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Attraction:

The Fleet Air Arm Museum

 

ADDRESS:

The Fleet Air Arm Museum

Box D6

RNAS Yeovilton

Ilchester

Somerset

BA22 H5

 

Tel: +44 (0) 1935 840565

 

E-mail: info@fleetairarm.com

Web: www.fleetairarm.com

 

Attraction Type: Massive display of naval aircraft throughout the 20th Century.  Amazing multi-media experiences from the trenches of the Somme to the Flight Deck of Aircraft Carrier Ark Royal in the 1970s.

The Fleet Air Arm at Yeovilton is an amazing day out and well-worth the trip across the border from Dorset.  

 

Like the Tank Museum at Bovington, this attraction tells the story of people through machines.  At Yeovilton you can learn all about Naval aviation and the pioneering aviators who first flew aircraft from land and sea.  

 

Boys and their Dads will probably rave about this museum more than their sisters and Mums, but even they will find this massive series of exhibitions interesting and entertaining.  You can also guarantee you’ll come away knowing more about aircraft, the physics of flying and the history of Britain in the 20th Century.

 

The Fleet Air Arm Museum takes you on a journey from the earliest aeroplanes to supersonic flight, from aircraft made with wood and fabric to the most advanced passenger and military jets ever flown.

 

Throughout the journey you are introduced to the exceptional people who flew, developed and maintained the planes in peacetime and in conflict.  Sometimes those people are named individuals, whose faces look out from monochrome pictures.  Others are interviewed on video screens.  Some are just manikins in the uniforms of the day.  All add to the atmosphere and understanding of this fascinating place.

 

You may ask what’s so exceptional about the people involved in the development of naval aviation.  Today, we are used to seeing modern jets take-off and land at will on huge modern carriers.  But the early days of the naval aviator coincided with the earliest days of powered flight.  They also coincided with the Great War of 1914-1918.  

 

A little over a decade after Richard Pearce and the Wright Brothers succeeded independently in powered flight, men were flying machines with the flimsiest of construction over the battle fields of the Somme.   They were also flying over the North Sea during the massive clash between the British and German Fleets at Jutland.  Those earliest flyers were separated from the shells and bullets flying beneath and at them by fabric the thickness of a silk scarf.

 

And whilst their land-based contemporaries were having trouble enough getting to grips with flying and landing aircraft without killing themselves on airfields, the early pioneers of navy flying were being launched from catapults on ships and (believe it or not) submarines as well as taking off and landing on water in float planes.  Much of what they learnt, is still used today.

 

The Fleet Air Arm Museum is as much a museum of the Fleet Air Arm itself, as it is a museum of the machines it has flown.  You will learn much about the role of its pilots in conflicts from the First World War, through the sinking of the Bismarck and attacking the Tirpitz in the Second World War, to the Korean and Falklands Wars.

 

From start to finish the array of artefacts and aircraft is hugely impressive and the way they are displayed is both engaging and thought provoking.  

 

But there is also excitement.

 

Without doubt, the thing that children and many adults will remember most about their visit to the Fleet Air Arm Museum is their trip to and through the aircraft carrier at the centre of the exhibition.  This huge mock-up of a carrier flight deck and central “island” are brilliant.  In terms of the story of naval flying, this part of the journey marks a transition across the museum from halls predominantly concerned with propeller powered flight to jet and supersonic aviation.  But it is also a journey in itself.

 

You will “fly” in a real Wessex helicopter to the flight deck of the 1970s Ark Royal.  You will stand on the flight deck as aircraft take-off and land and then you will be shown round much of the rest of the ship.  This multimedia display is so well done, you will almost forget you are in a hangar in Yeovilton and not cruising the high seas whilst a fully operational aircraft carrier goes about its business around you.  It’s very well done and boys, especially, love it!

 

At the end of your trip around the carrier, you’ll go “outside” again on to the flight deck with all the wind and noise that goes with it, before being lowered into the hangars!  From here you can progress to the “Leading Edge” part of the museum.

 

This is where you will learn about the development of concepts we now take for granted, from vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) Harrier jump-jets, to the now defunct age of supersonic passenger flight.  You can even walk through one of the original prototype Concordes, which is amazing.  What is more so, is the aluminium plaques in the floor below the supersonic airliner, which show the length of the Wright Brothers first flight.  They fit easily within the length of this fairly small, if very fast, airliner, and show just how far we have travelled since 1903.   

 

This is awe-inspiring of itself, but it also illustrates that almost every machine and artefact displayed here and the history of every conflict and lifetime told in the Fleet Air Arm Museum is a history that took place within living memory.  And that really is a humbling thought.

 

You owe it to yourselves, to your kids and to those whose stories are told here, to visit, to marvel and to remember.

 

The only thing that would make this an even better day out, would be joint ticketing with the Tank Museum!

Fleet Air Arm Museum...