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37 unusual facts about Fleet Air Arm


816 Squadron RAN

816 Squadron is a Royal Australian Navy Fleet Air Arm squadron that started out as a Royal Navy unit 816 Naval Air Squadron.

817 Squadron RAN

817 Squadron was a Royal Australian Navy Fleet Air Arm squadron.

817 Squadron was first formed as a Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm squadron in 1941, operating Fairey Albacore aircraft in the ASW role in Icelandic and Mediterranean waters.

It was originally formed as part of the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm for service during World War II and took part in combat operations in Norway, North Africa, Sicily and off the coast of France.

Arctic Star

Fleet Air Arm personnel, not qualified by sea service, may qualify under the criteria applicable to Royal Air Force personnel.

Blackburn Dart

The Dart was the standard single-seat torpedo bomber used by the Fleet Air Arm from 1923 until 1933.

Brewster SB2A Buccaneer

Five of the Cyclone powered aircraft under the model number '340' were supplied to the Fleet Air Arm of the Royal Navy for assessment - four as dive bombers and one as a target towing tug.

British air services

Fleet Air Arm (1924 - 1937 as part of the Royal Air Force, 1937 onwards as part of the Royal Navy)

Bryan Bush

Prior to his footballing career, Bush had worked as a butcher in Bitton and as an engineer in the Fleet Air Arm, and he joined Bristol City as an amateur following the conclusion of World War II.

Christina Goulter

She said that that British Air Power, as a whole played the decisive role in victory, and this included Bomber and Coastal Commands, as well as the Fleet Air Arm.

City of Derry Airport

In 1943 the airfield became a Fleet Air Arm base called RNAS Eglinton HMS Gannet and was home to the No. 1847 Fleet Air Arm Squadron which provided convoy air cover as part of the Second Battle of the Atlantic.

Curtiss SO3C Seamew

A number of the SO3C-1s, not a floatplane, but a fixed undercarriage version, were ordered by the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm under the terms of Lend-Lease.

De Havilland Firestreak

It was developed by de Havilland (later Hawker Siddeley) in the early 1950s and was the first such weapon to enter active service with the Royal Air Force and Fleet Air Arm, equipping the English Electric Lightning, de Havilland Sea Vixen and Gloster Javelin.

De Havilland Moth Minor

Civil aircraft operated in the United Kingdom were impressed into wartime service with the Royal Air Force and Fleet Air Arm, one example was used by the United States Army Air Corps.

Hinstock

From 1941 to 1947 there was a co-located Royal Air Force and Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm training station called HMS Godwit, which specialised in instrument and blind landing technologies.

Hispano-Suiza HS.404

Subsequently a suitable belt-feeding system was developed by Martin-Baker and the new design was adopted by the RAF and Fleet Air Arm in 1941 in a slightly modified form as the Hispano Mk.II.

History of Australian naval aviation

During the mid-1920s, the RAN attempted to acquire government support for an Australian Fleet Air Arm, modelled loosely on the RNAS and its Royal Air Force-controlled successor, the Fleet Air Arm.

HM Prison Ford

Royal Naval Air Station Ford (RNAS Ford) was formerly a Fleet Air Arm station, and was converted to an open prison in 1960.

Horsea Island

In the 1950s the lake was used in the testing of improved Martin Baker Ejection Seats, following catapult launch mishaps on carriers in which Fleet Air Arm aircrew often sustained serious compression injuries to the spine after ejecting from submerged aircraft.

Ian Verner Macdonald

Macdonald is claimed to be a World War II veteran of the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) and Fleet Air Arm, however, details of said service are unknown.

Judith Keppel

Keppel's father was a Lieutenant Commander in the Fleet Air Arm, who moved with the family to various naval postings around Britain until they settled in London when she was 17.

Ken Hollyman

He played in more than eighty wartime matches, serving with the Fleet Air Arm during the war, for the club before eventually making his league debut against Norwich City on the opening day of the 1946-47 season, the first season of league football following the end of World War II.

Ken Webb

Ken Webb, from Gossops Green, Sussex, intended to attempt the record when he retired after a working life that included 12 years with the Fleet Air Arm.

Lagonda flamethrower

It was believed that it would act as a deterrent to Luftwaffe dive-bombers targeting the lightly defended Merchant Navy ships and coastal bases of the Fleet Air Arm.

The Bedford Cockatrice was ordered for the defence of the coastal bases of the Fleet Air Arm in the event of glider- or parachute-dropped invasion troops.

Miles M.76

Hugh McLennan Kendall flew with the Fleet Air Arm during the war, and was involved in air-racing prior to and after the war.

Naval Air Station Brunswick

Naval Air Station Brunswick, Maine, was originally constructed and occupied in March 1943, and was first commissioned on April 15, 1943, to train and form-up Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm pilots to fly squadrons of the Chance Vought F4U Corsair, and of the Grumman TBF Avenger and F6F Hellcat, for the British Naval Command.

The air station had a Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm, but the squadrons also practiced at other Naval Auxiliary Air Facilities (NAAF) in Maine before eventual transport to Britain.

No. 10 Air Experience Flight RAF

10 AEF has a team of pilots who fly the cadets; they must have 200 hours recorded as a pilot within the RAF, Fleet Air Arm or Army Air Corps.

RAF Tangmere

In 1925 the station re-opened to serve the RAF's Fleet Air Arm, and went operational in 1926 with No. 43 Squadron equipped with biplane Gloster Gamecocks (there is still a row of houses near the museum entrance called Gamecock Terrace).

RM Condor

The base has been home to 45 Commando, which is part of 3 Commando Brigade, since 1971, although it was first constructed as a Fleet Air Arm base in 1938, when it was known as RNAS Arbroath (HMS Condor).

Roger Livesey

He was chosen by Michael Powell to play the lead in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) after Powell was denied his original choice, Laurence Olivier (Winston Churchill had objected to the movie and the Fleet Air Arm refused to release Olivier- who had been a Hollywood movie star before returning to England to take a Navy commission).

Tangmere

Mothballed after World War I, in 1925 the station re-opened to serve the Fleet Air Arm, and went operational in 1926 with No. 43 Squadron.

Timeline of British military aviation

1 April - The Royal Air Force establishes its Fleet Air Arm, consisting of RAF units normally embarked on aircraft carriers and fighting ships

United Kingdom military aircraft serials

A unified serial number system, maintained by the Air Ministry (AM), and its successor the Ministry of Defence (MoD), is used for aircraft operated by the Royal Air Force (RAF), Fleet Air Arm (FAA) and Army Air Corps (AAC).

United States Navy Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor program

One British writer claimed that the early school was influenced by a group of a dozen flying instructors from the British Fleet Air Arm aboard HMS Ark Royal, who were graduates of the Royal Navy's intense Air Warfare Instructors School in Lossiemouth, Scotland.

William Marlowe

He served in the Fleet Air Arm and hoped for a career as a writer before training as an actor at RADA.


Hans-Günther Lange

On 4 May 1945 U-711 was damaged in Operation Judgement, an attack by the Fleet Air Arm of the Royal Navy at Kilbotn aimed at the depot ships Black Watch and Senja, and sank after attempts by Lange and seven other crew members to keep it afloat.

HMS Goldfinch

HMS Goldfinch was the name given to Ta' Qali airfield in Malta when it was transferred to the Fleet Air Arm on 1945-04-01 for use as a Fleet Requirements Unit.

OPEC siege

Ex-Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm pilot Neville Atkinson, at that time the personal pilot for Libya's leader Muammar al-Gaddafi, flew them, including Hans-Joachim Klein, a supporter of the imprisoned Baader-Meinhof group and a member of the Revolutionary Cells, and Gabriele Kröcher-Tiedemann, from Algiers to Tripoli, where some hostages were freed.

Operation Banquet

Striking more of a note of desperation were Banquet Alert which called for the employment of Fleet Air Arm training aircraft under Coastal Command and Banquet Training which called for the absorption of aircraft from Training Command into the operational striking force of Bomber Command.

RAF Nordhorn

The range is used by the British Royal Air Force (RAF), the German Luftwaffe, and other NATO air forces and aviation arms of their other branches (such as the Army Air Corps, and the Fleet Air Arm).

RAF Search and Rescue Force

The military and civil roles are shared with the Sea King helicopters of the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm, while the civil search and rescue role is also shared with the helicopters of HM Coastguard.

The colour of the location mark indicates the agency providing helicopter response (blue: Fleet Air Arm, yellow: RAF Search and Rescue Force, red: Her Majesty's Coastguard).