Gloster Aircraft Company
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The Gloster Aircraft Company was a British aircraft manufacturer formed in 1917 as the Gloucestershire Aircraft Company Limited. In 1926 the name of the company was abbreviated to Gloster because customers outside of the United Kingdom found the original name too difficult to pronounce. The company produced the Gloster Grebe; Gloster Gladiator; Hawker Hurricane; Hawker Typhoon; Gloster Meteor and Gloster Javelin and its test runway became famous for the first flight of Sir Frank Whittle's turbo-jet aircraft.
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[edit] Brief history
The Gloster Aircraft Company was formed in 1917 as the Gloucestershire Aircraft Company. The company acquired the aircraft business previously carried out by H H Martyn with a 50% share, and the Aircraft Manufacturing Company the other 50%. The company rented what was the Sunningend works of H H Martyn and Company Limited in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. As orders for aircraft increased other companies in the Gloucester and Cheltenham district were contracted with work. Where any flying was involved the aircraft were moved to an Air Board aircraft acceptance park at Hucclecote seven miles away by motor transport. Although Huccelcote aerodrome was used by the company it had no hangars until 1921 when it rented part of hangar from the Air Board.
With the move to metal construction the Sunningend factory was no longer suitable, and in 1928 the company (now named the Gloster Aircraft Company Limited) bought the aerodrome at Hucclecote with all the hangars and office accommodation.
Hucclecote was the second in a series of villages located along an old Roman Road following a more-or-less straight line to the inland port city of Gloucester.
[edit] 1934 Amalgamation
In 1934 the company was taken over by Hawker Aircraft Limited, though still producing aircraft under its own name. In that same year the company produced the famous Gloster Gladiator biplane.
The Gloster Gladiator was a biplane fighter, used by the Royal Air Force, the Royal Navy as well as a number of other air forces, during World War II. The aircraft had a top speed of around 414 km/h. Gladiators were also modified for carrier operations and flown by the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm (FAA) as the Sea Gladiator.
The Gloster Gladiator had an enclosed, single-seat cockpit, cantilever landing gear and a two-blade, fixed-pitch propeller driven by a Bristol Mercury air-cooled engine. A total of 756 airframes were built: 480 RAF, 60 RN, 216 exported to 13 countries. Gladiators were sold to Belgium, China, Egypt, Finland, Free French, Greece, Iraq, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Portugal, South Africa and Sweden.
Although serving valiantly in the first years of the Second World War, the Gloster Gladiator was sorely outclassed by contemporary monoplane fighters such as the Messerschmitt Bf-109, and destined to be the RAF's last biplane fighter.
[edit] 1939-1945 WWII production
In 1939, the company built 1,000 Hawker Hurricanes in the first 12 months of World War II and delivered its last of 2,750 Hurricanes in 1942. Production was then switched to building 3,330 Hawker Typhoons for the Royal Air Force.
[edit] 1941 Turbo-jet
Image:FrankwhittleE28-39farnborough.jpg On 8 April 1941, the first test flight of the Gloster E.28/39 with a turbo-jet engine, invented by Sir Frank Whittle. took off from the company's airfield at Hucclecote. This formed the basis for the Gloster Meteor, the only jet to be used by the Allied Forces during World War II.
The Gloster Meteor was the first operational Allied jet fighter aircraft of World War II. First flying with the British Royal Air Force (RAF) in 1943, the Meteor commenced operations in mid-1944, only some weeks later than the world's first operational jet, the German Messerschmitt Me 262.
[edit] 1945 World Record
In 1945 a Gloster F.4 Meteor prototype, stripped of armament, gained a World Speed Record of 606 mph with Group Captain H. Wilson at the controls. In early 1946, another F.4 prototype was used to set a world air speed record of 616 mph (991 km/h) TASwith Group Captain "Teddy" Donaldson flying the highly modified Meteor, nicknamed "Yellow Peril." Meteors remained in service with several air forces for many years and saw action with the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) in the Korean War. Eventually, Gloster Meteors in fighter, trainer and night fighter versions were in operational use by 12 nations.
[edit] Gloster's heyday
During Gloster's "heyday," in 1947, S/L Janusz Zurakowski was employed as an experimental pilot. In the following years, he became one of the world's most famous experimental and aerobatics pilots (he developed a new aerobatics maneuver, the "Zurabatic Cartwheel" which held the audience captivated as he suspended the Gloster Meteor G-7-1 prototype he was flying, in a vertical cartwheel at the 1951 Farnborough Air Show). Announcers shouted out, "Impossible!" Serving for a brief period as the chief test pilot, he tested the many experimental versions of the Gloster Meteor, Javelin and E.1/44 fighters. During the Gloster years, "Zura" as he came to be known, set an international speed record: London-Copenhagen-London, 4-5 April, 1950.
In 1952, the two seat, delta winged Gloster Javelin was developed as an all weather fighter that could fly above 50,000 feet at almost the speed of sound. This modern aircraft proved to be too heavy to take off from the short airfield in Hucclecote, and was instead fitted out to the bare minimum and given a very small fuel load. It was then flown in a short hop to RAF Moreton Valence three miles to the south, where the aircraft would be completed. Parts of this old airfield can still be seen as you drive on the M5 motorway just south of Junction 12. The motorway was constructed parallel to the runway and at either end, large concrete sections of taxiway can be seen angling off the carriageway. It was this shortcoming of the facilities, along with the rationalisation of the British aircraft industry, that would lead to the demise of the Gloster Aircraft Company.
[edit] 1960s demise
In 1961, the company was merged with Sir W G Armstrong Whitworth Aircraft Limited to form Whitworth Gloster Aircraft Limited. Following another re-organisation by the owners, the Hawker Siddeley Group, the firm became part of the Avro Whitworth Division of Hawker Siddeley Aviation in 1963, and the name Gloster disappeared.
The site at Hucclecote was sold in 1964. The runway, while still visible from the air, has been partially obstructed by buildings on what is now the Gloucester Trading Estate. Many of the firms based on the estate are housed in former hangars.
[edit] Aircraft Designs
- 1921 Gloster Mars - single-seat racing biplane later modified as the Gloster I
- 1921 Gloster Sparrowhawk
- 1923 Gloster Gannet - single-seat ultra light biplane
- 1923 Gloster Grebe - single-seat day fighter biplane
- 1923 Gloster Grouse
- 1924 Gloster Gorcock - expermintal single seat fighter biplane
- 1924 Gloster II - single-seat racing biplane
- 1925 Gloster III - single-seat racing float biplane
- 1925 Gloster Gamecock - single-seat day and night interceptor biplane
- 1925 Gloster Guan - expermental single-seat high altitude fighter biplane
- 1926 Gloster Goral - two-seat general purpose biplane
- 1926 Gloster Goring - two-seat day bomber/torpedo biplane
- 1927 Gloster IV - single-seat racing float biplane
- 1927 Gloster Goldfinch - single-seat high-altitude day and night fighter biplane
- 1927 Gloster Gambet - single-seat deck landing fighter biplane
- 1928 Gloster Gnatsnapper - single-seat deck landing fighter biplane
- 1929 Gloster VI - single-seat racing monoplane (world absolute speed record holder for a few hours in 1929)
- 1934 Gloster Gauntlet - single-seat day and night fighter biplane
- 1929 Gloster AS.31 - two-seat photographic survey biplane
- 1932 Gloster TC.33 - four-engined bomber/transport biplane
- 1932 Gloster TSR.38 - three-seat torpedo/spotter/reconnaissance biplane
- 1934 Gloster Gladiator - single-seat day fighter biplane
- 1937 Gloster F.5/34 single-seat day fighter monoplane prototype
- 1939 Gloster F.9/37 twin engined heavy fighter prototype
- 1941 Gloster E.28/39 first British jet engined aircraft
- 1944 Gloster Meteor single-seat day fighter - only allied jet aircraft to see action during WW II
- 1948 Gloster E.1/44 single-seat jet day fighter prototype
- 1954 Gloster Javelin two-seat all-weather jet fighter
[edit] References
- James, Derek N. Gloster Aircraft since 1917. London: Putnam, 1987. ISBN: 0-85177-807-0.
- Zuk, Bill. Janusz Zurakowski: Legends in the Sky, St. Catharine's, Ontario: Vanwell, 2004, ISBN 1-55125-083-7.
