Gloster thin-wing Javelin

The thin-wing Javelin was a family of unbuilt design studies for a faster successor to the Gloster Javelin, the Royal Air Force's first purpose-designed all-weather jet fighter. The Javelin's thick delta wing caused heavy drag near the speed of sound, so Gloster reworked the design from 1953, and the Air Ministry's requirement F.153D called for a thinner wing and Bristol Olympus engines in place of the Armstrong Siddeley Sapphires. The proposals ran through P.364, P.370, P.371 and P.372 to the area-ruled P.376, a lengthened two-seat aircraft with a T-tail and swept-back intakes meant to carry two Red Dean missiles at speeds beyond Mach 1.6. Prototype XG336 was well advanced when the project was cancelled in May 1956 in favour of buying the Canadian Avro Arrow, which was itself later dropped.