Jet Age Museum, Gloucestershire Airport
Gloucestershire’s aviation collection at Staverton, centred on Gloster. Shows an E.28/39 replica, a Gamecock reproduction, Meteors and a Javelin FAW.9.
The types
Gloster aircraft you can see
| Type | First flew | Built | UK museums |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gloster Gamecock & Fairey FlycatcherGamecock I, Flycatcher I | 1922 | c.300 | 2 |
| Gloster GladiatorI/II | 1934 | 747 | 6 |
| Gloster E.28/39reproduction | 1941 | 2 | 1 |
| Gloster MeteorF.4, F.8, NF, T.7 | 1943 | 3,947 | 31 |
| Gloster Javelin | 1951 | 436 | 8 |
The firm
Gloster in brief
Its biplane fighters ended with the Gladiator, the RAF’s last biplane fighter. Hawker bought Gloster in 1934, and Gloster went on to build Hurricanes and Typhoons for its parent. Its design office produced the E.28/39, Britain’s first jet aircraft, which flew in 1941. The Meteor followed. It was the RAF’s first jet fighter and the only Allied jet to see combat in the war.
The Javelin all-weather fighter proved too heavy for the short runway at Brockworth. Gloster merged with Armstrong Whitworth in 1961. The Gloster name disappeared in 1963 inside Hawker Siddeley.
Where to go
Museums holding Gloster aircraft
| Museum | Gloster types | Adult entry | Airframes | Headline exhibit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jet Age MuseumGloucester, Gloucestershire | 5 | Donation | 15 | Gloucestershire's jet-age shrine (free!) beside Staverton airport: Gloster heritage from the E.28/39 replica to Javelins, with… |
| Fleet Air Arm MuseumYeovil, Somerset | 3 | £21 | 97 | Concorde 002 (G-BSST), the first British-assembled Concorde, which made her maiden flight from Filton in 1969 and now headlines a hall of… |
| IWM DuxfordCambridge, Cambridgeshire | 3 | £29 | 146 | Concorde 101 (G-AXDN), the pre-production development aircraft and the fastest Concorde of them all at Mach 2.23 — plus an SR-71A… |
| Royal Air Force Museum MidlandsShifnal, Shropshire | 3 | Free | 78 | TSR-2 XR220, one of two survivors of the most gifted aircraft Britain ever cancelled, sharing floor space with the stainless-steel… |
| East Midlands AeroparkDerby, Leicestershire | 2 | £5 | 35 | East Midlands Aeropark: a Vulcan, Nimrod R1 and Buccaneer parked on grassy mounds overlooking EMA's runway — half museum, half premier… |
| Midland Air MuseumCoventry, Warwickshire | 2 | £11 | 66 | Vulcan XL360 with cockpit access and volunteer-led tours (ask for the instrumentation talk), plus the Whittle jet heritage collection a… |
| Newark Air MuseumNewark, Nottinghamshire | 2 | £12.50 | 95 | Vulcan XM594, with cockpit tours occasionally given by former Vulcan aircrew, which reviewers describe with the reverence normally… |
| Norfolk and Suffolk Aviation MuseumBungay, Suffolk | 2 | £10 | 65 | Depends who you ask — the joy is the oddities. Come for the Bloodhound missiles and decoy rarities; stay for volunteer flight-simulator… |
| Royal Air Force Museum LondonLondon, Greater London | 2 | Free | 88 | Avro Lancaster R5868 'S-Sugar' — 137 operations, the RAF's highest-scoring surviving heavy — under the same roof as a Vulcan, a… |
| Airworld Aviation MuseumCaernarfon, Gwynedd | 1 | £7 | 10 | Airworld at Caernarfon Airport (RAF Llandwrog, birthplace of the RAF Mountain Rescue Service): Hunter, Vampire and the world's only… |
| Bentwaters Cold War MuseumWoodbridge, Suffolk | 1 | £7.50 | 9 | Bentwaters Cold War Museum occupies the actual USAF hardened command post — war room, battle cabin and decontamination showers intact —… |
| Boscombe Down Aviation CollectionSalisbury, Wiltshire | 1 | £13.50 | 49 | The Lancaster cockpit reproduction tour, and a test-and-evaluation pedigree collection you can physically inhabit rather than admire… |
| Bournemouth Aviation MuseumChristchurch, Dorset | 1 | £10 | 29 | The sit-anywhere policy itself — one entry fee, no per-cockpit charges, a full BAC 1-11 flight-deck sim in a shed, and thousands… |
| City of Norwich Aviation MuseumNorwich, Norfolk | 1 | £9 | 33 | City of Norwich Aviation Museum at Horsham St Faith: Norfolk's largest, ~30 airframes including a Vulcan and Nimrod with bookable… |
| Gatwick Aviation MuseumGatwick, Surrey | 1 | £12.50 | 16 | Avro Shackleton WR982 (the £5 guided tour is unanimously endorsed) and a live-engined English Electric Lightning. There's also… |
| Hooton Park HangarsEllesmere Port, Cheshire | 1 | £9 | 45 | Hooton Park's 1917 Belfast-truss hangars — among the finest WWI aviation buildings surviving — hold aircraft, buses and a printing museum… |
| Hucknall Flight Test MuseumNottingham, Nottinghamshire | 1 | By appointment | 3 | Hucknall Flight Test Museum, on the aerodrome where Rolls-Royce flew testbeds from 1934 (and hoisted the Flying Bedstead into history),… |
| Montrose Air Station MuseumMontrose, Angus | 1 | £10 | 14 | The 1913 fabric itself, plus the resident ghost stories (Montrose is Britain's most famously haunted airfield, a claim the volunteers… |
| MorayviaForres, Moray | 1 | £8 | 35 | Nimrod XV244 (complete, and the crew who operated her sometimes give the tours) alongside a Sea King in RAF SAR yellow — the machine that… |
| National Museum Of FlightNorth Berwick, East Lothian | 1 | £15 | 47 | Concorde G-BOAA, which flew British Airways' first commercial supersonic service in 1976 and arrived here by barge and giant road-crawl… |
| North East Land, Sea and Air MuseumsSunderland, Tyne and Wear | 1 | £7.50 | 46 | NELSAM in Sunderland mixes Vulcan XL319 (flew in when the airport still existed), a Pucará from the Falklands, trams, buses and a… |
| RAF Coltishall Heritage CentreNorwich, Norfolk | 1 | Free | 5 | RAF Coltishall's guardroom museum, curated by veterans of the base — the Jaguar force's spiritual home, free to enter on open days, with… |
| RAF Manston History MuseumRamsgate, Kent | 1 | £7 | 22 | RAF Manston's history museum spans 1916 RNAS days to Cold War Meteors, with strong 1940s room-sets — and it sits next door to the… |
| Robertsbridge Aviation SocietyRobertsbridge, East Sussex | 1 | Free | 6 | Robertsbridge Aviation Society — a village-hall-sized museum of recovered WWII relics and six jet cockpit sections, curated with… |
| Solway Aviation MuseumCrosby on Eden, Cumbria | 1 | £8 | 21 | Vulcan XJ823 with pre-bookable crew-compartment visits; a Phantom, Lightning and Canberra (whose three-crew cockpit reviewers describe as… |
| South Wales Aviation MuseumBarry, Vale of Glamorgan | 1 | £10 | 73 | The resident Harrier and a growing VC10/Tornado-era collection, most with steps and open canopies. Kids exit wearing thousand-yard grins. |
| South Yorkshire Aircraft MuseumDoncaster, South Yorkshire | 1 | £7.50 | 109 | Doncaster's South Yorkshire Aircraft Museum sprawls across the old RAF Doncaster site: dozens of airframes and helicopters, strong… |
| Speke Aerodrome Heritage GroupLiverpool, Merseyside | 1 | Free | 7 | Speke Airport Museum — Speke Aerodrome Heritage Group keeps airliners, including a Dan-Air 748 under restoration, on Liverpool's gorgeous… |
| Tangmere Military Aviation MuseumChichester, West Sussex | 1 | £15 | 23 | Hawker Hunter WB188 in one-off scarlet, in which Neville Duke took the world air speed record to 727.63 mph off this coast in 1953;… |
| The Shuttleworth CollectionBiggleswade, Bedfordshire | 1 | £19.50 | 55 | The 1934 DH.88 Comet 'Grosvenor House', winner of the MacRobertson England–Australia air race, restored to fly; and the Edwardians —… |
| Trenchard MuseumAylesbury, Buckinghamshire | 1 | By appointment | 6 | The Trenchard Museum at RAF Halton tells the story of the RAF's apprentice scheme — 'Trenchard's Brats' — on the working base where… |
| Ulster Aviation Society (Maze Long Kesh)Lisburn, County Antrim | 1 | By appointment | 63 | The Shorts family — SC.1 vertical take-off research aircraft included — plus a Buccaneer, Phantom, Wildcat, and a newly arrived AV-8… |
| Yorkshire Air MuseumYork, North Yorkshire | 1 | £17 | 54 | Halifax 'Friday the 13th' — the world's only complete Halifax reconstruction, honouring the type that flew from this very field —… |
Questions
Frequently asked
What was Britain’s first jet aircraft?
The Gloster E.28/39, which flew in 1941. A replica is on show at the Jet Age Museum in Gloucestershire.
Why is it spelt Gloster?
The firm began as the Gloucestershire Aircraft Company. It changed to Gloster in 1926 because overseas customers struggled with the original name.
What was the last Gloster aircraft?
The Javelin all-weather fighter. Gloster merged with Armstrong Whitworth in 1961, and the name went in 1963.