5/4/2023 0 Comments Prone position![]() On 28 April 1939, Whittle made a visit to the premises of the Gloster Aircraft Company, where he met several key figures, such as George Carter, Gloster's chief designer. The first Whittle prototype jet engine, the Power Jets WU, began running trials in early 1937 shortly afterwards, both Sir Henry Tizard, chairman of the Aeronautical Research Committee, and the Air Ministry gave the project their support. Securing funding was a persistently worrying issue throughout the early development of the engine. For several years, attracting financial backers and aviation firms prepared to take on Whittle's radical ideas was difficult in 1931, Armstrong-Siddeley had evaluated and rejected Whittle's proposal, finding it to be technically sound but at the limits of engineering capability. Whittle formed Power Jets Ltd in March 1936 to develop his ideas of jet propulsion, Whittle himself serving as the company's chief engineer. ![]() The development of the turbojet-powered Gloster Meteor was a collaboration between the Gloster Aircraft Company and Frank Whittle's firm, Power Jets Ltd. ![]() One further aircraft in the UK remains airworthy, as does another in Australia. As of 2018, two Meteors, G-JSMA and G-JWMA, remain in active service with the Martin-Baker company as ejection seat testbeds. In the 1950s, the Meteor became increasingly obsolete as more nations developed jet fighters, many of these newcomers having adopted a swept wing instead of the Meteor's conventional straight wing in RAF service, the Meteor was replaced by newer types such as the Hawker Hunter and Gloster Javelin. On 10 February 1954, a specially adapted Meteor F.8, the "Meteor Prone Pilot", which placed the pilot into a prone position to counteract inertial forces, took its first flight. On 20 September 1945, a heavily modified Meteor I, powered by two Rolls-Royce Trent turbine engines driving propellers, became the first turboprop aircraft to fly. Other performance-related records were broken in categories including flight time endurance, rate of climb, and speed. In 1946, this record was broken when a Meteor F.4 reached a speed of 616 miles per hour (991 km/h). On 7 November 1945, the first official airspeed record by a jet aircraft was set by a Meteor F.3 at 606 miles per hour (975 km/h). The Meteor was also used for research and development purposes and to break several aviation records. Specialised variants of the Meteor were developed for use in photographic aerial reconnaissance and as night fighters. Several other operators such as Argentina, Egypt and Israel flew Meteors in later regional conflicts. Meteors of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) fought in the Korean War. Slower and less heavily armed than its German counterpart, the jet-powered Messerschmitt Me 262, the Meteor saw limited action in the Second World War. Thousands of Meteors were built to fly with the RAF and other air forces and remained in use for several decades. Several major variants of the Meteor incorporated technological advances during the 1940s and 1950s. Gloster's 1946 civil Meteor F.4 demonstrator G-AIDC was the first civilian-registered jet aircraft in the world. ![]() The Meteor was not a sophisticated aircraft in its aerodynamics, but proved to be a successful combat fighter. The Meteor first flew in 1943 and commenced operations on 27 July 1944 with No. Development of the aircraft began in 1940, although work on the engines had been under way since 1936. The Meteor's development was heavily reliant on its ground-breaking turbojet engines, pioneered by Frank Whittle and his company, Power Jets Ltd. The Gloster Meteor was the first British jet fighter and the Allies' only jet aircraft to engage in combat operations during the Second World War. Two in use as testbed aircraft (one with civil registration)
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