March 5 , 1943 – The first flight of the Gloster Meteor . Aviation history is dotted with examples of individual technologies that changed the course of aircraft development , but one of the most far-reaching advances was the development of the turbojet engine . And while we often associate that advance with WWII , its origins can actually be traced back to before the war even started . Royal Air Force engineer Sir Frank Whittle was the first to design and produce a practical turbojet engine , forming Power Jets Ltd . in 1936 to develop his engine . Though he found it difficult to find financial backers for his project , and hard to find anybody to build a plane to put the new engine in , Whittle eventually visited the Gloster Aircraft Company in
1939 . There he met Gloster ’ s chief engineer , George Carter , who took an interest in Whittle ’ s new engine and began considering an aircraft design in which to implement the turbojet . The first proof of concept aircraft was the Gloster E . 28 / 39 , a single-engine aircraft that took its maiden flight on May 15 , 1941 . With proof that the turbojet would work , Gloster moved ahead with work on a production fighter , but decided to use two engines to make up for the lack of power in the early turbojet . By 1940 , Carter had the first proposal for the twin-engine Meteor fighter , and within 6 months Gloster received an order for 8 prototypes under Specification F9 / 40 , which was basically written to match the fighter already in development . The Meteor was built in a modular fashion consisting of five main sections : nose , forward fuselage , central section , rear fuselage , and tail sections . Various companies were contracted to build modules , and this modular concept allowed production to be dispersed and also facilitated disassembly and transport of the Meteor . The Meteor was introduced on
July 27 1944 , with the first aircraft delivered to No . 616 Squadron of the RAF . At first , the Meteor was used against the German V-1 flying bombs , and on August 4 , 1944 , Meteor pilots claimed the first kills when they shot down 2 V-1s . They would eventually claim 14 “ buzz bombs ” by the end of the war . Meteors were initially forbidden from flying over German-held territory for fear that one of the fighters could fall into enemy hands . But when the V-1 threat subsided , Meteors finally were finally sent to Europe in January of 1945 , but the clash between the Meteor and the Messerschmitt Me 262 , Germany ’ s first operational jet fighter , never occurred . Production and development of the Meteor continued after the war , and Royal Australian Air Force Meteors saw significant action in the skies over Korea during the Korean War . Nearly 4,000 Meteors were built by the time production ended in 1955 , and the Meteors ended their days with the RAF as target tugs , flying into the 1980s .