AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 13 / 68

Plate 13 of 68 · Between the wars · Biplane fighter

Gloster Gladiator

Gladiator I, painted as L8032, The Shuttleworth Collection’s airworthy Gloster Gladiator, the last Mk I built, used by No. 2 Anti-Aircraft Co-operation Unit, bought back by Gloster in 1948, flown again as G-AMRK in 1952 and presented to Old Warden in 1960, with its 830 hp Bristol Mercury IX radial, painted as ‘K7985’ of No. 73 Squadron RAF as flown at the 1937 Hendon display: silver dope overall with aluminium forward panels and a polished long-chord cowling, the squadron’s blue and yellow flash either side of the fuselage roundel, black ‘K7985’ aft of it and ‘K’ over ‘7985’ on the rudder, the blue and yellow ‘bow tie’ and roundels above the upper wing, roundels above the lower wing, red wheel covers and a two-blade Watts wooden propeller, as it is flown from Old Warden.

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as L8032, The Shuttleworth Collection’s airworthy Gloster Gladiator, the last Mk I built, used by No. 2 Anti-Aircraft Co-operation Unit, bought back by Gloster in 1948, flown again as G-AMRK in 1952 and presented to Old Warden in 1960, with its 830 hp Bristol Mercury IX radial, painted as ‘K7985’ of No. 73 Squadron RAF as flown at the 1937 Hendon display: silver dope overall with aluminium forward panels and a polished long-chord cowling, the squadron’s blue and yellow flash either side of the fuselage roundel, black ‘K7985’ aft of it and ‘K’ over ‘7985’ on the rudder, the blue and yellow ‘bow tie’ and roundels above the upper wing, roundels above the lower wing, red wheel covers and a two-blade Watts wooden propeller, as it is flown from Old Warden. Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (906 KB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (I/II); engine, crew and dimensions are for the Gladiator I modelled here.

History

The Gladiator

The Gladiator was Henry Folland’s last refinement of the open-cockpit Gauntlet. Gloster built it as a private venture, the SS.37, to meet an Air Ministry specification for a four-gun fighter, giving it single-bay wings braced by one pair of interplane struts on each side, cantilever main undercarriage legs with internal springing, flaps on both wings and a Bristol Mercury radial in a long-chord cowling. The prototype first flew on 12 September 1934 and reached about 242 mph, and the Air Ministry ordered the type in 1935 as the Gladiator, with an enclosed sliding canopy, the first on an RAF fighter, and four machine guns, two in the fuselage sides and one under each lower wing.

No. 72 Squadron at Tangmere received the first Gladiators in February 1937, and more fighter squadrons followed through 1937 and 1938. They were already outclassed. The Hurricane had flown in 1935 and the Spitfire in 1936, and the Gladiator was the RAF’s last biplane fighter, a stopgap ordered while the monoplanes came into production. The Mk II followed with a Mercury VIIIA and a three-blade Fairey-Reed metal propeller in place of the early two-blade wooden Watts. About 750 were built, including 98 Sea Gladiators with arrester hooks for the Fleet Air Arm, and Gloster sold Gladiators to Belgium, China, Finland, Greece, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Portugal and Sweden.

When war came the Gladiator fought wherever the monoplanes were still too few. No. 263 Squadron flew its Gladiators from the frozen Lake Lesjaskog in Norway in April 1940, and Gladiators of Nos. 607 and 615 Squadrons fought in France. Over Malta a handful of Sea Gladiators held off the Regia Aeronautica in June 1940 before Hurricanes arrived, and Gladiators fought the Italians over the Western Desert, East Africa and Greece, where Pat Pattle of No. 80 Squadron began his run of victories in one. They ended the war on meteorological flights. In Britain L8032 flies with the Shuttleworth Collection and N5903 with the Fighter Collection at Duxford, and K8042 is displayed by the RAF Museum.

This airframe

Gladiator I L8032 (G-AMRK)

L8032The airframe modelled

L8032 was the last Gladiator Mk I built. Completed in 1937 and assembled in 1938, it served with No. 2 Anti-Aircraft Co-operation Unit, helping to train anti-aircraft gunners. Gloster bought it from the Air Ministry in February 1948 together with the Mk II N5903, and the two were used as instructional airframes by Air Service Training before Viv Bellamy bought them; he made L8032 airworthy, using N5903’s engine, and it was registered G-AMRK in June 1952. Gloster bought it back in 1953 and restored it to military standard, and when the company closed it presented the aircraft to the Shuttleworth Collection on 7 November 1960. Since 2007 it has flown from Old Warden, Bedfordshire, as “K7985” of No. 73 Squadron, the aircraft flown by Edgar “Cobber” Kain at the 1937 Hendon display. The model shows it as flown today: silver dope overall with aluminium forward panels and a polished long-chord cowling, the squadron’s blue and yellow flash either side of the fuselage roundel, black “K7985” aft of it and “K” over “7985” on the rudder, the blue and yellow “bow tie” and roundels above the upper wing, roundels above the lower wing, red wheel covers and a wooden Watts two-blade propeller.

See it at The Shuttleworth Collection

Where to see one

In the gazetteer

The gazetteer records the Gladiator in 5 UK collections. The airframe modelled here is marked.

Every airframe and serial All 68 plates

Profiles and models are procedural interpretations built in Blender from published dimensions, three-view drawings and photographs of each airframe. Treat the museum aircraft as the reference.