Visit To Fleet Air Arm Museum, Yeovilton

[DD_Arthur]

So it came to pass; after ten days of weather induced boredom my wife finally lost her rag and threw us bodily out of the house.  By the simple inducement of waving folding money in his face I pursuaded my eldest son to drive his littlest brother and I to RNAS Yeovilton. 

 

http://www.fleetairarm.com/

 

It's only an hours drive from our home or if you're a twenty one year old student it's only a half hour drive.  Here he is making a relaxed but unsuccessful attempt on the British landspeed record down the length of the A303!

 

Whilst my youngest waved happily through the rear window at our fellow road users receding in our wake I adopted the strategy of my late father whilst being chauffered by my mother; close one's eyes and keep pressing a large, imaginary brake pedal!

'Fraid I didn't risk my shiny new camera outside as it was still drizzling on arrival so we swept into the carpark, past the huge anchors besides the gates from long since scrapped aircraft carriers and ran up the steps to the entrance hall where we flashed a student card and my RM Association membership and were relieved of a (slightly) discounted entrance fee.  Actually it's not a bad deal.  By agreeing to convert our tickets into a charitable donation on which the museum can claim VAT back they offer you free admission for another twelve months from date of ticket.

 

Straight into hall four, the "Leading Edge" exhibition.

 

Sure enough, fifty years ago the British aviation industry was still at the leading edge. In front a gorgeous Hawker Hunter trainer whilst the little pointy blue thing behind is the BAC221 which was built to investigate high speed delta wing technology and actually held the world airspeed record for a short time in the mid-fifties.  Behind that is the original Hawker P1127, the Harrier prototype.  On the right and dominating hall four with it's all white colour scheme (just like certain kinds of Elephant) is Concorde 002, the second prototype to fly and a fine example of the 'plane which went a long way to destroying the British aircraft industry.

 

Back in the mid-sixties, whilst the American taxpayer was fronting up for a war in S.E. Asia, building a great society and putting a man on the moon, over here Britain and France decided to shovel great wads of cash into an effort to put a man in a light weight business suit into a comfy chair next to Joan Collins whilst sipping a champagne cocktail at twice the speed of sound.

 

 

Concorde 002 never carried fare paying passengers, it's narrow fuselage being crammed full of sophisticated measuring instruments so the boffins could work out where Elton John and Rod Stewart would sit when the bloody thing was eventually allowed to land at JFK.  Concorde's cockpit shows it's late 'fifties heritage with a bewildering array of instruments and a certain similarity in layout and size to the flight deck of a Vulcan bomber.

 

 

Tucked away behind Concord is the nose of a 1954 Vampire T22 trainer.

 

 

No sign of the magnificent Westland Wyvern, a post war carrier Jabo with a contra-rotating prop which used to reside in this hall. It's place taken by an old Whirlwind chopper and a very shiny Sea Harrier as part of the museum's Falklands war exhibit. 

 

 

 

 

Nose cone of a Delta Dagger (Israeli made Mirage) apparently shot down by this very Harrier.

 

 

There seems to have been some shuffling about of the Falklands exhibit since I was last here and most annoyingly the little Wasp helicopter - the very chopper that C/Sgt. Menghini of our aircorp flew through the night the mist and a snow storm to land on the side of Two Sisters mountain by the light of a green pencil torch during a battle - has gone.  Par for the course I suppose as Sgt. Menghini's reward for his skill, determination and bravery in making four trips that night and saving the lives of over a dozen wounded Marines and Argentinian soldiers was zilch, zero, nuthin'.

However, in the 'Family Learning Area' you can play the 'Falklands Conflict game'!  Missed that one.

 

Space is at a premium at Yeovilton so as a general rule of thumb, if it had wings that can be folded, then they're folded.  Which is a pity.  After visiting the IWM at Duxford and seeing what they've managed to cram into a similar amount of limited space I think the curator at Yeovilton would be well served by a visit to Cambridgshire.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some rather lovely scale models of aircraft carriers made by ship yard apprentices are also on display

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also you can try your hand at the Vickers K-Gun game and try and bring down a BF110!

 

 

Upstairs in this hall is a gallery of Fleet Air Arm related art.  Skuas attacking the Konigsberg? a German pocket battleship in harbour in nineteen-forty. The actually sunk it with no losses either!

 

 

Attacking the Bismark in Swordfish.

 

 

Is it true that none of our Swordfish were lost during this attack as the Bismark's mechanical gun laying computers were not designed for aircraft that flew at less than 100mph and so all they're shot fell short?

Dragging F4U's out of the monsoon mud out east.

 

 

"Good show Ranjit! Now when you and Jumbo have finished here we've got some Spitfires we'd like you to bury too." 

"At once, Sahib!"

 

I think I must have used my pictures per post quota so standby for part two!

[SkyPup]

Looks like a terrific museum.  Thanks for sharing.

 

P

[BadAim]

This is very nice!

[DD_Arthur]

Ooops, I forgot all about this thread!  Since some of you may or may not be visiting Yeovilton in the very near future...........

 

Now I did mention earlier how the museum suffers from a slight lack of space.  Welllllllllllllll...after the Korean war exhibits

 

 

 

you go onto the "Carrier Experience" which involves entering a Wessex Mk. 5 to fly through a bumpy western approaches gale and do a night landing on the deck of an Ark Royal type fleet carrier in the nineteen seventies. Basically, you board the chopper, the lights go down, an industrial strength butt-kicker starts up and everyone laughs nervously.  After a couple of minutes the vibration stops, the lights go up, the opposite door opens and you're let out down a ramp onto the "flight deck."

 

Now when this exhibit first opened it must have been pretty exciting - although in my opinion they should make you jump out the chopper into the path of a wind machine,  into which buckets of salt water mixed with small quantities of brake fluid and paraffin should be thrown to give you the full effect. Arranged around the deck are most of the musuem's  large collection of dusty postwar heavy metal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can then enter the island structure for a tour of the interior and some idea of how the navy lived and worked forty years ago. 

 

 

Personally, I think this whole part of the museum needs a drastic makeover.  Part of the tour involves a deafening projection onto an end wall of a Buccaneer landing and then the Phantom "takes off" - reheat is simulated by the use of orange lightbulbs up the jet pipes  .

 

The facsimile of the carrier structure and it's internals has been done really well but I can't help feeling - in the age of Youtube - that this whole exhibit has been overtaken by technology. Infact, a very quick search found me this;

 

   

 

I can't help feeling that if they took this exhibit down there'd be much more space to display more of the museum's aircraft collection in all their unfolded glory.

After this exhibition you are funnelled past the museums restoration shop where they are currently working on a Wildcat.

 

 

 

 

Oh yeah, from a previous visit - the Westland Wyvern - now in the museums reserve collection (you can't get to see it) due to lack of space but what a symphony in aluminium! 

 

 

So, the Fleet AirArm Museum, Yeovilton.  All in all, a good day out.

 

[Painless]

Looks like a "must see" Arthur !

 

Tell your son to hold the bloody wheel correctly and to leave his bollocks alone if he wants to drive  in a "sporty" manner ! LOL

 

Great pics M8.

 

Cheers,  Mick.

[DD_Arthur]

Every time he gets in a car I crap myself.  He's just much too over confident.

[Painless]

LOL Arthur, it's a worry being a dad !

 

"Every time he gets in a car I crap myself.  He's just much too over confident."

 

 

I'm sure I've heard Siobhan use exactly those words when talking to one of her M8's about me you know

 

Cheers,  Mick.

[delta7]

nice pics, I was there around 1975 with my folks, one of our last family holidays, and I fondly remember it. We were staying in a small hotel near the museum and there was an ex RAF pilot ,who flew in the middle east between the wars, staying there also. He was kind enough to spend some evenings with an enthusiastic teanager pestering him but unfortunatly I cant remember any of his stories now. My Dad drove a ford zodiak almost non stop home to central scotland at the end of the holiday.