Ghost in the Machine: The Gloster Meteor's Forgotten Tragedies

The Gloster Meteor was Britain's first jet fighter and the first jet to be used in the Second World War. But despite its pioneering achievements, it has a legacy of fatal accidents which have largely been forgotten in popular memory. This is a story about just one of those accidents, the ghost which is said to haunt it, and the Meteor's complex post-war legacy.

[jimsweeney]

Great summary! So often people now complain or maybe just get annoyed at safety procedures not just in aviation but in most industry and health care. It is easy to forget that those procedures are developed in response to a tragedy that didn't need to happen in most cases. I think you are spot on that with the safer practices enforced today, most of these accidents would have been avoided.

[andrewrobinson]

A great doc. A while back I read 'How Meteors hit the ground' by Geoffery Higges. The number of accidents happening was just mind boggling! In the worst year, the RAF was losing on average one a week! Absolutely terrible.

[thatguyinelnorte]

Nice video. It does point out that a lot of young air crew members were killed in training flights. And, while it is safer these days, there are still training deaths. And not all are simply "pilot error".

[manic]

I knew about the West German Starfighters which had an accident rate of 292 of 916 Starfighters crashing, killing 115 pilots, but id never heard about this, thank you for sharing.

[johnherbert]

thanks to you both for this great information about the Meteor and it's pilots. Nice model too, I must build one myself.

[sIightIybored]

Supermarine Scimitars had an over 50% crash rate, de Havilland Sea Vixens nearly 40%. The built them a bit crashy in the 50's (though luckily for the Fleet Air Arm, lost less pilots). Less hotels to haunt if you've fallen in the sea though.

[c.morees]

The Royal Dutch Airforce did operate the Gloster Meteor after World War 2 and lost 40 pilots in accidents with this type...

[kamikazetsunami]

Always have time for your channel. Cheers

[landoremick]

Great videos. You have a nice style of delivery

[jimmorrison]

A wonderful coverage of a time I had not considered 👍

[MrMevie]

The early jet age was so wild. There are stories of holes opening in the fuselage during flight of early model DeHavilland Comet airliners.

[randomroveruk]

I noticed a flight of Canberras (not Meteors) at 3:22. Similar aircraft in some respects. Never mind, we all make mistakes! I enjoy your videos though.

[tonywakeford]

A fascinating well told account of overlooked endeavours and loss in peace time.👍

[Grimhilde]

for a possible future vid, could you and Simon perhaps cover the story of the English Electric/BAC Lightning interceptor....? for Modeller Simon, {if you don, t mind shelling out a few quid} Trumpeter makes 2 very nice big 1/32 kits of both variants, the early F.1/F.3 and later F2A/F.6. very "straightforward" builds with no real "snags".

[alansmithee]

A'reyt Catherine. Times when "flying by the seat of your pants" seem to still come before the sort of practices that were already adopted from Operational Research to win the naval Battle of the Atlantic in WW2.
There was a BBC4 documentary series that covered British aviation that showed this was not just the one design that had such issues, though not so spooky.

[Grimhilde]

oops..."my bad" in a reply about larger scale Meteor Models makes a 1/32 F.4 and i, ve got one in my got so many i forget sometimes what i have in the deep, dark and ominous chambers and catacombs of my

[SimnTrains]

Brilliant video. I find it bizzare that the pilot crashed the plane into his own room.

[AnthonyBrown]

I was looking at the history of the Meteor recently and became aware of the very high accident rate . I am making a model of the Mk8 . Your video adds some interesting facts and details

[ianallan]

I thought you were going to talk about the phenomenon of Meteor phantom dive. At certain speeds and attitudes, a Meatbox with wheels and flaps deployed would be aerodynamically compelled to dive into the ground.

[antonrudenham]

I used to stay in the St George hotel when doing firefighting courses and was always fascinated by the thought of all those young Canadian aircrew who stayed there when it was a bustling officers mess during the war, the whole place is covered with marvelous paintings and photos of that era and there are many WW2 buildings still in use there.