Meteor F8 IAF

About

The Gloster Meteor was the first British operational jet fighter and the only Allied jet aircraft to see combat in the Second World War. Designed by Gloster Aircraft Company under chief designer George Carter, the Meteor first flew on March 5, 1943, and entered RAF service in July 1944. F.1 variants were used to chase down German V-1 flying bombs over southern England — the first jet-versus-cruise-missile combat in history.

The Meteor F.8 variant introduced in 1949 was the definitive postwar Meteor, with a longer fuselage, more powerful Rolls-Royce Derwent 8 engines, and a Martin-Baker ejection seat — the kind of refinements that turned the wartime jet pioneer into a Korean War-era frontline fighter. The F.8 was the most-produced Meteor variant, serving with the RAF, Royal Navy, and over a dozen foreign air forces including the Israeli Air Force.

Israeli Meteors flew during the Suez Crisis (1956) and other Middle East operations, where the type's straight-wing layout was outclassed by Soviet-supplied MiG-15s but remained capable in ground-attack and reconnaissance roles. The unmistakable Meteor silhouette — twin engines on a straight low wing, single fuselage, twin tails — is one of the more distinctive early-jet subjects in modern RC EDF scale flying.

In the simulator

A demanding twin-engine early-jet scale subject. A natural sibling of the Meteor_F8 2 Sqdn RAF variant in this same pack — same airframe, different paint.