Originally Posted by
OUAQUKGF Ops
The loss of Gloster Meteor F.4 RA452 based at Bovingdon with RAF Fighter Command Communications Squadron - 19th April 1949.
Well to start off with I have looked high and low for an image of this particular aircraft but like many Meteors it had a fairly short operational life so photographs if any are few and far between.
Making do then with an image of another Meteor F.4........
Location unknown. This F.4 was with 209 AFS
In May 1951, it was reported that the Meteor 4's tail unit lost half its strength when the skin tore, the skin tearing was found to originate round rivet holes, access panels or discontinuous stringers (stress risers). A total of 890 Meteors were lost in RAF service (145 of these crashes occurred in 1953 alone), resulting in the deaths of 450 pilots.
In the book Jet Age Photographer there’s a picture by Russell Adams showing the tail deformation. The oil canning effect is significant around the tail/fuselage joint and across the rudder too. They were taken at various speeds, and notably to take the images they had to use another Meteor 4, which was suffering the same issue simultaneously…
https://jetagemuseum.org/russell-adams/