Planes and Choppers Photos

The Gloster Aircraft Company was formed in 1917 as the Gloucestershire Aircraft Company. The company acquired the aircraft business previously carried out by H H Martyn with a 50% share, and the Aircraft Manufacturing Company the other 50%. The company rented what was the Sunningend works of H H Martyn in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. When the British aircraft manufacturer Nieuport & General closed down in 1920, the services of its chief designer, Henry Folland were hired by the company, which also acquired the rights for the Nieuport Nighthawk fighter and unbuilt aircraft components. In 1926, the name was abbreviated to the Gloster Aircraft Company because non-UK customers found the original name too difficult to pronounce. In 1934 the company was taken over by Hawker Aircraft, though it continued to produce aircraft under its own name. In that same year the company produced the famous Gladiator biplane. The 1935 merger of Hawker Aircraft and the interests of J. D. Siddeley (Armstrong Siddeley and Armstrong Whitworth Aircraft) saw Gloster become a part of Hawker Siddeley Aircraft, Ltd. Having no modern designs of its own in production, Gloster undertook manufacture for the parent company Hawker. In 1939, the company built 1,000 Hawker Hurricanes in the first 12 months of WW2 and delivered the last of its 2,750 Hurricanes in 1942. Production was then switched to the Hawker Typhoon. On 15 May 1941, the first test flight of the Gloster E.28/39 with a turbo-jet engine, invented by Sir Frank Whittle, took off from RAF Cranwell. This was followed by the Gloster Meteor, the first and only operational Allied jet fighter aircraft of WW2. First flying with the RAF in 1943, the Meteor commenced operations in mid-1944, only some weeks later than the world's first operational jet, the German Messerschmitt Me 262. In 1952, the 2-seat, delta winged Gloster Javelin was developed. In 1961, the company was merged with Sir W G Armstrong Whitworth Aircraft Limited to form Whitworth Gloster Aircraft Limited. Following another re-organisation, the firm became part of the Avro Whitworth Division of Hawker Siddeley Aviation in 1963, and the name Gloster disappeared.