The Gloster Meteor was the RAF’s first jet fighter, bringing Britain into the Jet Age. At the same time, engineers of the German Luftwaffe had been working on developing their own operational jet fighter, and the Messerschmitt Me 262 entered service a few months before the Meteor. However, these early jets were relatively underpowered, and while the technology would launch aircraft development into a new era, their impact in the Second World War was limited – partly because of how guarded the technology was. Instead, the Meteor found great use as a test aircraft and in the export market after 1945, and saw active service once again in the early 1950s in the Korean War – this time in the hands of the Royal Australian Air Force.
In this video, our expert Liam Shaw takes us around the details of the Gloster Meteor and its pioneering history.
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View and licence the archive film clips used in this video on IWM Film:
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Credits:
Gloster Meteor F.8 Prone Pilot via Alan Wilson on Flickr
616 Squadron Meteor via RuthAS
North American F-86F Sabre via D. Miller on Flickr
