Gloster Gladiator
The Gloster Gladiator is a British biplane fighter. But biplane fighters were outdated and consigned to history from the middle of the 1930s. The Gloster Gladiator was the exception that proved the rule.
The aircraft was introduced in 1934 as a further development of the Gloster Gauntlet. The requirement for the new fighter was that it should have a top speed of more than 210 knots and be armed with least four machine guns.
The Gloster Gladiator met the requirements in style and had outstanding flying qualities. By the spring of 1940, 537 Gladiators had been produced, in three different models. Almost half were exported to European countries.
When the second world war started, the British authorities prioritised the use of the Gloster Gladiator in combat operations abroad. The more modern fighters, the Hurricane and the Spitfire, were allocated to the defence of Great Britain.
The Gladiator saw action in almost all theatres during the Second World War, with a large number of air forces, some of them on the Axis side.
The RAF used it in France, Norway, Greece, the defence of Malta, the Middle East, and the brief Anglo-Iraqi War (during which the Royal Iraqi Air Force was similarly equipped).
Other countries deploying the Gladiator included China against Japan, beginning in 1938; Finland (along with Swedish volunteers) against the Soviet Union in the Winter War and the Continuation War; Sweden as a neutral noncombatant (although Swedish volunteers fought for Finland against USSR as stated above); and Norway, Belgium, and Greece resisting Axis invasion of their respective lands.