it could crash on you. You just wanted it to come down. When I think of all those people that fought in the war, they died. My heart sinked. It's something that never leaves you, actually. You see that plane coming over there now? And that now is worrying me now. Because it is worrying me, because I can see it's quite low. Yeah. And that is worrying me at the moment. And I'm thinking, what is he going to do? What is he going to drop? That's how I'm thinking at this moment. Stupid, isn't it? No, it's not at all. Very few people have lived through what you lived through. While Kate gathers material about life during the Blitz, around the IWM, teams of experts are working to preserve the museum's priceless collection, which offers a glimpse of how the world lived, fought, celebrated, and even dressed. Ben, can we get a hand, please? OK. I've got the top. At the Churchill War Rooms beneath Whitehall in central London, conservation specialists Vicki Singleton and Helen Lindsay are carefully removing one of Churchill's most famous outfits for its regular inspection. It's an amazing thing. It's beautiful, isn't it? Me too. Lovely, thank you. Yeah, that's better. That's perfect. OK. Gosh, it's so short. Oh, no. Makes you realise, doesn't it? When you're standing next, it's not the sort of suit you envisage a world leader to be wearing. There are lots of photos of him wearing his siren suits, aren't there? This onesie, known as a siren suit, was invented by Churchill himself, originally as something he could quickly pull on during nighttime air raids. It soon became one of his signature looks, and he took to wearing them while meeting world leaders. I see that the zip wasn't working, and that's been sewn together for display. This item is on loan from Mrs Minnie Churchill, and so its condition needs to be regularly checked. It's in a sealed case, so the dreaded moths can't get to it. There's no evidence of light damage. There isn't any discolouration underneath the fabric. I would wear it in a minute, absolutely. I'm just not sure it would fit. Rare items like this are what the IWM is famous for, but not all of their treasures live inside glass cases. The museum owns and flies one of the rarest spitfires in the world from its Duxford site in Cambridgeshire, and it's test pilot John Romaine's job to ensure it's airworthy. The plan today is to fly this lovely Mark 1 on air test. It's come off maintenance from the winter, and of course it needs to be ready for this year's air show, and so we do an air test before the season starts, just to make sure everything's OK, and that primarily the engine's running well and all the systems are working. There are very few airworthy spitfires left in the world, and the museum's Mark 1 version is one of the oldest and rarest. This one is particularly special because it's such a historical beast. I mean, it's probably the most authentic and the most historical aeroplane that there is out there. It's a lovely example. But before the public can see her in action in the upcoming air shows, John and the team have their work cut out, making sure she's safe to fly. Covering more than 100 years of history, the Imperial War Museums take great pride in telling the stories of the major world wars. But contemporary conflict in modern battles is just as important. IWM is the nation's treasure. We were set up in 1917 to tell ordinary people stories from the First World War, and I think we're still doing that today. Take it back a little, Gordon. Yeah, hold it. At Duxford, the conservation engineers are carefully lifting rare war-damaged vehicles into position for a new display. This is the Land Rover Battlefield Ambulance. This was basically used in Iraq during the Iraq War in 2007. This was actually based at Basra Air Base, so there was a medical centre there. In 2007, in June, there was a rocket attack. It was early on a Sunday morning in 2007 when the base was rocked by a blast from a rocket fired by Iraqi insurgents. Photos taken immediately afterwards show the rocket embedded in the ground. The air base came under attack 300 times, and that just highlights the real dangers that a lot of medical staff had to put themselves into. We definitely feel responsibility of telling people's stories. We're getting to new visitors now who don't remember 9-11 because they were a child. We want visitors to come here and know as much about the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan as they do about the First World War. Discover the past with exclusive history documentaries and ad-free podcasts presented by world-renowned historians, all from History Hit. Watch them on your smart TV or on the go with your mobile device. Download the app now to explore everything from the wonders of ancient Pompeii and the mystery of the princes in the tower to the life of Anne Boleyn and D-Day. Sign up via the link in the description. Nearly half a million people come to Duxford each year to uncover the history of these magnificent aircraft. Duxford was one of the earliest RAF stations and played a major role during the Battle of Britain. And today, the airfield hosts regular air show days to show off these incredible warbirds in all their glory. And there's always one star of the show. The air's quite turbulent today, so it'll bounce around a little. But other than that, you know, Spitfires are very nice to fly. They're lovely on the controls. Pilot John Romain is about to take the museum's Mark I Spitfire up for a test flight. 80 years ago, it took off from here, bound for Dunkirk. It was actually flown from Duxford in early 1940 by Geoffrey Stevenson. He went out on a trip over Dunkirk. They shot down a number of Stukas that were bombing the beaches and the ships. But then he in turn was then hit by an Me 109. So he barely landed the aeroplane on the beach near Dunkirk and was arrested by the Germans and eventually ended up in Colvitz. But the aeroplane then just sunk into the sand, disappeared. And there was a big shift of the coastal sands in France in the 80s. And this aeroplane just popped to the surface. Recovered by a French museum initially as a, you know, a corroded wreck. But it was still this aeroplane. And eventually bought by an American owner who then gave it to us to fully restore to the aeroplane you see today. Just next to the museum's aircraft hangars sits the workshop of the Aircraft Restoration Company, where it's lead mechanic Conor Dimmock's job to make sure this vintage aircraft can take off safely. They're very delicate engines because they're 78 years old now. They're kind of almost high maintenance. This aeroplane itself, it crashed in Dunkirk and a lot of the parts were corroded due to the sea. But we managed to salvage as much as we possibly can and put it back into the aircraft to make it as original as possible. It does make you feel very proud to work on such an icon. You know, you see these Spitfires around and there's not that many of them about and people's faces light up when they see them. And it's nice to say that, you know, you've helped with the process of keeping the aircraft flying. I enjoyed it as a hobby, youngster, building model aircraft. And then growing up, I just thought, yeah, this is a career that I want to join. And since I was 12, started working voluntary. And then 16, come up and actually got an apprenticeship. And actually to get involved in them is just such an incredible experience. Tickets for the Spitfire's first flying day sold out in just days. So the pressure's on for the Duxford team to get it safely back in the air. Meanwhile, back at IWM London, aircraft are also the focus of attention for the audio-visual producer, Rob Lee. You've got an effect laid over it. It looks almost like grayscale. So what they've sent you is something slightly different to what we last reviewed. He's leading a team to install the ambitious centrepiece of the Second World War galleries. A giant ceiling display filled with the sights and sounds of a German bombing raid. Thinking about making a template up to get the bolts exactly right. I think that's going to be a little bit easier for the next one. Yeah. I do feel proud to be working at IWM. I mean, I came here as a child. My dad took me up. There's a picture of me and him. Stood outside the guns, outside the front. I'd forgotten about that picture. But when I got the job here, dad dug it out. Was like, look, maybe you're supposed to work here. One of the real challenges for someone in my role is that I'm not a historian by training. I'm looking at this from the point of view of digital production. And so working with people like Kate is really important to make sure that the historical accuracy of what we're showing is there. Curator Kate is in Camberwell with 90-year-old blitz survivor Kitty. Researching how sound will be a key component of the new installation. You could hear the noise of the bombs and the ak-hak fire. You could hear it all. You never heard birdsong, that was for sure. When the blitz started and a raid first happened, what was the thing which first made that clear to you? The noise. The noise, yeah. Yes, the sound. Would you ever hear the aircraft before you heard the siren? You maybe wouldn't even wait for the siren. You knew it was going to come. Yeah. So you'd get down there before because once the siren started, the bombs were dropping. That was maybe, could be too late. When you'd come out after the air raids, did you find things looking different? When the all clear went, ooh, that was lovely to hear the all clear come up. But you come up and you look around you, that building wasn't there, that building wasn't there. You just thank God that you could go back into your flat because they weren't there and they were digging for bodies, you know, and you had to walk past that. I have a responsibility to the people who live through this war to make sure that how I present them is accurate and is faithful to what happened to them. I didn't witness it, I wasn't there. So I need to make sure that, you know, what goes into the garage at the end of the day is going to be truthful. Back at IWM London, Kate's taking what she's learned from Kitty to AV producer Rob to help design the overhead display. And the bombers, I think they're too close together. OK. So when I met with Kitty and she remembered so clearly the sounds of the Blitz and being in air raids, that's something we're going to have to get right because it stayed with her. Oh, that's the sound of the air raid warning siren. Kitty remembered that would be a great sound for her, that she could leave the shelter and things were safe again. As final touches are made to the design of the installation, the museum's full gallery team arrives for the first test, the 35 LED panels. Hi, Sarah. We don't have a huge amount of time before we open now, so there's a lot of people on site today for this switch on of the AV piece. Project managers, designers, senior management team. There's lots of different objects going in here which are very sensitive to light. Colours will fade and that is irretrievable, that kind of damage. You can't fix that. Light is a constant challenge for museum staff. The brightness of every bulb is carefully monitored and controlled. So one of the major concerns today is just how much light the 35 powerful LED panels are going to cast over the delicate objects below. Can we see what that looks like now? Yeah, yeah. Here it goes. Oh, wow. Finally, all of the tiles up at once. But there's a problem. It seems quite bright to me. Yeah, this is bright. Yeah. I'm just a bit worried because there's four uniforms in here. What becomes abundantly clear when you make exhibitions is that if it damages the object, it won't be done. There's also a jigsaw puzzle in there, which is paper, which is colourful. So that is too bright. I think they should see it. So we've got to get it the right level and make sure that it's still safe for the objects underneath. If this is what the night looks like, the day is going to look really bright at this level. Uniforms could be at risk. So we'll have to see what we can do about that. The Imperial War Museum holds more than 33 million unique items, from an atomic bomb to Saddam Hussein-themed toilet paper. But there's one that's seen by more people than any other. The museum's most complicated and demanding historical object, HMS Belfast. She played a key role in the D-Day landings and the Korean War. Today marks 83 years since HMS Belfast was launched and the ship's yeoman, Stuart Paw, is preparing to hang a special birthday decoration. Well, we're going to the flag store now and that's up forward here. So we've got to go through a few hatches. So here we go. It's the ship's birthday and we decided, I like pennants because pennants are the pointy ones. They're very colourful and they're slightly bigger than the flags. So it looks very good. So I've decided to put up HMS Belfast 1938 to 2021, 83 today. Warships like this were only ever meant to last 20 years. There's number eight. So keeping HMS Belfast afloat for 83 is something worth celebrating. This is I or India in a phonetic alphabet. So it'll be a yellow flag with a black dot. Well, hopefully it is, otherwise it's been put away wrongly. This flag communication system is a naval tradition dating back thousands of years. You've got to get it right because if you make a mistake in there, somebody's going to pick it out on Twitter or Facebook and somebody will come back. So we're going to start off with H, Hotel, Mike, Sierra. I've always liked flags ever since I was a kid, I suppose, with all the different countries when I was growing up in Commonwealth countries. Flags were changing all the time. The next one's the date of her birth, 1938. This is quite a success. She's made it 83 years, well over three times her estimated life. And it looks great. Hopefully, we'll be doing that when she's 100. I'm sure we will. With millions of items, the museum only ever has around 1% of its collection on display to the public, which means hundreds of highly trained specialists are constantly restoring, conserving and protecting the treasures held in the storage vaults. The textile stores repair and maintain uniforms. A dedicated film preservation unit manages more than 23,000 hours of footage and art specialists help conserve the museum's extraordinary art collection, one of the largest in Britain. The enormous hangars at Duxford are bursting at the seams. The curators have squeezed one of the last remaining Vulcan bombers between two fighter jets, while a vintage de Havilland Mosquito hangs delicately above a Concorde. They're worth millions and irreplaceable, so complex cleaning processes are a key to their preservation. Today is a very big day. Today, we've got an external company removing dust from our suspended objects. All right, boys, we're both going to go down there and then one of us is going to shoot across where we're playing the ball. We're going to head out along this beam, well, Simon's going to head out along this beam and he's going to head towards that Mosquito that we're going to clean. Although the public never see their work, the museum employs a specialist rope crew to dust the top sides of the suspended aircraft. With so many planes packed in so tightly to this hangar, there's no way to get ladders or cranes in, and so each job begins with a precarious climb. Oh, mate, it's caught in the loop. It's all right, mate, just pull it through. No, it's all right, it's just... Don't drop ends. In rope access, you cannot afford to drop anything from high. OK. You try your best and your best again to make sure that nothing can fall from you. This is quite one of the most difficult planes to get to. All right, let's do it. We gain access via a climb across this structural steel. All right, if you get your foot loops a bit higher, so when you stand up, it moves across a bit easier. So he stands up in his foot loops, which takes weight off his body weight, and he can move his body across, so it's very, very strenuous. I wouldn't want to be doing it myself. You need to have a lot of training in order to do this work. He's getting off his slings now, and he's getting on his descender, and he's going to descend down the rope, clean the wing. Yeah, I'm going to get this wing, the engine, that, and then if I can get over to that blue shackle over there, I reckon I can get to the other wing. They can't touch the aircraft because the surface of your hands contains oil, which can damage the aircraft, plus a lot of the aircraft in here are actually really fragile. Right. Particularly the one which they're cleaning today, which is called the Wooden Wonder. Its frame is made of wood. When the de Havilland Mosquito was introduced in 1941, it was one of the most technologically advanced aircraft in the world. Able to fly a range of missions, from reconnaissance to bombing raids, it quickly amassed an impressive combat record. In battle, they were fierce and formidable, but now, safely in the care of the museum, they're treated with kid gloves. If you leave dust for a long time, it solidifies and attaches itself permanently to the object. Then it's very difficult to remove, and by removing it, you're also then going to damage the surface of the object. You ready? He doesn't want to put any dents or scratches on the plane as the plane's priceless, and you've got to respect what you're working on. I've just got to five. Do you reckon you'll be able to get your mop to the number six? Point. Thing. If you can get the rest of that, that'll be that. While the rope team continue to work on the suspended aircraft, down at ground level, a team of volunteers is also hard at work. So thank you all very much for coming today. What we're going to do is clean these two aircraft, this Huey helicopter and then the F-111. So that you don't touch the aircraft, you make a little pad with it, like that, so you keep your hands behind the pad when you're cleaning. With this, I can reach up here. Dust is not just dust. To me, it's absolutely fascinating. I actually went on three full days of training on dust, so there's an awful lot more to it than meets the eye. Yeah, it's slightly sticky. Yeah, I can see what you mean. We need to put a little bit of brush along here. The threat of dust is a far cry from the dangers these machines faced during battle. This Bell Iroquois helicopter, nicknamed the Huey, was the workhorse of the war in Vietnam, acting as a gunship, troop transport and air ambulance. It was always in the thick of battle. Today, it's preserved with meticulous care. And for volunteers like Helen Hassler, the simple act of dusting is a chance to indulge a passion for history. I used to want to retrain and do history. I used to regret doing my degree. I used to say, I wish I'd done history and I could be working at the Imperial War Museum. And so now, by volunteering, I'm getting my dream of working at the Imperial War Museum. I'm interested in anything old. I don't like new stuff, so I collect old things. I live in a flat surrounded by old things. So being able to handle objects that I can't actually own myself and are part of history is really important to me. When you get dusting, you actually go into a hypnotic state. You think about what it actually was designed for and what it did. Who built it? Who flew in it? Where it went in the world? So touching it is like travelling back in time with it and becoming part of its history and it becomes part of my history as well now. With a display aircraft being cared for at one end of Duxford, down the other, the museum's only airworthy Spitfire is about to undergo a rigorous airworthiness test to fly in the museum's upcoming air show. Because of the pandemic, the Spitfire has been grounded since last year and now it's test pilot John's job to ensure it's safe for the aerial display team to fly. It's not a long flight but it covers all of the areas that we need to cover. So there'll be, of course, engine, climb, undercarriage retractions, flaps, stall speeds everything to make sure that she's just as we expect her to be. The first test is whether the Merlin engine will start at all. Hello, Golf Juliet. Runway 24R, surface wind 010 degrees, 8 knots. Take off your discretion. It's never boring, I have to say. There's always something to learn. However many hours you've got on them, you're always learning something new. Spitfires are just such an iconic aircraft. You look at that bottom wing as soon as it's flying, that elliptical wing, they are literally the symbol that the Battle of Britain won the war. We pinch ourselves sometimes because we get a lot of opportunities to fly them. We're spoiled, really, to be quite honest. You need to watch it at an air show, the noise they make. We fly a lot of vets in our two-seat Spitfire. You get airborne, you then let them fly it, and most of them still get the feel of how to fly. And they do get emotional. And when they get out the aeroplane, a completely different person gets out. It's amazing. Spitfire Golf Juliet, runway 24R, surface wind 010 degrees, 7 knots. Land your discretion. Good, very good. It's flying just like it did last year. It's lovely, very good on controls. Everything's working as it should. So, yeah, she's ready for another season. It's great news for the team at Duxford as they make the final preparations for the first air show of the season. The Imperial War Museum's Duxford Airfield knows how to wow the crowds. Each year, they host as many as 10 flying days and air shows. Tens of thousands of people from all over the country come to see dozens of different aircraft. From vintage warbirds to state-of-the-art fighters. But for today's show, the focus is all on one plane. Personally, it's a Spitfire. I love Spitfires. I'm looking forward to a Spitfire. Whenever you see them fly, it's just something magical. It's iconic, it's emotive, and especially after the year we've had, we just need that boost. It's the first time the public has seen the museum's rare Mark I Spitfire in action for more than a year, and pilot John is eager to show it off. It's great seeing people coming in. You get an immense sense of the history involved in these aeroplanes. I mean, that backdrop at Duxford is just like it was in 1940. So it really does put you back into that time frame. You hear the sound of the Merlin engine, and, yeah, your goosebumps in the back of your neck time. Today, we taxi out right past the crowd. They're all waving, and they're happy to see it all starting again. Then you really start to appreciate, you know, how much they're enjoying it. Seeing the Spitfire taking to the air is a special moment. How would we be able to connect people to World War II if we couldn't connect them tangibly, if they can't see it, hear it or feel it? Not only for the public, but also for the museum's staff and volunteers. That's the era of planes that I love, the warbirds. So being able to see it in action and hear it, the sound of it is beautiful. Just imagine a whole squadron of them. Just be incredible. My mum was a teenager in Croydon during the war. Mum tells me where she watched the Battle of Britain, like the vapor trails from the gardens and that. It brings a lot of emotion. For the crowd at Duxford, this display gives visitors a sense of what it might have been like to see these aircraft in action during the war. Meanwhile, back at IWM London, the team are nervously waiting to unveil the Blitz ceiling installation to one of the few people who knows personally what it was like to actually be there. Today's an exciting day. We've got Kitty coming to the museum. Kate and the AV team have made the final adjustments to the 35 massive light panels, which will project the sights and sounds of the air raid over the visitors' heads. Although the rest of the gallery is still being installed, 90-year-old Kitty has been invited for a first look at the ceiling. I mean, that's a horrible sight. Oh, my God. Absolutely amazing. So eerie, isn't it, that sound? Oh, it was. And as soon as you hear it, you know it's danger, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It was panic then. Yeah. It was just panic. Because you knew that these bombs were going to start dropping. Do you see the sequence here? You can see there are sort of bursts of light every now and then, which is sort of the flack, you know, the anti-aircraft guns. So they're firing from the ground, trying to fire at them. So that's what those... And they did, they did. Yeah, they did, yeah. They did, they caught some of them. So that's those sorts of bursts, did you see? It's very good, very, very realistic. Oh, brilliant. So I bet you could hear it way up. Oh, yes. Yeah. And down. Yeah. In the shelter, you could hear it. Yes, yeah. Really good. Oh, good. Oh, it's all right now. Can you hear the all clear? It's all clear. And that noise is... We used to call the siren Mony Miny. Mony? Yeah, that was the nickname. That was quite terrifying, quite honestly, especially the siren going over, you know. It was quite frightening, remembering what happened and how we all had to dash. I mean, I think they've done a great job. It's quite awe-inspiring, to be honest with you. So throughout this process, we've listened to people who were there, like Kitty, to make sure that we're getting things right. And she even sort of said how they used to give a nickname to the air raid siren, calling it the Mony Miny. So that's a new bit of information she's given me even today. That's why today was so important, to actually show it to someone who was there and to tell us that, yes, thankfully, we have got it right. Well, I think when people come in here and see this, see all what's around and see those dogfights, I think they're going to be really impressed. I think they're going to think, my God, how did people live through this? And it will bring to light what we actually went through at that time.