The early jet age

Gloster’s Meteor was the only Allied jet fighter to see operational service in the Second World War. Frank Whittle’s early engines were too weak for one to do the job, so George Carter’s design used two, slung in the wings. The first Meteor flew in March 1943, and in July 1944 No. 616 Squadron took it into action against V-1 flying bombs.

Meteors of No. 616 Squadron were the RAF’s first jets in action, chasing V-1 flying bombs in the summer of 1944.

WK991 is preserved at IWM Duxford in the High Speed Silver of a 1950s Fighter Command day fighter, with the red-and-white chequers of No. 56 Squadron and the ventral tank it is displayed with.

Early jet engines were so feeble that every foot of tailpipe wasted precious thrust. de Havilland’s answer was to put the Goblin in a short central nacelle and carry the tail on two slim booms, which kept the jet pipe short and gave the Vampire its unmistakable shape. The prototype flew in September 1943, too late for the war, and the Vampire became the RAF’s second jet fighter.

A Vampire was the first jet to land on and take off from an aircraft carrier, in December 1945.

The model wears the early-1950s day-fighter scheme of VZ304 as it was photographed preserved at Duxford in 1983: Dark Green and Dark Sea Grey over PRU Blue, with bright Type D roundels and yellow-and-black unit bars either side of the boom roundels.

The Venom began as a Vampire with a bigger engine. de Havilland fitted the twin-boom layout with the more powerful Ghost and a new, thinner wing swept back along its leading edge, and at first called it the Vampire FB.8. By the time John Derry flew the prototype at Hatfield on 2 September 1949 it had become the DH.112 Venom, and it was a good deal faster and higher-flying than the aircraft it grew from.

Switzerland’s licence-built Venoms outlasted the RAF’s by more than twenty years: the last were retired in 1984.

J-1704 is one of 100 Venom FB.4s, J-1701 to J-1800, built for the Swiss Air Force by a consortium of Swiss firms; it was assembled by the Federal Aircraft Factory at Emmen, made its acceptance flights on 6 September 1956 and was delivered in March 1957.

North American began the Sabre as a straight-winged jet for the US Army Air Forces, then swept its wing back 35 degrees after studying German wartime research. The XP-86 first flew on 1 October 1947 with George Welch at the controls, and in September 1948 an F-86A set a world speed record of 671 mph. It had leading-edge slats that opened at low speed, a nose intake and a bubble canopy that gave the pilot a clear view all round.

On 18 May 1953 the American pilot Jacqueline Cochran flew a Canadair Sabre faster than sound in a dive, the first woman to do so.

XB812 was built by Canadair at Cartierville and first flew on 16 April 1953.

Lockheed built the T-33 by stretching its P-80 Shooting Star, the first American jet fighter to enter squadron service, so that a second cockpit would fit behind the first. The fuselage gained about a metre, the instructor sat in tandem behind the student under one long sliding canopy, and some of the fuel went from the fuselage into the wing and the big tanks on its tips. Tony LeVier flew the prototype, then called the TP-80C, on 22 March 1948.

Canada’s licence-built CT-133 Silver Star swapped the American Allison engine for a Rolls-Royce Nene, and Canadian crews were still flying it in 2005.

Lockheed built 51-9036 as a T-33A-1-LO for the US Air Force, which passed it to the French Air Force, where it flew as 19036.

Britain’s first jet bomber came from English Electric, a company better known for trams and power stations, and from its chief designer W.E.W. “Teddy” Petter. Roland Beamont first flew the prototype in May 1949, and its broad, nearly unswept wing let it fly higher than the fighters of its day.

In 1957 a rocket-boosted Canberra set a world altitude record of 70,310 ft.

WH725 is shown as delivered to No. 50 Squadron in 1953, in Medium Sea Grey over gloss black with Type D roundels and a red serial.

The Swift began as an insurance policy. In 1948 Supermarine gave its straight-winged Attacker a swept wing and tail to make the Type 510, the first British aircraft to fly with both swept back, and when the Korean War made the RAF anxious for a fighter to match the MiG-15, the Air Ministry ordered a developed version off the drawing board as a back-up to the Hawker Hunter. The Type 541 had a new fuselage around a Rolls-Royce Avon axial-flow engine, fed by intakes on either side of the cockpit, and kept the 510’s wing, swept back at its leading edge and slightly drooped.

For eight days in the autumn of 1953 a Swift was the fastest aircraft in the world: Mike Lithgow’s record of 735.7 mph, set in the heat over Libya, beat Neville Duke’s Hunter record of earlier that month and was then lost to Douglas’s F4D Skyray.

WK281 was built by Supermarine as an FR.5 and served with No. 79 Squadron in RAF Germany as ‘S’, flying low-level camera sorties over the north German plain until the squadron gave up its Swifts in 1961.

Sydney Camm’s Hunter is often called the most beautiful jet fighter Britain ever built. The prototype first flew in July 1951 with Neville Duke at the controls, and in September 1953 Duke took a modified Hunter, WB188, to a world air speed record of 727.6 mph.

The Hunter’s gun pack, with all four Aden cannon and their ammunition, could be swapped as a single unit to turn a jet round quickly.

The model wears the 1950s RAF day-fighter finish of F.6 XG225: Dark Green and Dark Sea Grey disruptive camouflage over High Speed Silver, with Type D roundels.

The Chipmunk was the first aircraft designed by de Havilland’s Canadian company. Its chief designer, the Polish engineer Wsiewołod Jakimiuk, drew a neat all-metal, low-winged two-seater with a tailwheel and a sliding canopy to replace the Tiger Moth, and the prototype first flew at Downsview, Toronto, on 22 May 1946.

The RAF took delivery of 740 Chipmunk T.10s in just four years, between November 1949 and October 1953.

WP962 was built at Broughton in 1952 and stood in the line of training aircraft at the Coronation Review at Odiham in July 1953.

After the war the RAF wanted a basic trainer that behaved more like the fast aircraft its pupils would go on to fly than the old Tiger Moth did. Percival’s P.56 Provost, which first flew on 24 February 1950, was a stout low-wing monoplane with a large radial engine, a tailwheel undercarriage and a roomy cockpit where pupil and instructor sat side by side.

The Provost’s cockpit canopy and glass are so wide because pupil and instructor sit side by side, which let the instructor watch the pupil’s hands as well as the view ahead.

WV562 is a Provost T.1 that served with No. 22 Flying Training School, wearing the code “P-C”, and was later kept as an instructional airframe with the maintenance serial 7606M.