Gloster Meteor
1943 fighter aircraft family; Britain's first jet fighter
The Gloster Meteor is the first British jet fighter and the Allies' only jet aircraft to engage in combat operations during the Second World War. It was designed and primarily produced by the Gloster Aircraft Company, although its development was heavily reliant on its ground-breaking turbojet engines, pioneered by Frank Whittle and his company, Power Jets Ltd.
Development of the Meteor began in 1940, while work on its engines had been under way as early as 1936. It made its maiden flight in 1943 and commenced operations on 27 July 1944 with No. 616 Squadron RAF. The Meteor was not a sophisticated aircraft in its aerodynamics, but proved to be a successful combat fighter. Gloster's 1946 civil Meteor F.4 demonstrator G-AIDC was the first civilian-registered jet aircraft in the world. Several major variants of the Meteor incorporated technological advances during the 1940s and 1950s. Thousands of Meteors were built to fly with the RAF and other air forces and remained in use for several decades. 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. Meteors of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) fought in the Korean War.
The public source identifies “Gloster Meteor” as 1943 fighter aircraft family; Britain's first jet fighter. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Gloster, Meteor and fighter.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q140318. The Library of Congress control number is sh85084309. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1940, 1936, 1943 and 1944.
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This entry incorporates text from “Gloster Meteor” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.