In the Fairey Gannet, the pilot was seated forward, having this way a good view over the nose for carrier operations, and sat over the Double Mamba engine, behind the gearbox and propellers. The aerial observer sat under a separate canopy, directly behind the pilot. After prototype tests, a third crew member, with the role of second observer, was included, in his own separate cockpit, placed over the wing trailing edge. This change altered the airflow over the horizontal stabilizer, which required small finlets on either side to be included. The Gannet was also fitted with a large internal weapons bay, capable of holding up to 2.000 lbs. (907 kg) of either bombs, torpedoes, depth charges and/or rockets, and a retractable radome under the rear fuselage, where the Ekco ASV Mk.19 radar's antennae was placed.
The wings folded in two places with a distinctive "Z"-shape on each side. The first fold was upwards, at about a third of the wing span where the inboard anhedral (down-sweep) changed to the outboard dihedral (up-sweep) of the wing (often described as an inverted gull wing). The second wing fold was downward, about two-thirds of the wing span. The length of the nosewheel shock absorber caused the Gannet to have a peculiar nose-high altitude, characteristic which was common in every carrier aircraft.
When serving with the Fleet's Air Arm (FAA) most of them were painted in the standard camouflage scheme of a Sky (duck-egg blue) underside and fuselage sides, with upper surfaces in Extra Dark Sea Grey. Fuselage demarcation line ran from the nose behind the propeller spinner in a straight line, to then curve and join the fin line. Code numbers were generally painted on the side of the fuselage, ahead of the wing and round and serial markings were behind the wing. The T.2 and T.5 dual-control trainer variants were left in silver overall with a yellow or orange "trainer" band on the rear fuselage and wings.
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