Dear old Meatbox, what a delight to fly. I was fortunate enough to be on the last AFTS course to train on the beast at RAF Strubby in the mid-sixties. At the end of the course we delivered the aircraft to Kemble where a number of them were mothballed, and the rest scrapped.
The asymmetric flying was definitely a feat of some physical strength. We seemed to practice on one engine almost as often as on two although by then we were not allowed to shut an engine down or fly on one for practice below 4000 ft. We did still practice engine failure on take off and certainly in the T7 it was very important to remember to throttle back the live engine to ensure retention of control. This would then continue into a not quite so knee-trembling single-engine climb at 200 kts - IMC you had to fly wings level when not intending to turn but VMC you were allowed up to 5 or 10 degrees of bank towards the live engine to relieve the foot load. The most demanding exercise was to do a sinlge engine overshoot on the port engine - you had to use the hand pump to raise the gear and flaps because the hydraulic pump was on the starboard engine. Needless to say if you had to overshoot on the port engine your QFI would insist on the use of the hand pump even though the starboard engine was only throttled back!
The phantom dive could occur with one or both engines going and was indeed a result of having airbrakes out when gear was lowered. Originally, I believe, the airbrakes came out to almost 90 degrees which caused real problems, the effect was reduced by reducing the airbrake travel to only about 45 degrees but this still did not completely solve the problem.
As far as I could tell, the single-seat Meteors after the Mk4 all had bang seats, that is: F8,
PR(?)9, FR10, whereas the 2 seaters were not so equipped - I know the T7 was without MB escape assistance.
Apart from the flying, my fondest memory of the Meteor was to hear one with 'big breathers' coming in for a run and break on the blue note - a sound only surpassed by the Hunter.
