A name foreigners could say

Gloster began life with a name its customers could not pronounce. The Gloucestershire Aircraft Company was formed in 1917, in the middle of the First World War, by Hugh Burroughes and the Cheltenham architectural engineers H. H. Martyn, who held half the shares, with the aircraft maker Airco holding the other half. Airco wanted extra capacity, and got it: working from rented premises at Sunningend in Cheltenham, the firm was turning out 45 Bristol Fighters a week by the spring of 1918. Finished aircraft went seven miles by road, wings off, to an acceptance park at Brockworth. In December 1926 the board gave up on overseas buyers mangling Gloucestershire and shortened the name to Gloster. Locals and workers just called it GAC.

Folland’s racers

Peace nearly finished the company: Airco collapsed and Gloster was only partly compensated for cancelled orders. Its rescue came from a rival’s failure. In 1920 Nieuport & General closed, and Gloster hired its chief designer, Henry Folland, along with the rights to his Nighthawk fighter and a store of unassembled parts. Those parts became the Sparrowhawk, 50 of which were built for the Imperial Japanese Navy in six months and flown off ramps mounted on battleship gun turrets. Folland then turned to speed. The Gloster I set a British record of 196.4 mph, the Gloster III came second in the 1925 Schneider Trophy race, and in 1929 the gold-painted Gloster VI, nicknamed Golden Arrow, held the world absolute speed record for a few hours.

Biplanes to the very end

Through the 1920s and 1930s Gloster was the RAF’s biplane fighter specialist. The Grebe of 1923 was followed by the Gamecock, which the Finns built under licence as the Kukko and flew in the Winter War. The Gauntlet, from 1935 the fastest aircraft in RAF service, was the last RAF fighter with an open cockpit. Then came the Gladiator, first flown on 12 September 1934 and the RAF’s last biplane fighter. Obsolescent almost as soon as it arrived, it still fought everywhere: from a frozen lake at Lesjaskog in Norway, in Greece, and over Malta, where a handful of Sea Gladiators gave rise to the legend of Faith, Hope and Charity. South African Pat Pattle scored 15 of his victories in one.

Building the boss’s fighters

In 1934 Gloster was bought by Hawker, and in 1935 it became part of the new Hawker Siddeley group. Folland left. When war came in 1939 Gloster had no modern design of its own in production, but it had a big factory at Brockworth and skilled hands, and it put both to work for its parent. It built 1,000 Hawker Hurricanes in the first twelve months of the war and 2,750 in all, the last in 1942. Then it switched to the Hawker Typhoon and built some 3,300 of them, almost the entire production run. The design office, meanwhile, had very little to do. That turned out to matter a great deal.

The secret in the garage

On 28 April 1939 Frank Whittle visited Gloster and met its chief designer, George Carter, who took a keen interest in the working jet engine he was shown. Because Gloster’s design office had spare capacity, the Air Ministry gave it the contract for Britain’s first jet aircraft in early 1940. Two airframes were built in secrecy, and to keep one safe from bombing it was assembled away from Brockworth, in the Regent Motors garage in Cheltenham. On 15 May 1941, at RAF Cranwell, chief test pilot Gerry Sayer took the E.28/39 up under jet power for 17 minutes. Sayer never saw what followed: he disappeared on a Typhoon flight in October 1942.

מֵטֵאוֹר

The fighter that followed was the Meteor. It first flew on 5 March 1943 and went into action with No. 616 Squadron on 27 July 1944, only weeks after the German Me 262, as the only Allied jet to fly combat operations in the war. Its first job was chasing V-1 flying bombs, and pilots learned to tip them over with a wingtip. After the war Meteors set the first official jet speed record, 606 mph in November 1945, and then 616 mph in 1946. Some 3,947 were built and twelve nations flew them. The price was high: 890 were lost in RAF service, with 450 pilots killed, many before ejection seats were fitted. As of 2023, two Meteors were still flying, as Martin-Baker ejection seat testbeds.

Too big for its own runway

Gloster’s last fighter was the delta-winged Javelin, the RAF’s first purpose-built all-weather interceptor, which first flew on 26 November 1951. It was so heavy that it could not take off fully fuelled from the short Brockworth runway; each one was stripped down and hopped seven miles to Moreton Valence to be finished. That shortage of facilities, and the rationalisation of the British industry, sealed the company’s fate. In 1961 Gloster merged with Armstrong Whitworth as Whitworth Gloster Aircraft, and in 1963 the name disappeared into Hawker Siddeley Aviation. Brockworth was sold in 1964. For a while Gloster Saro built fire engines and fuel tankers at Hucclecote; today the airfield lies under an industrial estate.

מפעלים

• Sunningend works · Cheltenham, Gloucestershire — Rented H. H. Martyn premises where the company started in 1917
• Brockworth (Hucclecote) works and aerodrome · Brockworth, Gloucestershire — Bought in 1928; main factory until sold in 1964
• Regent Motors · Cheltenham — Garage where one E.28/39 was built in secret away from bombing
• RAF Moreton Valence · Gloucestershire — Flight test airfield where Javelins were completed and Meteors first flew

אֲנָשִׁים

• Hugh Burroughes · co-founder and director — Lived 1884–1985
• הנרי פולנד · chief designer, 1920–1934 — Came from Nieuport & General; designed the Grebe, Gamecock, Gauntlet and Gladiator; left after the Hawker takeover
• George Carter · chief designer, 1936–1948 — Laid out the E.28/39 and the Meteor with Frank Whittle
• Gerry Sayer · chief test pilot, 1935–1942 — Flew the Gladiator prototype and the first jet flight of the E.28/39
• Frank Whittle · jet engine pioneer — His Power Jets engines powered the E.28/39 and the Meteor
• Janusz Żurakowski · test pilot — Performed his cartwheel manoeuvre in a Meteor at Farnborough in 1951
• Bill Waterton · chief test pilot, 1947–1954 — Flew 614 mph in the 1946 High Speed Flight

שיאים וראשונות

• British speed record of 196.4 mph, Gloster I
• World absolute speed record, Gloster VI, 1929, held for a few hours
• First British jet flight, E.28/39, 15 May 1941
• First official jet speed record, 606 mph, Meteor F.3, 7 November 1945
• World speed record of 616 mph, Meteor F.4, 1946
• First turboprop aircraft to fly, a Trent-engined Meteor, 20 September 1945
• Jet endurance record of 12 hours 3 minutes with air refuelling, 7 August 1949
• London–Copenhagen–London speed record, Meteor F.8, 4–5 April 1950