Gloster Aircraft Company
4 types ยท 0 airframes
Pre-1950 Narrative
Narrative coming soon.
Aircraft Types
Gloster Gamecock
The Gloster Gamecock was a British single-seat biplane fighter developed from the Grebe, replacing that type's unreliable Armstrong Siddeley Jaguar engine with a Bristol Jupiter radial and moving the twin Vickers guns inside the fuselage. It entered RAF service in 1926 and became a popular air-show performer, but its accident record was severe: 22 of the RAF's 90 aircraft were lost in landing or spin accidents, and the type left British front-line service in 1931. Finland adopted the improved Gamecock II, building 15 under licence as the Kukko; Finnish Gamecocks served through the 1930s and fought in the Winter War, one forcing down a Soviet DB-3 bomber in January 1940.
Gloster Gladiator
The Gloster Gladiator was a British single-seat biplane fighter, the RAF's last biplane fighter and its first with an enclosed cockpit. Developed by the Gloster Aircraft Company from the Gauntlet as a private venture, it entered service in 1937 already overshadowed by monoplane fighters, yet fought in Norway, over Malta and in the Middle East in the early Second World War, and was exported to 13 countries. It is best remembered for the defence of Malta in June 1940, where a handful of Sea Gladiators, popularly named Faith, Hope and Charity, were for ten days the island's only fighters.
Gloster IVB
The Gloster IVB was the short-span, geared-engine member of the three Gloster IV racing floatplanes built by the Gloster Aircraft Company for Britain's 1927 Schneider Trophy team. Flown by the RAF High Speed Flight, it was the only Gloster to start the Venice race, lapping faster than one of the Supermarine S.5s before a cracked propeller shaft forced its retirement; it later served as a high-speed trainer until a landing accident ended its career in December 1930.
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.