In September 2018, my wife and I visited the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm Museum at RNAS Yeovilton, in England, United Kingdom. We were on a holiday which started with attending the wedding of a good friend at the nearby city of Exeter, and decided to visit the museum on the free day before the wedding. We spent around four hours touring the exhibits (the time is extended by my photography), and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I was surprised by how much my wife liked the museum, she isn’t interested in aircraft but thought the displays were very well presented.
The museum exhibits are divided into four separate halls, with a few exhibits on a mezzanine level between halls one and two. Hall 1 displays the earliest years of British naval aviation up to WWII, and some rescue helicopters. Hall 2 houses WWII aircraft, hall 3 is the excellent interactive aircraft carrier experience and cold war era machines and hall 4 mainly showcases experimental aircraft. I will divide this article to showcase each hall separately.
Hall 1 is dedicated to early British naval aviation and search and rescue aircraft. Unfortunately I didn’t capture many images in this hall, and none of the pre-1930 aircraft that were on display.
Hall 2 houses the aircraft used by the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm during the WWII and Korean War eras.
On entering this hall we were presented with a Fairey Fulmar, which is displayed in the wings folded storage position. The large wings have an interesting folding arrangement, with the inner flaps folding up and the wingtips locking onto the tailplane. It makes an impressive sight when viewed from above on the mezzanine deck. The Fulmar was designed as a two-seater fighter, primarily for convoy air cover support. This particular aircraft N1854 was the first prototype, first production machine and first of the type to fly, and was used for carrier landing trials on HMS Illustrious.
At the end of WWII, the Fairey company retained the airframe and registered it as G-AIBE, using it for transport and communications duties. In 1972 the aircraft was gifted to the Fleet Air Arm Museum, as the last surviving Fulmar.
The Royal Navy acquired over 2,000 F/4U Corsairs during WWII under the lend/lease arrangement, assigning the code FG-1A. The Royal Navy desperately needed high-quality naval fighters and gladly accepted the Corsair, despite the type being shunned by the US Navy due to carrier landing and stall problems. Necessity is the mother of invention, and the RN fixed the low-speed stall characteristic with a small piece of wood on the wing leading edge, and the landing rebound issue with a main gear strut damping valve. After these modifications were proved successful, the US Navy finally accepted the type for carrier operations.
KD431 was built by Goodyear Aircraft Co in Ohio, USA in 1944 and served with several squadrons and aircraft carriers through 1945, not seeing active service. Post-war it was surplus to requirements and was transferred to Cranfield College of Aeronautics in 1946 as a technical training aid. In 1963 she was donated to the Fleet Air Arm Museum, and was repainted in a polyurethane finish.
Other Information
Location
The Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm Museum is located on the operational RNAS Yeovilton, 4Km from the township of Ilchester in the county of Somerset, England, UK.
Image Galleries
If you’d like to view more of images on this topic, below are some links to my photography gallery website.
