Fleet Air Arm
Navy unitWikipedia
36
MENTIONS
13
EPISODES
9
PODCASTS
Search complete. 36 mentions across 13 episodes found for "Fleet Air Arm".
Sep 30, 2026
speaker_3VOICE_ACTOR
I was already well acquainted, of course, with a history.
speaker_3VOICE_ACTOR
Graduate of Annapolis, lieutenant in the fleet air arm, excellent record, citations for bravery, and so forth.
speaker_3VOICE_ACTOR
Toward the end of the war, he and his bomber crew disappeared over the South China Sea.
speaker_3VOICE_ACTOR
Search failed to turn them up.
Tail DraggerHOST
The Royal New Zealand Air Force received Corsairs in mid-1943 and flew them effectively throughout the Solomon Islands campaign.
Tail DraggerHOST
The British Fleet Air Arm was also taking delivery, and it was the British who eventually solved the carrier problem.
Tail DraggerHOST
Fleet Air Arm pilots were accustomed to flying difficult aircraft, and they approached the Corsair with the pragmatism that comes from having no alternatives.
Tail DraggerHOST
They determined that if you raise the pilot's seat seven inches, which improved the forward view over that long nose considerably and flew a curving approach to the carrier rather than the standard straight in, the visibility issue on final became workable.
Tail DraggerHOST
The left-wing stall tendency was addressed with a spoiler modification on the right wing that caused it to stall first, giving the pilot a warning buffet rather than a surprise snap.
Steve DarlowHOST
So that's exactly what we did.
Steve DarlowHOST
RAF Bertram Newton has a remarkable history Stretching from the First World War through the interwar years and into the Second World War, it played an important role with coastal command, with numerous squadrons passing through the station, including British, Canadian, Dutch and Fleet Air Arm units.
Steve DarlowHOST
Many were involved in anti-shipping, anti-submarine and air-sea rescue operations.
Steve DarlowHOST
But, as Jamie explains, the history of Bertram Newton is really about the people who served there.
13 MINS LATER
Jamie HefferGUEST
So quite a lot of duties that were given to Coastal Command, considering that even in 1936 they were very much under-equipped for the job, because again they were all flying things like the Avro Anson.
Steve DarlowHOST
And many squadrons, units that were based here, crossed the war.
Jamie HefferGUEST
Yes, over 30 squadrons came and went here, plus seven land-based squadrons of the Fleet Air Arm.
Steve DarlowHOST
There's not just Bertram Newton, but there's satellite stations as
Andy AitchesonHOST
That's a feeling of freedom, a feeling of ecstasy, if you like.
Andy AitchesonHOST
He flew with 794 Naval Air Squadron, part of the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm, where he was involved in pilot and aircraft training.
Andy AitchesonHOST
Actually, the article then goes on to describe his life with 794 Naval Air Squadron and his service during the war.
Andy AitchesonHOST
It's just a lovely way to finish off this episode with something that sounds like a good news story.
Andrew LownieGUEST
And There is again the sense you don't snitch, that you keep these secrets in your own tight circles.
Andrew LownieGUEST
I talked to people in the Fleet Air Arm, I was told there were lots and lots of stories, but they weren't prepared to talk to me, who they perceived as an outsider, because this was stuff that they wanted to keep in their own tight little sort of operation.
Andrew LownieGUEST
And that's part of the problem.
Andrew LownieGUEST
I mean, whistleblowers are looked down on rather than people speaking the truth.
Tail DraggerHOST
While the United States Navy is deciding the Corsair is not suitable for carrier operations, the British Royal Navy is putting it on carriers and making it work.
Tail DraggerHOST
The Fleet Air Arm receives Corsairs starting in 1943 under Lem Lys.
Tail DraggerHOST
The British look at the visibility problem on approach and solve it almost immediately.
Tail DraggerHOST
Their solution is the curved approach.
Tail DraggerHOST
It requires practice and real judgment.
Tail DraggerHOST
It works.
Tail DraggerHOST
The Fleet Air Arm flies Corsairs in the Pacific, in the Indian Ocean, even in the narrow Norwegian fjords against German shipping, off escort carriers operating in conditions that would have seemed impossible to the American engineers who rejected the design for carrier operations in 1942.
Tail DraggerHOST
By late 1944 the United States Navy has watched this long enough.
Glenn DiesenHOST
We are joined today by Royal Navy Commodore, uh, Steve Jermy.
Glenn DiesenHOST
Uh, former strat- strategy director in the British Embassy in Afghanistan, and, uh, he also commanded warships in the 5th Destroyer Squadron and Britain's, uh, Fleet Air Arm.
Glenn DiesenHOST
Uh, also, uh, he writes articles in Substack which, uh, with, yeah, excellent analysis, although they do not always conform to the state-approved narratives.
Glenn DiesenHOST
But, uh, I have left a link in the description and, uh, yeah, thank you for coming on the program and also for producing your great articles.
Tim HollandHOST
But by late summer, the need hadn't gone away.
Tim HollandHOST
The Fleet Air Arm had requested 181 Grumman F4F Wildcats, which they got as the martlet.
Tim HollandHOST
That's a story for a different day.
Tim HollandHOST
And they did that after assessing a whole bunch of different RAF types.
Tim HollandHOST
They looked at the Hurricane.
Tim HollandHOST
They looked at some of the other aircraft that were under development at the time and decided that the Wildcat was the best interim solution.
Tim HollandHOST
By January, the Fleet Air Arm had continued to want Spitfire performance.
Tim HollandHOST
And then when the Mark V first started flying, they realized that that was probably the kind of performance they wanted on their carriers.
Tail DraggerHOST
The British figured out what the Navy couldn't.
Tail DraggerHOST
The Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm received Corsairs under Lend-Lease and their carrier aviation instructors went to work on the landing problem.
Tail DraggerHOST
The solution they developed was a curved approach.
Tail DraggerHOST
Instead of flying a straight-in final and losing sight of the deck behind that big cowl, Fleet Air Arm pilots held a constant gentle turn all the way to the wire, keeping the carrier deck visible around the side of the nose through the offset angle of the turn.
Tail DraggerHOST
The technique worked well enough that the British were operating Corsairs from carriers almost from the start of their deliveries.
Tail DraggerHOST
When American pilots tried the same approach, it worked for them too.
speaker_0NARRATOR
With the crisis threatening to worsen, English Prime Minister Harold Wilson held a mini-cabinet meeting at the Royal Naval Air Station Cold Rose in Cornwall, where it was decided that setting fire to the remaining oil was the only option left.
speaker_0NARRATOR
On Tuesday 28 March, the Fleet Air Arm sent buccaneers from Nosiemouth to drop 42 1,000-pound bombs on the Torrey Canyon.
speaker_0NARRATOR
The operation was vouched a success, even though the Navy was criticised in the media when a quarter of those bombs failed to hit a stationary target.
speaker_0NARRATOR
a stationary target 300 by 40 meters wide, no less.
3 more episodes mention Fleet Air Arm.
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