Tom Spencer outlines the service of the final Meteor day fighter – the incredibly elegant F.8...
Gloster’s Meteor was the RAF’s first jet fighter and served in a limited manner during the closing stages of World War Two.
Fighter Command gradually began replacing its home-based Spitfires with jets immediately after the war and, as production of the Meteor F. 3 and F. 4 increased, these supplanted them. As with the Supermarine thoroughbred it was replacing, the Meteor was developed incrementally to improve performance.
To promote stability, some late-production F. 4s received a slightly longer nose but this then affected the aircraft’s centre of gravity as fuel and ammunition were used and revealed the fin design was incapable of coping. This resulted in increased, and potentially dangerous, instability. A new, more angular (and elegant) fin design was trialled and contributed to significantly better handling. Meteor F.4 VT150 was then modified as the F.8 prototype and strengthened in several areas to allow for the increased stress anticipated. It also had the 30in (76cm) nose extension containing a 95 gal (432 lit) fuel tank and thus modified, VT150 flew for the first time from Moreton Valence, Gloucestershire, in the hands of …
