Category:Gloster

The Gloster Aircraft Company ("GAC") started out during World War One as Gloucestershire Aircraft Company Limited – a dedicated subcontracting company designed to take some of the construction load off Airco (1912-1920), allowing Airco to increase their own aeroplane production capacity.

Although Airco did very well during wartime, they had trouble transitioning to the post-war environment, and failed in 1920.

Now independent, GAC reconfigured itself, acquiring Henry Holland of Nieuport and the rights to produce the Nieuport Nighthawk.

Further developments

1926 saw a switch to the more phonetic spelling "Gloster", as the original spelling confused the heck out of some of their foreign customers who weren't familiar with some of the historical idiosyncrasies of English pronunciation.

1934 saw GAC acquired by Hawker Aircraft, and the start of production of the Gloster Gladiator biplane.

1936 saw Hawker then merge with J.D Siddeley (who had Armstrong Siddeley and Armstrong Whitworth) to produce Hawker Siddeley.

The outbreak of WW2 saw GAC producing Hawker Hurricanes and Hawker Typhoons. This left GAC's design facilities with not much to do, which made them ideal partners for Frank Whittle's new secret jet engine project. The prototype airframe flew in May 1941, and became the iconic Gloster Meteor jet fighter.

The Gloster Javelin delta-winged interceptor (which was fast but still subsonic) appeared in 1956.

GAC were one of several companies that then contributed to the TSR-2 project, cancelled in 1965.

An ongoing series of reorganisations and rationalisations from 1961 to ~1963 saw Gloster become part of Whitworth Gloster Aircraft Limited, then become the Avro Whitworth Division of Hawker Siddeley Aviation, and finally disappear as an aircraft brand altogether.