Video – Indiana Military Museum

Indiana Military Museum
Military buffs visiting Vincennes will want to visit the Indiana Military Museum. At the entrance of this impressive museum the visitor passes by a military guard shack watched over by a uniformed mannequin in full uniform.
From the Book
Southwest Indiana Day Trips

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Transcript:

Indiana Military Museum
Vincennes and Knox County are loaded with history.

Military buffs visiting Vincennes will want to visit the Indiana Military Museum. At the entrance of this impressive museum the visitor passes by a military guard shack watched over by a uniformed mannequin in full uniform.

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Jim Osborne is the founder of the museum. He began his first real collection at 7 years old when a neighbor, a WWII Veteran, gave him a box of memorabilia that he had collected when he was in the war. This box became the nucleus of the vast collection that today is the Indiana Military Museum. His father owned a drive in movie theater where the boy watched scores of WWII movies. The collection grew over the years and outgrew his parent’s basement, where he initially stored the collection. He began to acquire armor and other vehicles. Attending college he acquired a degree in history and later returned to earn a law degree. In the early 1980’s the size and scope of his collection led his friends to suggest he needed to put it in a museum. The idea reached fruition when the museum was incorporated in 1984. The museum opened on its current site on May 31, 2013.

Visitors will want to see the Indiana Military Museum. This amazing museum includes a 6500 square foot museum loaded with well-organized military weapons, gear and paraphernalia. The vast collection includes military hardware from the Civil War, World War I and World War II. More recent wars like Desert Storm are also included. Vincennes famous citizen Red Skelton served in the war and the collection includes some of his artwork he drew, his uniform and other Skelton memorabilia. The exhibits include a General Dwight D. Eisenhower uniform, a Japanese World War Tank and a fully equipped full size parachutist landing and ready for action. Cannons, tanks and other armor as well as guns are all displayed with informative tags. Signs explaining what you are seeing and the uses are profusely scattered through the museum. A small bin of sand from the island of Iwo Jima stands in stark reminder of the fierce battle for possession of that strategic island.

As impressive as the inside of the museum is, the grounds outside the museum are even more amazing. The museum dedicates about two acres to various military warplanes, antiaircraft weapons, cannon, tanks, and other armor. The visitor will even find a German World Wary II bunker outfitted the way the GI invaders of Norway found them as they fought their way off the beaches.Visitors can enter the bunker to see how the German troops lived inside the concrete box and imagine their emotions when they awoke on that June 6 morning to see the massive Allied fleet assembled to invade Normandy.
Additionally, the visitor will find an extensive collection includes a MiG-17F, a Douglas C47-D Skytrain, an M-3 Halftrack and a M-47 A.K.A Patton Tank. Helicopters, an A. K. A. Alligator Tracked Landing Vehicle and A. K. A. Duck landing craft round out the collection.

Indiana Military Museum
715 S 6th St,
Vincennes, IN 47591
(812) 882-1941

The episode is based upon my book, South Central Indiana Road Trips, available on the web site, http://www.mossyfeetbooks.com. The book is the first book in the 9 volume Road Trip Indiana Series. The books include all the historical markers, as of 2022, in Indiana with the text and back story. The books also include a nearly complete listing of virtually every tourism destination in the state. The destinations include parks, museums, drive in theaters, bowling alleys, wineries and much, much more. I encourage you to visit the web site and subscribe to it.
You can find my books locally at the Walnut Street Variety Shop in Batesville, Indiana.
I hope you enjoyed this podcast and thank you for listening.