Much of the Gloster story has already been told by H. F. King in Flight for 27th May 1955. The same edition contains a generous contribution by Air Commodore Alan Wheeler which most vividly portrays a pilot's point of view on the Grebes, Gamecocks and later on, the Gladiators and Meteors.

When I left school with a Scholarship to Cambridge, subsequently transferred to Manchester School of Technology because I thought it would enable me to acquire a more practical knowledge of electrical engineering, the Wrights had only just made their first flight and the idea of a career in the aircraft world never entered my head. However, after the final exams at the end of the three years at Manchester and four years experience in Works and in a Consulting Engineers office, I had the opportunity in 1909 of following my Chief, Mervyn O'Gorman, to Farnborough when he was appointed by Lord Haldane as Superintendent of the Balloon Factory, later rechristened the Royal Aircraft Establishment. My salary was £3 a week and my first job was Personal Assistant to the Superintendent and later I was given the resounding title of Technical Assistant in Charge of Supplies, mostly the special materials which were being developed for aircraft and engines. At the outset I had to make hydrogen for the Airships which were the sole product of the Factory for more than a year. Making hydrogen was more interesting than you might think because occasionally the gasometers, where the hydrogen was stored before compression into steel bottles, used to blow up. We made no less than four new Airships before Lord Haldane gave permission for aircraft design to start and we had some leeway to recover to catch up with A. V. Roe, Sopwith, Blackburn and several others who had started earlier.