NO GO
Tickets are $27 each really a rip off.
Where was the Sidney Reilly exhibit, the great British spy on whom James Bond was modeled on? Just one of his adventures was his assignment to Germany: He was sent to Essen, Germany in 1909 to monitor the vast growth of the German war machine. He devised a cover as a Baltic shipyard worker named Karl Khan secured a job as a welder in a Krupp armaments plant. His plan was to photograph the plant and its production output, but he realized that the drawing office was heavily guarded during the day. Instead he volunteered for the fire brigade which worked during the night shift. A few nights later, he strangled the head of the night security detail and incapacitated another security officer, thereby gaining access to the drawing room. In true Reilly fashion, rather than bothering with photographing the plans, he simply stole them, hopped a train and then a boat and evaded German agents as he escaped back to England.
He went on try to topple the Russian government and was caught and executed on November 25, 1925.
How can you show an Enigma Machine and not mention Alan Turing? Winston Churchill said that Turing made the single biggest contribution to Allied victory in the war against Nazi Germany. Turing’s pivotal role in cracking intercepted coded messages enabled the Allies to defeat the Nazis in several crucial battles. He is also the father of the personal computer and developed the Turing Test an essential concept in the philosophy of artificial intelligence.
Died by suicide, June 7, 1954
There was no mention of Bletchley Park either, Britain’s center for espionage in World War 2. This exhibit should have been labeled “The American Spy Story” and should have included Julie Child!
She helped the OSS Emergency Sea Rescue Equipment Section to develop a shark repellent for underwater bombs, to prevent them from being detonated prematurely before they could hit Nazi vessels.
There was just too much missing from this exhibit to warrant spending $27 on it.