Certainly be nice to see the Centaurus Tempest II of which Richard Grace has (almost?) completed the rebuild at Sywell - originally one of a few recovered from India by Doug Arnold in 1979 and sold on to Richard's dad Nick and Chris Horsley, then to Autokraft, etc, etc...

I have little doubt it was at least partially because of the large numbers of piston engines various languishing in 'stores' after the war - engines were being produced in vast quantities by many factories and it took some time to shut off the flow post war.
You only have to look at the B.P. Balliol - The top kneddies decided to use up some of their large stock of spare Merlin engines to power this trainer - the Merlin was hardly a suitable engine for an advanced trainer but hey we had 'loads in stock'.
The Meteor would get its chance at TT jobs soon enough :)

There is a 'Sea Balliol' down at Newquay in the Classic Museum (complete with folding wings). I had no idea it was there so do not know how complete or original it is.

Built by Boulton Paul Heritage Trust - it looks quite nice although close up you can tell it is a part replica.

The later Meteors could do a lot of the jobs, but especially those that required a longer endurance or range would be best left to a piston-engined type at the time. The Meteor F.8 had a 1 hr endurance only, I don't know if that includes reserves or not.

By the time though that the Meteor was settled into Target/Flag towing it had a minimum of an additional ventral fuel tank (where the cable 'hooked on') - the 'proper' TT versions usually had the ventral tank + 2x wing drop tanks.

Tempest 2
 

I remember when N Grace was interested in the Tempest 2, but was surprised when I mentioned they never quite made it to ops in WW2, hence never quite a 'warbird', and certainly difficult to value.

Tempest II gets nearer to first flight at Sywell...

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