Gloster Aircraft Company

Gloster Aircraft Company Synopsis

Between 1917 and 1963, the Gloster Aircraft Company, with its forebears H.H. Martyn & Co. and Gloucestershire Aircraft Co., produced some 10,000 aeroplanes at Brockworth and Hucclecote. It also provided employment for countless thousands of local people. During the Second World War alone, GAC employed 14,000 men and women at its main factory and at another forty sites dispersed in Gloucester, Cheltenham, Stroud and other more distant parts of Gloucestershire. Gloster designed a number of outstanding fighter aircraft some of which were built in large numbers. These included the Gloster Gladiator, Hawker Hurricanes under licence and the Meteor, Britain's first jet fighter. By chance, the company had been chosen to design and build the Meteor and followed by building 4,000 jet fighters for the Royal Air Force and a dozen air forces around the world. Gloster finally became the first victim of a rationalisation which has since decimated British aircraft manufacturing companies.