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More on KentOnline
A museum has launched a JustGiving campaign to purchase engineering records from the Second World War.
The Royal Engineers Museum in Gillingham has to raise £10,000 by March 10 before the Mulberry harbours archives are auctioned off.
The harbours were temporary portable ports developed and built in the UK to help with the rapid amount of cargo being offloaded onto beaches during the invasion of Normandy in 1944.
After Allied Forces held beachheads following D-Day, the harbours were taken across the channel in sections and assembled off Omaha Beach and Gold Beach.
The museum now hopes to purchase the medals and archive of Colonel VC Steer-Webster CBE, who was a senior member of the design team for the project.
His archive contains medals, photographs and documents which include correspondence with Prime Minister Winston Churchill and General of the American army Dwight Eisenhower.
Sam Jolley, assistant curator for the museum, said: "The Mulberry harbour is a unique example of British wartime ingenuity and the inventiveness of the Royal Engineers.
"In 10 months, the Mulberry harbour was used to land over 2.5 million troops, 500,000 vehicles and 4 million tons of supplies.
"As one of the Corps of Royal Engineers' most famous and successful operational endeavours, this Mulberry harbour archive would be most appropriately held by the Royal Engineers Museum.
"This is the first time the RE Museum has tried to crowd fund and we are really pleased with how positive the response has been.
"If we are unable to win the Steer-Webster Collection at auction, all money raised will go towards the long-term conservation of Mulberry harbour plans already held in the museum's archives.
"Many of the items are in a very poor condition and we are unable to display them or show them to our users.
"In the long term, we will also be exploring new storage solutions for the plans, the sheer number of which will provide a mini engineering challenge in itself.
"Vital conservation work, digitisation and improvements to storage will enable the long term care and study of this archive by future engineers, historians and museum users."
To donate towards the appeal, visit their JustGiving page.
