Meteoric Rise

After standing outside at Yorkshire Air Museum for many years, Meteor WS788 is being restored. Graham Buckle describes the project

At 14:30 hours a jet fighter departed Leeming in Yorkshire, arriving at its destination at 16:15 amid much jubilation. It had been a longduration sortie, conducted at very low level at carefully monitored speed and traversing, as the crow flies, around 40 miles.

It was March 16, 1992 and the latest exhibit at the Yorkshire Air Museum (YAM) at Elvington, near York, had arrived on a convoy of trucks, just in time for the venue’s new season. For the previous 18 years, Gloster Meteor NF.14 WS788 had been a display airframe at the fighter base at Leeming. During that time it witnessed the base morphing in 1988 from training with Hunting Jet Provosts and DHC Chipmunks into ‘Screamin’ Leeming’ with three Panavia Tornado F.3 squadrons.

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