3,400 HP, 310 MPH, bi-fold wings, coaxial propellers, oldest flyingTurboprop, Fairey Gannet 

I last flew XT752 on 18 July 1968 shortly before leaving the RN. Good memories and a great aircraft. (Chalky White)

I used to service this aircraft at Lossiemouth 1970 -72. 849 squadron. It's wonderful to see the old lady still flying. Looks like she's had a new coat of paint since I last worked on her. We used to use cartridges to start her. Brilliant

As a mechanical designer who began in the days before CAD, when I see the mechanics of that folding wing I can almost feel the scratch of 4H graphite on toothy vellum as it's being laid out. Janey is a thing of beauty in the eye of this beholder.

Such an Ugly but beautiful Gannet and in superb condition, it has so many moving parts it almost like a SeaKing Helicopter. The Pilot is rightly proud of this Uniquely rare treasure of the Royal Navy. Bravo!

The pilot provided some very interesting points about the Gannet and seeing engines start up and the wings unfold was quite a treat.

What a big bruiser, no wonder they called it the Gannet. Such a fascinating aircraft and well explained by the pilot. Thanks for sharing the clip.

I actually really like that aircraft. Its ugly at first glance, but once you really look at it it's beautiful. And the tech that's been pumped into it is amazing. And its from the early 50s. Real genius

An aircraft that manages to be ugly and beautiful at the same time! How they crammed all the engineering into the fuselage and wings is truly amazing. I used to watch Gannets flying over my house in Scotland as they went in to land at Abbotsinch naval aerodrome - now Glasgow Airport!

Incredible machine at any time but 1954 ? How talented those aeronautical and mechanical engineers had to be ! Remarkable engineering achievement.

Amazing combination of function, power, and engineering. A robust bird that, in my eyes, looks like one very stable platform for the mission. And I like the paint job as well.

The aim of shutting down one engine was to provide “loitering “ time in a specific search area . The extra range was not as important as the time spent in the vicinity of possible sub targets !

I've loved airplanes all my life, and this is one amazing machine. Thanks for sharing. And, I could listen to that pilot explain things all day!Bruce

Finally, RU-vid is starting to understand my preferences.

Fantastic achievement! I still have my Frog model of the Gannet ... the flying demonstration looked spectacular, and the contrarotating prop noise was quite marked, though nothing like that of the Tu-95 family.

The basic lines and silhouette reminds me of a TBF Avenger. 310 mph seems slow for a 3400 hp aircraft but I'm sure the payload is substantial. Too bad the rest of them were scrapped. Such a unique aircraft should have been treated with more respect.

Loved this, brought back memories. I saw a squadron of these fly low up the runway at the HMAS Albatross base Nowra nsw Australia. At the first big airshow they had in 1966

Omg I am in LOVE. That is the coolest prop plane ever.

It's an ugly beast, but it has a lot of character, and is so unique nothing looks like it, nothing operates like it and as it has already been said, the technology is amazing. It is very fascinating, and a pleasure to see it.

I love seeing old machinery of any form restored or preserved, but prop planes have to be top of my list.

Wow what an incredible piece of engineering! All that ordnance, plus having to carry all that fuel that's wild, especially considering when it was built

The Gannet is a quintessentially British design. Almost a flying caricature of itself. Rube Goldberg was undoubtedly on the design team for this one!

Back in 1963, as an apprentice at Bristol Siddeley Engines, Coventry, the Double Mamba was the first gas turbine engine that I laid a spanner on. And later, I was able to see them on test, with the second engine being shut down and 'windmill' restarted.

Please oh please oh holy please DON'T include music. Otherwise excellent. I also used to see Gannets in formation flying over my home in West Sussex1958 on. Such a wonderful sound, especially to a nipper of 9 years.

How in the heck can almost 700 people give this a thumbs down??? What could you not like about this video?

Never heard of this aircraft before. Learned something new, thanks.

What a beautiful ship !!!! Love her voice in the fly-by....amazing ship !!!

Wow! Unique Doesn't Really Seem To Cover It & It Certainly Is Interesting . . .

I grew up watching these warbirds at the Royal Canadian Navy Air Branch facility HMCS Shearwater at Halifax, Nova Scotia in the 1950s. Fairy had a maintenance facility there, servicing the RCN's TBM Avengers, Seafires, Seafuries, and even a couple of Lancasters being converted to commercial aircraft.

Janet the Gannet, must be named after someone's old girlfriend. Lovely to see it flying, a wonderful aircraft.

In 1969, when I was on the Royal Engineers Sailing Association yacht "Petard" on passage between the Isles of Scilly & Waterford, we were buzzed twice by one of those. The next time I saw one was in August 1988 when a Gannet, privately owned 7 based in Carlisle, flew past me as I was walking near the Settle to Carlisle Railway.

I remember these as a kid in the early 60s but never quite clocked that they had 2 engines.

In the early 1950’s the family was holidaying near Jervis Bay. I was walking along the beach with my father’s mate who had been a “rat of Tobruk” when a pair RAN Gannats buzzed the beach. They were so low I could almost touch them, or so it seemed. When I looked back down at my father’s mate his fishing rod and basked were in the air and he was running up the beach with his arms over his head and dived into the sand. He was still shaking hours later. I’ve never forgotten this. I can still hear the buzz of those planes and see him.

The Fairey Gannet AEW (with the radar bulge under the fuselage) was the Royal Navy's eyes in the sky. F.A.A.squadrons operated on carriers with these AEW Gannets in the 1960's. I served on H.M.S. Centaur. As we know, by the time the Falklands war came along, some penny pinching bureaucrat at the M.O.D. had given these valuable Gannets the chop, and look what happened !!

Good quality video. Thumbs up. Camera?

An incredible flying machine. Good video. ♡ T.E.N.

What a cool airplane. So glad at least one of the type has been preserved.

How anybody can get an aircraft like that in the air is at the top of their craft! Simply amazing.

JEEEEZUS, what a threatening little Bully. Yet another fantastic piece of flying genius----that we have neglected to give praise to. I'm so pleased she has survived.

love Brits tech . under rated . but when it hits the market , some of it is world class level .this is ugly as hell and then turns into art

This is the best restoration of an aircraft I have ever seen! If I had the money I would buy it!

I’d like to see more of that plane! What a machine.

What a fabulous aircraft thankyou for keeping her flying. The double Mamba is an absolute marvel.

Anti-submarine destroyer??? Shouldn't that just be submarine destroyer or anti submarine aircraft?

What an amazing amount of tech for a plane nearly 70 years old!

What a beautiful warbird! I love it.... thanks for sharing!

Fairey is a Great Aircraft company with incredible innovations that others fail to accomplish. Checkout the Fairey Rotodyne, another Awesome aircraft that Nobody else could build.

It is an odd looking and completely capable aircraft. It's a British tradition, I think. Cheers.

As a seabird, the Gannet is known for eating everything it can find as fast as it can, so when I was at school Janet the Gannet was a girl in my class.

Absolutely incredible! 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏

Million thanks for the great video..! Amazing engine and prop noise..

all that "Artiste Wannabee" zooming, panning and one-scene-per-second fast-cut editing is unfortunately annoying to an audience who'd rather just absorb the content in simplest form. Still... a very cool aircraft.

I was as a young boy living in Filton Bristol, very privileged to see several Gannets over the years, landing there for various reasons.

It's like the Engineers went on a bender and designed the most complex prop-driven aircraft they could. :)

One of the coolest carrier aircraft ever made, love it! all hail Janet the Gannet!

Actually, Tupolov and Antonov used contra-rotating coaxial propellers in several of their aircraft designs, the most famous of which are the Tu-95 Bear and the An-22. The Antonov An-22 is the largest turboprop airplane in the world and the Tu-95 is still the fastest (575 mph) propeller airplane in the world despite being designed and first built in 1952.

UN Believable!!! One Word WOW!!!

I want one! The way the wings fold up, I could fit it in my garage! And with 3,400 HP I could take off from my driveway! (Landing again might be a bit of a challenge though... :-)

i simply love this chunky big plane!

It looks a LOT BETTER flying than sitting on the ground (most planes do).

An unusual airplane I have never seen before, and a crew of three. Thanks Dawg

I was interested because the Australian Navy operated Gannets. But I couldn't watch it because of the music.

I was around these aircraft while on HMS Hermes at 18 years old. A good friend of ours was a pilot of one of these aircraft. Those days are full of good memories. I later spent time on the Ark Royal while assigned to 809 Squadron, (Buccaneers). The Gannet was indeed a remarkable aircraft, though not a good one to get out off as an observer if you had to ditch in the sea.

Truly a brute of an aeroplane !

Beautiful design, remarkable engineering! Power and grace in combat. One terrific destroyer she was.

I bet that upset a lot of sailors. An aircraft only operated by the Fleet Air Arm being displayed to the tune of "The Royal Air Force March". Oops ! Who's a naughty Director then ?

The sad thing is that in 1982 RN officers were checking how many Ganets they could scrape together, ( especially the AEW version,) to fly from HMS Victorious which, in theory, was still in reserve for the Falklands war. Alas Victorious had been allowed to detieriate and could not be made ready in time.

Thumbs down because of the music... There is no reason to put music over the sounds of the plane...

Who said the Gannet is ugly? In my opinion it's one of the most beautiful prop planes ever built! You gotta love it. WOW!

you had me at nuclear depth charges.

Considering how rare it is I'd be afraid to fly it. This is a real museum piece.

Saab J-29 Tunnan "The Flying Barrel" has the similar chunkiness. Both cool jets 👍 Janet , you're beautiful

amazing aircraft, a real treat to see flying, what a fantastic piece of design and engineering,1954 the year i was born, a beautiful elegant dumpling of a plane......:-)

This needs to be at Oshkosh this year!!

I visited the Air Museum at Moorabbin years ago and when I came across the Gannet I found myself gobsmacked. What an aircraft. Hard to describe, no sleek beauty like a classic Spitfire, more utilitarian designed to do the job in the tough environment of aircraft carrier operations where shipboard space is at a premium out at sea and the need for two engines is vital for crew survival.

A very good looking plane, reminds me somehow of the A-1 Skyraider.

Powered by the Armstrong Siddeley Double Mamba - that's a mouthful - just think. If the Douglas XA2D-1 "Skyshark" had been equipped with this power-plant(s) it might very well have been a successful replacement for the A-1. But then again, we would never have seen the awesome Douglas A4D "Skyhawk" AKA "Scooter."

That plane has got to be worth MILLIONS!

What and amazing whork of engenering the sound is scaring thanks for sharing your beautiful passion with US from Carlos Portugal

A real monster of an aircraft- but i like it :-)

Amazing bird for sure. Interesting nitrogen start procedure and even mor fascinating co-axial props. Great video !

Why the RAF march, its fleet air arm surely!

What is not mentioned is that the arrangement of two independent engines working through two contra-rotating propellers was especially well suited to a high endurance naval plane designed for loitering. It provided the redundancy of the second engine along with the extra power for take-off but in a compact, narrow package compared to a standard turboprop twin design. Then it could be flown, with extra endurance, but turning off an engine and feathering the prop without affecting flying characteristics save the loss of power. What's more, if a standard twin engined turboprop aircraft has an engine-out problem, they can be next to impossible to land on the small carrier deck due to the asymmetry of thrust which can be very difficult to compensate for. On land there's a lot more room for such a landing. In the case of the Gannet, the thrust is all down the centre line, whether running on one or two engines. As a concept, it was brilliant. The fact that one can be kept flying almost 70 years after it was built means that it can't be impossibly difficult to work on either. Like a lot of those early turboprops (and jets), they lack the complex electronics of modern machines.

What a wonderful achievement to restore this amazing aircraft to airworthiness. One can see that it is beautifully maintained. I understand there are one or two others which are in some stage of restoration to flight, though no doubt it's an expensive and difficult proposition.

One of the most unique aircraft a testament to British aviation design in its heydays from WWII through the Cold War.

What a fantastic aircraft and a video to match thanks to all

Great film - so glad I found this. What a cool machine!

200 gallons/hour? Last year my Ford Ranger used 136 gallons for the whole year. But, alas, I didn't catch any subs.

My brother was on the Hms Eagle in 65. They had Gannetts, bucaneers, sea Vixens and phantoms.

After reading some of the ignorant comments I had to watch that again. Some of you shouldn't comment! Jeez.

Wow, I was in boarding school, in a Crown Colony& do recall this aircraft for its differences back in the day, BUT, I had never seen it fly, quite an aircraft for the time then, Cheers. FROM. NJ USA🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🇬🇧🇺🇸

The airplanes with the Kuznetsov NK-12 such as the TU-95, TU 142, and AN-22 airplanes also have contra rotating propellers.

What a machine! Magnificent. Engineering at it's best.

That music sucks the big one. The aircraft is great. I don't know why people think music enhances a video. It doesn't.

I used to have a flying instructor who flew these, he said they were amazing aircraft!

Great video thanks very much fantastic aircraft we have one in the museum at Moorabbin

One of the coolest prop jobs I've seen.

The RAN flew these. There is one on display at the aviation museum at Moorabbin airport in Melbourne. Sitting outside in the elements unfortunately.

What a gloriously complex and functional plane.

Just when you think you've seen it all!

I live in the states and have never seen one of these before. When I served in the Navy back in the 70's, I worked on the F-14 Tomcat. It was a beautiful plane but, it seems like the uglier ones were the real work horses of aviation. Those are the ones that have several years, if not decades, of service. Great piece of history.