Outside the building is a Whale floating roadway bridge span from Mulberry B harbour at Arromanches which was repurposed and used as a conventional bridge over a river in France. This Whale was recovered in the 1950s from the remains of Mulberry B at Arromanches on the British ‘Gold Beach’. It was used as a road bridge over the River Vire at Pont-Farcy until flooding caused damage to the concrete supporting the bridge in 1990. The contractor employed to dispose of the Whale decided not to sell it for scrap.
In 2008 the Whale was gifted to Les Amis du Pont Bailey (‘The Friends of the Bailey Bridge’). A team of French and British volunteers living in Normandy dismantled it and made an inventory of its components. In 2015, it was donated to IWM.
