Important note
Photos provided on this website are not an endorsement of any political idea or of war. War is one of the most regrettable human activities.
All photos on this page are copyright Robert Mary and may only be reproduced with my express permission. You may contact me here
Practical information
The Tank department
of the National Army Museum (Brussels)
Wedged between the IRPA-building, the 1914-1918 gallery and the Air department there used to be a little courtyard full of rubble, weeds and rusty bits of military equipment. With the help of a host of volunteers, this woeful sight metamorphosed into a Tank Section of exceptional richness, which opened on 9 May 1980. The collection comprises not only the majority of the armoured vehicles used by the Belgian army from 1935 to the present, but also a large number of foreign tanks including the British Churchill and Centurion, the French EBR-Panhard, the Russian T-34 and the American Sherman. There are more than 250 tanks overall, thirty something of them on display in this section. The other remaining vehicles and a stock of spare parts are stored in the hangars of the Kapellen fort in Antwerp, one of the Museum’s storage facilities. This collection is one of the most important in Europe, representing production from 1917 to the present.
Tank storage facility (Vissenaken)
You will discover less vehicles in Vissenaken than in Kappelen, however very interesting vehicles are displayed there such as a variety of Sherman tanks (M4A1(76)W, M4A1(105), M4A1HUSS), M26 Pershing, M26 Pacific, M47 Patton and the famous M22 Locust (sole US airborne recon vehicle during WW2). A team of enthusiasts spend hours to restore -for free- those tanks and military vehicles which are stored in a military area.
More information is available at the Royal Museum of the Armed forces and Military History website, at the Vissenaken Municipality website (in Flemish only), at the Tank Museum Association (Site Depot Kapellen and Vissenaken) website, and at the Vissenaken Newsletter (in Flemish only).
You may contact the Tank Museum association here.
You should consider
the following website: Combat
Camel, a website dedicated to the M4A1(76)W tank restored
in Vissenaken Depot.
You can also find information on Sherman variants here.
Location information
Sint Pieterstraat (beware
that there is no specific address number), 3300 Vissenaken (located at
70 km from Liège).
You will find a map here showing
you the location of the Army depot near the Vissenaken football (soccer)
club (about 150 meters from the club on the first road on the right).
The depot was closed in 2009 due to presence of asbestos.
Tanks were relocated in Landen.
Year of Visit : February 2008