Qualla: Fleet Air Arm Museum

Fleet Air Arm Museum: Introduction

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rodw, Public domain. The fuselage of Short 184 number 8359 hangs in Hall 1, unrestored, the canvas torn in places, the timber visibly scorched. The little floatplane was built by Westland Aircraft just up the road in Yeovil in 1916, and it flew at the Battle of Jutland that May, the first aircraft in history to carry out a torpedo attack on enemy warships from the air. It went to the Imperial War Museum in London and was damaged when a Luftwaffe bomb hit the building during the Second World War. Now it sits at the Fleet Air Arm Museum at RNAS Yeovilton, on the very airfield where Westland still builds helicopters, telling a hundred and ten years of naval aviation in one room.

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Image: Rodw | Public domain

Fleet Air Arm Museum: The Working Airfield

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Paul Hudson from United Kingdom, CC BY 2.0. The Fleet Air Arm Museum is unusual among British military aviation museums in that it shares its location with an active Royal Naval Air Station. RNAS Yeovilton lies seven miles north of Yeovil in the flat Somerset countryside between the Mendip Hills and the Quantocks. Helicopt...

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Image: Paul Hudson from United Kingdom | CC BY 2.0

Fleet Air Arm Museum: Four Halls, A Century of Aircraft

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. DavidBrooks assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public domain. Hall 1 traces the development of naval aviation from fabric-covered biplanes and airships to modern jets, with the Short 184 as its centrepiece and a row of restored cockpits and engines along the walls. Hall 2 covers the Second World War, including a side room with a Yokosuka MX...

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. DavidBrooks assumed (based on copyright claims). | Public domain

Fleet Air Arm Museum: The Stories Behind the Aircraft

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Paul Hudson from United Kingdom, CC BY 2.0. Smaller displays around the museum carry some of its most affecting material. Operation Skua reconstructs the recovery of Blackburn Skua L2940, lost on operations and salvaged decades later. The Battle of Taranto display, the Fleet Air Arm's most celebrated exploit of the Second ...

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Image: Paul Hudson from United Kingdom | CC BY 2.0

Fleet Air Arm Museum: Aircraft of the Falklands and the Future King

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rodw, Public domain. From 2023 a temporary Falklands exhibition has brought together five aircraft that served in the 1982 conflict, including types that flew from HMS Hermes and HMS Invincible during the recapture of South Georgia and the Falkland Islands. The Flight of the Red Dragon exhibition doc...

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Image: Rodw | Public domain

Fleet Air Arm Museum: Watching the Helicopters

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alison Rawson, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Fleet Air Arm Museum opened in 1964, with its first hangar dedicated by Prince Philip, and has grown steadily since. It is now operated as part of the National Museum of the Royal Navy alongside Portsmouth and Hartlepool. What makes Yeovilton particularly worth visiting is th...

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Image: Alison Rawson | CC BY-SA 2.0