Gloster Meteor Canopy Q.

[Load Toad]

I was wondering why the NF11 version and trainer versions had the heavily framed canopies rather than the tear-drop types - was it because of difficulty in forming large canopies or.....? Later versions went with the full transparent canopies.

[henry crun]

I think is was cost.

I visited AW when they had the first NF14 canopy on the aircraft, and was told it cost 1400 pounds.
This drew whistles of amazement because it was a considerable sum at the time.

[Malcolm G O Payne]

My guess is that the Meteor 11 made use of the canopy already in use on the 7. With the development of the 14 they decided to remove a lot of the structure that impeded the view from the rear seat. I was an apprntice at Glosters at the time, but all the Deveopment work on the NF versions was done by Armstrong Whitworth at Coventry.

[XV277]

IIRC there was a plan to fit ejection seats to the NF14, which meant it needed to lose the framed canopy

[henry crun]

XV277: I have not heard that before, where did you read or hear of it ?

[XV277]

NOt where I thought....on reflection, I may have been getting confused with the Swedish NF proposals, which did have EJ seats