Wingleader Photo Archive 34 - Gloster Meteor F8/FR9

The photos were plentiful and of high quality but what do you find to write about a shiny single seat fighter that had just three aerials and an ejector seat?! Well, we did our best and to be fair, the more we got into the Meteor, the more we found. The FR9 in-particular proved to have had a very interesting lifespan and rocked some very interesting colour schemes, unlike its very plain and sensible F8 sister.

Unlike the Meteor’s wartime predecessors which lasted for just weeks and occasionally months, many Meteor airframes served for several years and received mods and upgrades along the way. We’ve done our best to point these out so that you know what to look for.

So, here we are, with a very attractive book on the F8 and FR9. We’ve learnt about the Telescrambler, pondered deeply about four black dots, and have actually grown quite fond of the old Meatbox, we hope you will too.

As usual, we’ve dug out around 120 very high-quality original photos which show the details and modifications, and have commissioned 6 in-depth colour profiles to illustrate them.