No. 616 Squadron exchanged its F.1s for the first Meteor F.3s on 18 December 1944.
Judging the Meteor F.3s were ready for combat over Europe, the RAF finally decided
to deploy them in the continent. On 20 January 1945, four Meteors were moved to
Melsbroek in Belgium and attached to the Second Tactical Air Force. Their initial
purpose was to provide air defence for the airfield, but their pilots hoped that their
presence might provoke the Luftwaffe into sending Me 262s against them. At this
point the Meteor pilots were still forbidden to fly over German-occupied territory,
or to go east of Eindhoven, to prevent a downed aircraft being captured by the
Germans or the Soviets.
In March, the entire squadron was moved to Gilze-Rijen and then in April, to Nijmegen.
The Meteors flew armed reconnaissance and ground attack operations without
encountering any German jet fighters. By late April, the squadron was based at Faßberg,
Germany and suffered its first losses when two aircraft collided in poor visibility. The war
ended with the Meteors having destroyed 46 German aircraft through ground attack and
having faced more problems through misidentification as the Messerschmitt Me 262 by
Allied aircraft and flak than from the Luftwaffe.
^ Butler and Buttler 2006, p. 48.
^ Green 1968, p. 55.
^ "CL 2934." Imperial War Museum. Retrieved: 3 June 2012.
^ Butler and Buttler 2006, p. 49.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloster_Meteor