The Bentham Works was a site of the Gloster Aircraft Company.

[4] The Meteor would first fly on 5 March 1943, piloted by Michael Daunt, from RAF Cranwell in Lincolnshire; the Meteor was originally to have been called Thunderbolt; the first aircraft had Halford H-1 engines (de Havilland Goblin) as the Power Jets W.2 was not ready in time.

Gloster aircraft were also flown from RAF Edgehill in Oxfordshire on the north-east of Cotswolds south of the A422, as this was halfway between the Bentham site and Lutterworth (later at Whetstone) in Leicestershire, where the jet engines were being developed by Power Jets; Power Jets also had a site at Barnoldswick.

The world's first turboprop aircraft was Meteor EE227 flown from RAF Church Broughton in Derbyshire on 20 September 1945, with a Rolls-Royce RB.50 Trent engine.

The German Messerschmitt Me 262 had been developed at Augsburg, then Oberammergau, in Bavaria by Woldemar Voigt; the Me 262 first flew on 18 July 1942 at Leipheim in Bavaria, piloted by Fritz Wendel.