Gloster Meteor World Speed Record

The Gloster Meteor was Britain's first operational jet fighter and the only Allied jet to see combat in the Second World War. In the years immediately after the war it became a high-profile record-breaker, demonstrating the capabilities of the new turbojet era to the public and to rival air forces.

In 1946 a Meteor set a new world air speed record, reaching a speed in the neighborhood of 600 miles per hour. The achievement underscored how dramatically jet propulsion had raised the ceiling on aircraft performance compared with the piston-engined fighters that had dominated the war only a few years earlier.

Beyond its record-setting flights, the Meteor served for years as a frontline and training aircraft with the Royal Air Force and other operators. It bridged the gap between wartime piston fighters and the swept-wing jets that would soon follow, and remained an important part of British air power into the 1950s.