My father flew the Meteor and Vampire in the RAF circa 1950-52. He’s now 88 and going strong.
Around that time the RAF had 365 crashes in one year - one a day
No doubt the fact that all the senior pilots and instructors were WW2 veterans with a very different mindset to years later had something to do with it. A lack of 2 seat trainers no doubt didn’t help.
He tells the story of a training exercise they did call a ‘limiting mach dive’ or something like that. You climbed up to 40000’ rolled over and went straight down at full power. At some point no matter how hard you pushed forward the aircraft pitched upwards into a climb.
“Sir what happens if it pitches down?”
“Write it up when you get back”
He was transferred from Meteor onto the Vampire because it was discovered that pilots with a hip to knee measurement over x were losing their legs in ejections and bleeding out before reaching the ground. If you look at a Meteor you’ll notice the canopy bow goes straight up and across as opposed to aircraft that came later where the canopy bow leans forward.
The Vampire didn’t have an ejection seat so no problem....obviously
And yes he did have to bail out of a Vampire later on - at night over the English Channel.
