Intermission #6
“Fighter Aircraft of the Royal Air Force” - Jane's Information Group, 2007
The transition of the Royal Air Force from piston-engined Aircraft to jet-powered ones was a process that took longer and was beset with more problems and delays than one might expect from a country that had helped pioneer jets since the late 1930s. The Gloster E.28/39 was the first British jet and was already fraught with problems and delays, from it's inception in the late 1930s to it's first flight in June 1941. In the beginning it had been the lack of funding, later it had been the pressure of a wartime economy that needed to provide aircraft of types that were already proven. During these years companies all over the world perfected the piston engine, pushing the envelope ever further, faster and higher. It became clear however that soon enough technology would simply no longer allow faster and bigger engines, and as a result money all over the world began to flow towards various jet projects. In Britain the Ministry of Defence decided after long deliberations that a British Jet Fighter Programme was needed sooner rather than later, and issued specification E.12/42 in March 1942. Many proposals were considered, with most companies bringing in some form of proposal or other, even though all of them were busy with building or improving existing models that were piston engined, for example Hawker was busy working on the Tempest, while Supermarine was having troubles with the next marque of the Spitfire. Both the Hawker and the Supermarine proposal were deemed workable, in fact the Hawker project would eventually become the Sea Hawk, but some sort of Jet Fighter was needed before the Germans or the Soviets put their own projects into Squadron service, so the only proposal that would be ready to fly in an acceptable timespan was chosen: Gloster Project P.1/42, soon to be known as the Gloster Meteor. The reasons for this were plain, Gloster had been working on it as a company funded project since 1941 in anticipation of a MoD specification, and had therefore been able to provide a life-sized wooden mock-up of their then unnamed aircraft.
MoD officials and selected RAF ground crew inspecting the mock-up
But even so progress was slow, because Gloster was entering a field of aeronautics that was completely new, and a cautious approach was deemed prudent. The Gloster Meteor was in principle based on the earlier Jet prototype of 1941, straight wings and a generally unexciting conventional structure. Low wings, all-metal fuselage and a t tailplane mounted high to keep them clear from the blast of the mid-wing mounted jet engines. Type approval came through within weeks, and the Gloster Meteor first taxied in late April of that same year, powered by Rolls-Royce W.2 Engines, the first to be developed by Frank Whittle since Power Jets had become a grudging sub-division of the former- or rather their Aviation Engine branch. The Engine still had various flaws, mainly the centrifugal central compressor and generally engine life, resulting in the aircraft being grounded until these problems could be resolved. The
Rolls-Royce W.23 Welland and the de Havilland Goblin engines were fitted to two of the Prototypes instead as the planes were moved to RAF Cranwell under the strictest secrecy. There further tests were conducted before the prototypes could be released for actual flight testing. In September 1942 the Prototype DG206 flew for the first time, followed by extensive testing. By that time intelligence had shown that both the Germans and the Soviets were working on their own programmes and the development was sped up, but still, the programme progressed slowly, so that by the time when the Meteor actually was ready for Squadron service, the development of replacements was already underway. Even so the first production version, the Gloster Meteor Mk.I ( the prototypes being re-designated as Mk.0 and being used for engine tests and experiments ) was approved for production in December 1943, but when the first four examples crashed within short order, a furious Churchill ordered production halted immediately until the faults could be corrected. The Gloster and Rolls-Royce Engineers went over the planes with a fine comb and failed to find any evidence of any sort of fault. The plane was seemingly fine. At that time Barnes Wallis and Frank Whittle teamed up again[1] and the two went over the plane again, and as it turned out then the Meteor Mk.I suffered from stability problems at high transonic speeds, experiencing large trim changes, high stick forces and self-sustained yaw instability (snaking) due to airflow separation over the thick tail surfaces, and that, combined with pilots that were not used to the handling and the speeds of the aircraft, accounted for the crash rate. The Mk.I was therefore withdrawn from service before it had entered the same and was sent back to the factory. What resulted two months later was the Gloster Meteor Mk.III. Extensive tests followed, as no one wanted another debacle and so it took several months before No. 111 Squadron was declared operational on 6th June 1944.
No.111 Squadron Meteor Mk.III conducting CAP over southern England
Production was slow, and it was not until May 1945 that all Fighter Command Squadrons were equipped with the new Aircraft. This gave the RAF time to develop new doctrines and procedures for a completely new Aircraft, and that was time well spent. The main opposition for the Allied Air Forces were at the time high-performance piston-engined fighters of all classes that turned out to be much more manoeuvrable, if slower than the Meteor, so new tactics were needed. Coincidentally the tactics adopted were not new, but rather ones that had been used by the Far-Eastern Squadrons in the dark early days of the war in the Pacific when RIAF and RAF Squadrons with elderly aircraft had been forced to fight against superior Asiatic Aircraft of Japanese make. They were changed and adapted, and in the end written into the manual for Jet Pilots, making 'dash, shoot and run' official policy for the first time. Thanks to the low-performance early jet engines the speed advantage of the Meteor Mk.II over the enemy fighters of the time would not have been all that great, and even with the RR Dervent III engine the the Meteor Mk.III[2] was a cumbersome aircraft and a poor gun platform, signing it's death warrant even then.
Initially combat for the Meteors consisted of ground-attack missions and escorting the heavy bombers deep into Axis territory so far their range would allow, so combat between the remnants of them and the Axis Air Forces was initially limited to breaking through the defences over the front and fighting off the Axis planes that intercepted the bombers. During this they never faced their direct Axis counterparts, even though both Germany and the Soviet Union were known to field jets at the time. The first Jet vs. Jet air battle took place in June 1945 when a group of sixteen Meteors, escorting a small group of Lancaster Bombers attacking military infrastructure in East Prussia encountered a Squadron of Soviet Mig-9 Jet Fighters. The Soviets had height and surprise on their side, and their smaller jets were more manoeuvrable than the larger RAF ones, but the Soviets were powered by a home-grown version of the BMW 003 engines that the Germans had handed over in 1943 as a 'sign of good will'[3], so the British had a slight speed advantage of roughly 20 kph, and their pilots were all veterans from the Battle of Britain and the heavy air fighting over the European Front, while the Soviet pilots were all relatively green, having received their planes only days before. The following battle was furious and bloody, but in the end superior training and experience prevailed. When the Soviets fled from the Battlefield, they had to leave eight of their number behind. The victory had come at a heavy cost, for six Meteors had been shot down, ripped apart by the massive Soviet 37mm cannon, and this showed that the Meteor was a good fighter, but too cumbersome to really rule the skies in the environment of the front.
The intended successors for the plane was to be decided by a competition centred around specification E.15/45. Gloster had not had the time to develop an entry, while the planes that had not made it the last time were entered that both also vied for contracts with the Royal Navy. As neither were chosen for the FAA neither Supermarine nor de Havilland were unduly troubled and the competition went on.
The de Havilland Vampire was the product of an in-company and privately funded effort to develop an aircraft that could hold it's own against the Meteor, and when the Meteor won the competition for the first jet by simply being closer to production, the engineers at Hatfield went back to the drawing board. As a result the Vampire was a very capable aircraft when it was submitted to E.15/45. The specification detailed a 'single engined jet-turbine powered aircraft' that could act as a conventional fighter and as an Infiltrator to replace the Mosquito and the Hornet in the rear area interdiction role and that was to be powered the the RR Nene Engine that was beginning to be the jet counterpart to the piston Merlin Series. The company was less than delighted, but Churchill as Minister of Defence had insisted that the same level of commonality as with the piston-engines was to be achieved with Jets. The d.H 110 as it was submitted dutifully had a Nene in it's belly, hardpoints for bombs or rockets under it's outer wings and two more for fuel tanks between the main fuselage and the twin booms. This turned the Vampire into an excellent first generation jet.
Competition came from Supermarine who struggled to get their unwilling Attacker design ready for combat service both for the RAF and the Fleet Air Arm. The Attacker was a much more conventional design and was based on the proposed but aborted Spitfire replacement, the Supermarine Spiteful. Also powered by a Nene, the Attacker had only one hard point for a fuel tank under it's belly, and more under it's wings. Tests were carried out and as it turned out the Attacker suffered from some serious faults. None were as severe as those of the Meteor Mk.II, but they were enough for the RAF to choose the Vampire instead. For one the Attacker retained the conventional undercarriage of the Spiteful and had therefore poor ground visibility, and on grassy airfields the same arrangement caused the engine to create a long furrow in the ground that 'three men could lie down in'. While this was not a problem on the airstrips in the UK that were all equipped with tarmac runways at that point this meant that the plane would be hard to operate on the forward bases on the continent. Supermarine took this lesson to heart even though the company pouted somewhat since they had brought the Spitfire. R.J. Mitchell was called back from medical retirement to help design one last aircraft that would eventually become the Swift. In the meantime the Vampire entered service with the RAF and the RCAF, the latter equipped with Vampires made at Avro and de Havilland shadow plants in Canada itself.
RCAF Vampire on patrol, April 1946
The end of the War however did not stop development. Operation Paperclip had yielded valuable insights into German and Soviet work on advanced aeronautical designs, and amidst the post-war rationalizations of the Industry that would see companies like Bristol, English Electric and Percival either disappear completely or be swallowed by the likes of Supermarine and de Havilland, a new generation of British Jet Fighters was born. Once again Supermarine stepped forward in 1948 with the Type 510 that had won a competition against the Vickers 545. Once again a Supermarine design was beset with teething problems which delayed the entry into service, and by the time it was ready in 1952, it's main rival, the Hawker Hunter flew and was bought by the RAF, also winning several lucrative export contracts. The Swift was not cancelled though, and so once again a Hawker and Supermarine product served side by side, and both had later variants produced that pushed the RAF into the supersonic age. The Hunter was however to be the last major jet fighter produced specifically for the RAF by Hawker-Siddley, for the last aircraft family that emerged from the hallowed halls that had spawned the Hurricane and her descendants was the supersonic Harrier for the RN and the RAF. This was a result of the replacement competition that was won by English Electric ( a subsidiary of Supermarine until the brand name was deleted and the company fully folded into Supermarine in 1974 ) and their Lightning design that would go on to form the backbone of Fighter Command and many Allied Air Forces for the next decades, together with the Canadian Arrow, breaking multiple speed records and being the first British plane with variable Geometry wings from the Mk.VIII on out, while the plane also was the first Allied Aircraft that was able to intercept the American Burbank U-2 ( nicknamed Dragon Lady ) spyplanes from above and with a speed advantage[4].
Even though aircraft technology has developed greatly since the Meteor took to the Air, Fighter Command today is still the same dedicated and professional force that defended Imperial airspace then. Today the Supermarine/EADS Typhoon[5] which also has a Naval variant in service with the FAA is a fighter that can trace it's lineage back to the days of the Sopwith Camel, the Supermarine Spitfire and the Gloster Meteor, and still the subjects of the Empire know that the Air Defence is in the hands of men and women that do their duty with all the dedication required.
Supermarine Lightning Mk.X of the Luftwaffe, Bruntingthorpe Airshow, 2005
Spm/MBB Typhoon Mk.III during the AFCAN 1999 exercise, somewhere over Canada
[1] They will soon in the main story.
[2] I am taking the Meteor F.4 as the basis for performance and so on.
[3]
[4] This is taken from the Wiki Article on the Lightning. An amazing aircraft that could be competitive even today.
[5] I really like this plane. It looks so freaking awesome in RAF markings.
