Gloster Meteor
The Gloster Meteor was Britain's first jet fighter and the only Allied jet to see combat in the Second World War. First flown in 1943, it entered squadron service in July 1944 against the V-1 flying bomb, and Gloster and Armstrong Whitworth developed the plain, straight-winged twin-jet into day and night fighters, trainers and reconnaissance aircraft. The F.8 was the RAF's air-defence backbone in the early 1950s, and Australian Meteors fought in Korea. In all 3,947 were built between 1943 and 1955; two still fly as ejection-seat testbeds.
Why It Mattered
The Gloster Meteor was Britain's first jet fighter, and the only Allied jet to see combat in the Second World War. It entered squadron service in July 1944, a few months after Germany's Me 262 had done the same. The RAF kept the Meteor over Britain, where No. 616 Squadron used its speed against the V-1 flying bombs then falling on southern England. After the war, in its F.8 form, it provided the backbone of Britain's air defence from 1950 to 1955, and Meteors went on to serve with many air forces worldwide.
Design Notes
Gloster gave the Meteor two engines because the turbojets available in 1940 were too weak to power a fighter on their own. The airframe around them was deliberately conventional: all-metal, with a straight wing, the engines carried in nacelles at mid-wing and the tailplane set high, clear of the jet exhaust. The engines caused most of the delay. The eight prototypes each flew with different powerplants, and the first Meteor to fly, DG206, used substitute de Havilland Halford engines because the intended Whittle engines were not ready. Responsibility for the Whittle engine passed from Rover to Rolls-Royce, whose Welland powered the first production aircraft and whose Derwent powered most later marks.
Operational History
The Air Ministry ordered twelve F.9/40 prototypes on 7 February 1941; eight were completed and flown, each with different engines. The fifth prototype, DG206, made the first flight, from RAF Cranwell on 5 March 1943 with Michael Daunt at the controls. The first production aircraft flew in January 1944, and deliveries to No. 616 Squadron began that July. The squadron's first V-1, on 4 August 1944, was not shot down at all: Flying Officer "Dixie" Dean used his wingtip to tip the flying bomb off balance and send it crashing down. Pilots were at first strictly forbidden to cross the Channel, in case an aircraft came down where Germany could recover it. By 1945 the ban had eased: a flight of the squadron was based in Belgium with the 2nd Tactical Air Force, and Meteors ended the war on ground-attack work. After the war came the F.4 and then the F.8, the RAF's air-defence backbone from 1950 to 1955; Armstrong Whitworth built radar-equipped night-fighter versions, and there were reconnaissance and two-seat trainer marks as well. The Meteor's last shooting war was Korea, where No. 77 Squadron RAAF flew F.8s from 1951. Outclassed by the MiG-15 as a fighter, the squadron spent most of that war on ground attack.
Afterlife
Swept-wing fighters pushed the Meteor out of front-line RAF service during the 1950s, where it was replaced by the Hawker Hunter and Gloster's own Javelin. Second-line work lasted much longer: Meteors remained operational in roles including target towing well into the 1980s. Production had run from 1943 to 1955 and reached 3,947 aircraft. Many survive in museums. The RAF Museum holds the prototype DG202, which served for years as a gate guard at RAF Yatesbury before its significance was recognised and it was refurbished for display. Only four Meteors remain airworthy, and two of them, two-seat T.7s, still fly for Martin-Baker testing ejection seats. Another flies with the Temora Aviation Museum in Australia, and a fourth at the Planes of Fame Air Museum in California.