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Special Hobby have sent us details of a forthcoming 1:72 Gloster Meteor kit with a difference – it will allow modellers to build the post-war machines that captured the World Speed Record before Chuck Yeager showed everyone a clean pair of heals in the Bell X-1.

”The very first British jet engine-powered fighter to see operational service was the Gloster Meteor. Following the wartime Meteor Mk.Is and Mk.IIIs, the production line gave also the post war Mk.4 version with much better performance. On 7 November 1945, two Meteor Mk.3s rebuilt to a Mk.4 standard were used to attempt the World Speed Record. The RAF High Speed Flight Meteors serialled EE454 and EE455 were flown by RAF’s Group Captain Hugh Joseph Wilson, CBE, AFC and Two Bars and Gloster Chief Test Pilot Eric Stanley Greenwood. Wilson, flying the camouflaged EE454 was few more miles faster that Greenwood in (almost) all-yellow EE455, having raised the record to 975.68 kmh. Less than a year later, Gp Capt E M (Teddy) Donaldson in a Meteor serialled EE549 set up a new record of 991.33 kmh and in January 1947, the very same machine also raised the Paris-London speed record.

The kit comprises two styrene sprues and a clear injected canopy, a fret of photo-etched engine air intake meshes, adhesive masks for various style canopies (incl. the special high speed metal canopy with small transparent portholes) and a decal sheet for record breaking machines serialled EE454, EE455 and EE549. The latter is depicted in two various colour schemes (camouflaged and all-blue) and what may be most interesting, with two various styles of her outer wing panels as later during the career, she was seen fitted with a standard Mk.4 short span wing.”

Kit #SH72361 - Gloster Meteor Mk.4 "World Speed Record” is due for release soon.

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