At
the end of WWII the Germans were left holding the world air speed record,
set by an Me209 in 1939 at 469mph. Naturally the victorious allies could
not let this remain, so in Britain Frank McKenna of Gloster Aircraft approached
the MAP for Government support in taking the record back for Britain.
The support was forthcoming and 2 Meteor Mk3's were allocated, EE454 and
EE455. The aircraft were fitted with Derwent 5 engines and longer nacelles
which were being planned for the new Mk4. Otherwise the planes were only
slightly modified by having Cannons and radios removed (inc the large upper
aerial) and an extra fuel tank added. Both had panel lines sealed and smoothed
before being given a "High Speed Gloss finish". EE454 was finished in
Standard day fighter scheme and EE455 in yellow to assist in filming. On the 7th
November Gp Cpt Hugh Wilson set a new record of 606.38 flying EE454 to claim the
trophy for Britain. Interestingly a year later the process was repeated when
another Meteor raised the record to 614mph. This latter record involved other
changes to the planes including a solid canopy. The latter Meteor now lives on
in Tangmere museum in the UK but I can find no record of the fate of EE454.
Click on
images below to see larger images
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I
based the model on Classic Airframes Meteor 4 but since it was actually a Mk3
with Mk4 engines I needed some Mk3 long span outer wings. I sourced these from a
Tamya Mk3 and the rest of the kit from Classic Airframes. To save time I would
have used the Tamiya kit of course but it looked harder to graft the CA engines
onto the Tamiya wing than just swap the outer wing panels which is what I did.
In terms of building the kit I found the nose weight recommended by CA to not
enough and so ended up filling the nose with lead as well. I also found the nose
leg support quite fragile and so I finally glued the gear leg to the extra lead
inside the nose. A long time was spent filling all the panel lines to replicate
the smooth aircraft! Paints were by Xtracolour.
An interesting model
for this almost forgotten event now 50
years ago. Next year is the 30th anniversary of the current world record being
set and my Blackbird is almost done!
For
reference I used "Gloster Meteor'' by Chaz Bowyer (1985) and
"The
Gloster Meteor" by Edward Shacklady (1962)
Colin
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