Where museum meets theatre
The Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm Museum in Yeovilton is one of the Southwest’s leading attractions and will almost certainly change your perception of aircraft museums.
As much an ‘attraction’ as it is a ‘museum’, the award winning Aircraft Carrier Experience is where Museum meets theatre. You’ll ‘fly’ by helicopter to the replica flight deck of the aircraft carrier HMS ARK ROYAL.
On board the Ark Royal you’ll see ten aircraft and two enormous projection screens showing a Phantom interceptor fighter and a Buccaneer low level strike bomber. You will be in the heart of the action as powerful jet fighters take off and land around you.
You will experience the thrills and sounds of a working flight deck, and feel the wind in your hair as you witness a dramatic air-sea rescue when a Buccaneer is lost over the side on the Ark Royal into the sea. You will even see a nuclear bomb
Inside the Ark Royal is a series of faithfully reconstructed cabins and operational areas from the Bridge to the ‘Goofers’ Deck’, which looks down onto the flight deck below.
The Museum has the largest collection of Naval aircraft anywhere in Europe and the first British built Concorde which you can go on-board and visit the cockpit.
Outside the Museum there is a children’s ‘Mini Marines’ adventure playground, a licensed restaurant and a shop, ample free parking and excellent disabled access.
Just across the road from the main Museum, is the Fleet Air Arm Museum’s reserve collection
The reserve collection is larger than that of many other entire aircraft museums and is housed in a Heritage Lottery funded climate-controlled building called Cobham Hall.
Within Cobham Hall there are over thirty historic aircraft and some five miles of shelving accommodating over 30,000 records and artefacts.
Among the aircraft and artefacts within Cobham Hall are one of the largest collections of Westland Helicopters and the only surviving example of a WW1 aircraft Carrier – a 60ft long Thorneycroft Seaplane Lighter. There’s a bullet ridden Argentinian Beechcraft Mentor and even a prototype Bouncing Bomb!
Cobham Hall opens to the public once each year when it attracts visitors from all over the UK to see its unique collection of aircraft, many of which have never before been seen on public display.
The Museum is open throughout the year but closed on Mondays and Tuesdays during the winter. It is situated alongside RNAS Yeovilton – Europe’s busiest military air station and dependent upon operational demands, you may see fighter aircraft and helicopters going through their rigorous training procedures.
