Meteor NZ6001 - some questions

[noooby]

Pedantic I know but the first photo in that group seems to be reversed. Cockpit steps are only on the left side of Meatboxes if I remember correctly.

[fwx]

Hi nooby, thanks for that, yes I think you are right, you can just make out the serial number behind the white band below the tail, and reversing does make it read better!

Fixed now, cheers, Chris

[Dave Homewood]

Here is a great photo of the Meteor in the hangar from the Hamilton Public Library's Heritage Collection.

LINK

[Antonio]

Again AWESOME!!!

I guess the cannons were retained for CoG purposes.
I had always 'assumed' she was unarmed.

[baz62]

I'm not so sure the cannons are actually there. I think they might be the blast tubes, or even round lead weights perhaps?

[baz62]

This is a photo of a later F8 but I think the gun installation is either the same or very similar to NZ6001. I think if the guns were there we would see a lot more of the breechs at the rear. Perhaps they left parts of the guns in place? Hard to say.
EDIT: showed this to a Meteor restorer in UK. He thinks no guns just the blast tubes.
Screenshot (64) by Barry Tod, on Flickr

[Dave Homewood]

R.N.Z.A.F. Meteor Jet Offered For Sale

The Royal New Zealand Air Force is offering for sale by tender its only Gloster Meteor jet fighter plane, stationed at Hobsonville. The Meteor was lent to the Dominion by the British Air Ministry for service instruction and public indoctrination for jets in 1945, when it was valued at £50.000, but later the Government bought the aircraft outright for a tenth of that sum.

The Meteor was shipped to New Zealand and assembled at Hobsonville. A Wigram-trained pilot and New Zealander, Squadron Leader R. M. McKay, flew the plane on test after its assembly, and 11 years ago this week was in Christchurch with it showing it to the public.

While the aircraft was in the Dominion it flew 272 hours. 67 of them with Squadron Leader McKay (now a group captain and commanding officer at Hobsonville) at the controls. Fifty-six Air Force pilots received jet conversion training on the machine.

The Meteor was one of the third of 16 versions built by Gloster for the Royal Air Force, and came off the first quantity production line. It was one of three planes given on loan to British Dominions — the other two being damaged beyond repair and written off in Australia and Canada.

The plane had a maximum speed of 475 miles an hour at 30,000 feet and burned 300 gallons of kerosene an hour. Its sea level range was only 280 miles, but the range was extended to 600 miles in higher altitudes.

The Gloster Meteor was the first British combat plane fitted with jet propulsion, and the only Allied jet to go into operational service in World War 11. The Mark IV version set a world air speed record of 616 miles an hour in 1946.

Meteors went out of production in Britain three years ago. and this month the Royal Air Force announced it would retire its operational Meteors.


PRESS, 24 APRIL 1957