Help save the Fairey Barracuda from extinction

Fairey Barracuda DP872. Restoration of the World's only WW2 Fairey Barracuda torpedo bomber.

Over 2500 Barracuda aircraft were delivered to the Fleet Air Arm, more than any other type ordered by the Royal Navy to date. Unlike other more iconic aircraft of its era none were retained for posterity and no complete examples exist today.

Since the early 1970s the Fleet Air Arm Museum has been collecting Barracuda components from a wide variety of sources throughout the British Isles, with the long term aim of rebuilding a Barracuda.

Nose, centre section and wing components from Barracuda DP872 were the first to be collected and have since formed the basis of the rebuild. Says Dave Morris Curator of Aircraft "some restoration work on the nose section was started in the 1990s, however, the enormity of the task coupled with lack of funds meant no further significant progress was made until now".

Full Steam Ahead for Barracuda DP872

On the 6th February 2015, the extensively re-built tail section of Barracuda DP872 was brought back from volunteers working in Newcastle.

The Project will now continue at the Fleet Air Arm Museum and work has begun already with the Barracuda occupying quite a large portion of the museum’s in-house restoration facility!

The project will aim to use a high percentage of re-claimed original parts and material where it is practical and possible. However, this will be balanced with newly manufactured components where structural integrity is required or where an original part simply does not exist. 

The centre section has been completely dismantled and Frame 6 (the start point of all Barracuda fuselage builds) has been set in a jig for alignment.

A lot of people have asked if the FAAM Engineering Team will have the skills required to make or restore all of the parts needed for the rebuild, or if we can achieve a rebuild. We hope that these new images will demonstrate that the Engineering Department is very well equipped in both skills and tooling and will make great progress towards creating an example of this unique aircraft.

PLEASE HELP US IN THIS IMPORTANT RESTORATION PROJECT

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