Gloster Meteor

Warpaint Series No. 22
Tony Butler
Hall Park Books Ltd., 1999
ISSN 1363-0369
80 Pages

Reviewed by Chris Banyai-Riepl

With all the other Warpaint titles coming in around 32 pages, I was very surprised when this one showed up on the doorstep. At first I thought there were two books in there, but no, it's just one whopping 80-page book on the Meteor. While this one may cost more than the other Warpaints, the price is definitely worth every penny. This book comes as close as possible to being the most complete Meteor book I've seen.

The book takes you on the long journey of the Meteor's life, starting at the beginning with the Whittle jet and the desire to have a twin-engined fighter. From there the Meteor's rise was, well, meteoric, and this book does an excellent job of explaining the changes to the airframe for all the different marks. The Meteor went through plenty of changes in its lifespan and many books tend to focus on just one set of Meteors (early WW2 Meteors, or night fighter Meteors for example). But this title gives it all to you, so you can get an excellent picture of the whole progression and how each variant related to prior and upcoming variants.

The side view illustrations add a nice touch to this book, as the Meteor was one of the more colorful early jets. Flown before the ideas of camouflage toned markings down, the RAF Meteors were very colorful, but compared to some of the foreign countries they could be called bland. There is one Argentinean Meteor F.4 that has white and red diagonal stripes on the tail and yellow and white checks around the rear fuselage. This scheme, and many of the others illustrated, is backed up in photos spread throughout the book, many in color. The final addition to this already great volume is a set of well-drawn 1/72 plans for all the Meteor variants.

If you're at all interested in early British jets or the Meteor in particular, this is one book you will definitely want to pick up. After looking at this book, I really want to build up my Czech Master Resin 1/72 Meteor F.8, although it will probably take me much longer now to figure out which scheme to paint it up in.