Fairey Barracuda DP872 Rebuild

Fairey Barracuda DP872 Rebuild The Fleet Air Arm Museum is a charity, and this project is only possible because of the generosity of our donors.

To help us make the Fairey Barracuda a reality, please consider making a donation:

https://www.justgiving.com/page/barracuda-live As the Barracuda project develops, using more components gleaned from a growing number of Barracuda aircraft and sources to aid the build, it is clear (from a museum point of view) that while this re-construction will always be that of Fairey Barracuda DP872, it is no

longer the pure ‘restoration’ of a single aeroplane and its original components. Being clear about what is restoration, conservation, preservation, reconstructed work or new manufacture is something that the Fleet Air Arm Museum’s Conservation and Engineering Team is keen to think about, identify and promote more accurately as part of the National Museum of the Royal Navy. The project will incorporate many disciplines with individually restored, conserved, preserved parts, re-manufactured parts and sub-sections utilising components from various sources. To be accurate we now see the project as a reconstruction and rebuild. The aim is still to create an exacting example of a Barracuda down to the last detail, using DP872 as basis, and using as many reclaimed original components as possible before we include any new material. The finished aircraft will be unique as the world’s only complete example of a Fairey Barracuda and will set the highest levels of museum standard engineering. We hope you will appreciate this level of correct and accurate Museum thinking associated with the project and continue to support us as the rebuild continues. As we have come out of lockdown, Will has been focussing on the next stages of construction centred mainly around the insertion of the floor and frames in the cockpit area. This begins to add new shape to the build but brings with it more challenges. The continuing conundrum of what was bent in the factory, what was bent in the crash (or bent further in the crash and by how much), what fits in ahead of what (we have no manufacturer’s build schedule for the aircraft) and what can be salvaged and used that is original Barracuda material. Processing the salvaged Solent wreck components is also a background task that continues to surprise us at the quality and condition of many of the components that have been on the seabed for more than 70 years.

Some highlights from our work on the wreckage of LS551, recently recovered from Norway. We had four of us working today,...
29/05/2026

Some highlights from our work on the wreckage of LS551, recently recovered from Norway. We had four of us working today, Dave, Will, Tony and myself, in order to get through the recording and assessing as quickly as possible. It's throwing up some interesting stuff, much of it shedding light on how LS551 met its end. In due course we'll do a proper assessment of airframe damage and what it may tell us about the final minutes of flight, after LS551 was hit by flak over the Tirpitz. Eye- witnesses reported that it crashed in flames - we've found plenty of evidence of fire damage so far.

The wreckage of LS551 was received at the museum a few weeks ago after last July's recovery from northern Norway so now ...
22/05/2026

The wreckage of LS551 was received at the museum a few weeks ago after last July's recovery from northern Norway so now the process begins in identifying and recording what we have, and conserving it before starting to harvest reusable components to assist with the rebuild of DP872. Luckily the weather has been very kind to us during the last two weeks of activity.

You may have spotted our new logo - to go with it we have an exciting announcement. As a national museum, it’s important...
15/05/2026

You may have spotted our new logo - to go with it we have an exciting announcement. As a national museum, it’s important to project a modern, simple, distinct and memorable identity. As Royal Navy Museums: Naval Aviation, we’ll be adopting a new face better to explain our mission, Linking Navy and Nation and as you view our page, our voice is still very much Fairey Barracuda DP872 Rebuild. To start, we have a new logo.
Now for the news: after 82 years on a Norwegian mountainside, Barracuda 4M of 829 Naval Air Squadron, LS551, is home in Yeovilton. We’ve taken delivery of the container full of irreplaceable artefacts. Now comes the hard work, to inventory, record, photograph and assess condition of every sub-assembly and part we’ve recovered. Our first assessment is that the wreckage has survived its journey and change of environment extremely well. We’re able to stabilise the condition as we inspect and we will then rectify as necessary. Will and Dave have isolated the parts of significant historical interest for early treatment, while the whole team turns our hands to sorting, recording and storing parts. This hasn’t stopped Will from pouncing on one or two parts of priceless and irreplaceable value to the rebuild, to get started.

We’re hugely grateful to everyone who has made this unqiue recovery possible, from our Norwegian colleagues, the companies in Norway who helped to bring LS551 down from the mountain and ship it to UK, our UK benefactors and supporters and to you, for taking an interest and following this page.

A quick post from me this week. I'm still working on the observers cockpit floor structure, which we will update you all...
02/05/2026

A quick post from me this week. I'm still working on the observers cockpit floor structure, which we will update you all soon. In the meantime here are some photos of a few of the smaller projects within the bigger restoration. We complete these smaller projects when we have those half hour/hour times that we can't put on the main build. We would like to thank Metal Finishings Ltd as without them we would not be able to rebuild these items.
Read on and enjoy.....
Will Gibbs.

More cleaning up of components from the Solent wreck and getting them ready for anti-corrosion treatment: zinc nickel pl...
24/04/2026

More cleaning up of components from the Solent wreck and getting them ready for anti-corrosion treatment: zinc nickel plating for steel and anodising for aluminium alloy.

A very nice guy who has helped the Barracuda Rebuild Team on many occasions when we’ve visited Northern Ireland.
21/04/2026

A very nice guy who has helped the Barracuda Rebuild Team on many occasions when we’ve visited Northern Ireland.

Will wanted to get some components ready for anodising and zinc plating so he found me a box of bits from the Solent wre...
17/04/2026

Will wanted to get some components ready for anodising and zinc plating so he found me a box of bits from the Solent wreck that had had an initial clean up a while ago. They were mostly from the stub wing area but a few interesting bits from elsewhere too.

First thing today was to get the new sheet metal racking assembled and into its corner of the workshop, all part of the ...
10/04/2026

First thing today was to get the new sheet metal racking assembled and into its corner of the workshop, all part of the overall improvements to our working environment. Only then was I able to get back to Barracuda bits and the wet media blaster. Happy days!

Even though it was a day off from ‘tin bashing’ due to the Easter weekend, I went in with my son and two grandsons for a...
03/04/2026

Even though it was a day off from ‘tin bashing’ due to the Easter weekend, I went in with my son and two grandsons for a wander and a quick peek at the Barracuda.

Today we remember Operation TUNGSTEN, the Fleet Air Arm's most powerful carrier strike of World War 2. At 0528 on the mo...
03/04/2026

Today we remember Operation TUNGSTEN, the Fleet Air Arm's most powerful carrier strike of World War 2. At 0528 on the morning of 3 April 1944, the first of two waves struck the German battleship KMS Tirpitz in Kaåfjord, northern Norway. The mission was to "inflict damage on Tirpitz by bombing with carrier-borne aircraft to such an extent that she will be unable to take any part in this year's operations". That was a veiled reference to D-Day, the invasion of Europe two months later.

The strike force lost three Barracudas and one Hellcat from the 120 aircraft launched. Eight Barracuda aircrew were lost and one became a POW. The official history acknowledged that the strike was "beautifully co-ordinated and fearlessly executed..." but the "results were "intensely disappointing". It's a curious verdict, one with which there is cause to disagree.

Some historians have been fixated on the failure to sink Tirpitz - but that wasn't the purpose of the strike. The mission was to destroy her combat readiness such that she couldn't interfere with D-Day. The attack resulted in such significant losses to her crew that she was never again operationally ready. Andrew Boyd in his recent book on British naval intelligence in the 20th century gets it: "TUNGSTEN ended her (Tirpitz) status as a serious operational threat".

The result was all the more remarkable given the state of training of the aircrew. Although the two strike wings had been through three months of intense workup training, 85% of the 650 aircrew in the strike wings had never set sail on operations and three of the five aircraft types involved, the Barracuda, Corsair and Hellcat had had little previous operational use. Three of the four types of bomb had not been used operationally before. Added to that, none of the Barracuda crews, with the exception of the strike leader, had dropped the principal weapon, the 1,600lb AP bomb which was being employed for the first time.

There was also a very secret purpose to TUNGSTEN, only revealed when documents were released after the 70 years rule. The classification BIGOT applied to many of the planning documents for TUNSTEN reveals that it was directly related to D-Day and was an important element of the deception plan, Operation FORTITUDE (NORTH). That is another fascinating story.

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Fleet Air Arm Museum, RNAS Yeovilton
Yeovil
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